Dragon Mirror from the South-Western Crimea

This article publishes a metal mirror found in the southwestern Crimea. Similar to a significant part of the finds of this category, the mirror under study finds no context or monument to be reliably associated with. This circumstance, however, does not diminish the value of the artefact, since the find is distinguished by high artistic performance and a number of authentic features allowing the one to determine its chronology and cultural and historical period. The mirror under analysis is a figured “disk” with an eight-petal festooned edge, the front side of which is smoothly polished. On the reverse side there is a decoration showing two dragons, with the heads looking on the centre of the disk. This image is known on metal mirrors in the Khitan state of Liao, then becomes widespread in the Song period. For the dragon scenes, there are other variations: with one dragon playing with a pearl; with four dragons moving in a circle; with a dragon and a phoenix; a dragon and a tiger. Dragon mirrors are copies of Chinese mirrors but made by the workers in the Golden Horde. The find in question meets with analogies in the sites from the second half of the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Bronze mirrors from mediaeval states of the Far East were made by casting. Then, irregularities and casting seams were removed from the surface of the artefact. The mirror side was grinded, polished, and amalgamated with a mixture of mercury and tin. The material used in the making of the find from the south-western Crimea was tin-lead bronze with a high tin content (21.8%), which correlates with the results of elemental analysis of mirrors of the Golden Horde period uncovered in other monuments.