A Fine and Rare Silver and parcel-gilt cup, Ilkhanid or Golden Horde, Southern Russia or Persia, circa 1300

of deep rounded body with sunken well, interior punched, engraved and gilded, with a central medallion with a winged sphinx with dragon-headed tail against a foliate ground, the cavetto with leaf-form cartouches at intervals each engraved with a bird motif, a foliate-edged thumb-rest rivetted to the rim and engraved with cartouches en suite to the body, loop handle rivetted beneath 

This type of drinking cup (or 'belt-bowl'), which has its origins in eastern Asia, spread west from the Ural river during the Mongol expansion of the early thirteenth century.  It was carried in a bag that hung from the traveller's belt, and is illustrated in a miniature depicting Sultan Sanjar ibn Malik Shah in the Edinburgh University copy of the Jami al-Tawarikh of Rashid al-Din (see Rice, D.T., The Illustrations to the 'World History' of Rashid al-Din, Edinburgh, 1976, p.175). 

Similar examples can be found in the David Collection, Copenhagen (see Folsach 1990 cat.333; and von Folsach 2001, no.507, p.318), and the Hermitage Museum (see Kuwait 1990, cat. no. 63; and Treasures of the Golden Horde, St Petersburg, 2000, no.47, p.76). The vestiges of late Seljuq figural iconography on the present example points to a date towards the end of the thirteenth century.