The Falcon’s Nest: A Massive Gold Box and Cover (0.85 Kg), Probably Achaemenid or Parthian

Good morning. On November 21, 2025, Saki will hold its inaugural sale of fine antiquities and ancient art with this beautiful catalog. We have a few spare copies left, so if you want one, we can send it to you. You have to order it via our website. Just email us. This is about lot 85, which is here, beautifully presented in the catalog on four pages. And here's the object. It's exceptionally beautiful. It's exceptionally heavy. It has 850 grams of near-pure gold, 22 carats plus, and it's a box made in the shape of a falcon's nest. There you go. You see the top falcon here, and the two little birds here, and the falcon has brought them a goose for dinner, if you will. And it's extremely finely executed, the details of the nest here with all these little branches and everything. And so we'll have a look at the metallurgy. So, as I said, we have measured gold alloys in three areas, and we're looking at 88 to 92 percent gold versus 5 to 6 silver and 3 to 6 copper. An interesting thing about this is, in ancient furnaces, the temperature wasn't high enough to create a homogenic gold alloy. And so, since gold and silver and copper have different melting points, in the cool-off phase, the gold solidifies earlier, which means that the copper and the silver then basically migrate into the liquid phase. At some point in the bottom, you see here, there is some copper concentration in this area. This is actually very good because it proves that this is an ancient alloy. And the copper concentration here is up to 6.2 percent, versus in the rest of the alloy, it's more like 2.8 to 3.4. So, there's a concentration here, and when this piece was once buried, there is a lot of malachite and cuprite patina that set down in this area. Of course, this is something that is impossible to imitate because modern alloys are very different, they are homogenic. So, this is about metallurgy. The provenance is also strong. It's from Leonardo Vigorelli, who is an important dealer and collector in Italy, in northern Italy. He's the founder of D'Artagnan-Sommarie, a famous gallery which exhibited all over the world and had very important publication work. And this is from his private collection. He acquired it some 30 years ago in London. Back in the day, he thought it's a Sasanian piece, which would mean 2nd, 3rd, maybe 4th century BC. And in this case, this would be not so much a falcon, but more an eagle. Now, it's very hard to tell those birds apart, specifically when they're modeled in gold. Our research, however, has turned a little more in a different direction. We think it's probably either a Hamanid or a Parthian, which would essentially say this is something around the 4th to the 1st century BC. So, essentially two, three hundred years earlier than what Mr. Vigorelli thought. The reason for that is that in the British Museum, there is a group of eagle sculptures from the Hamanid period, 5th to 4th century BC. And there is one eagle that is closely related to this one. Very, very similar. The modeling, the alloy, the position, the size, and several other features. So, this is the closest we could find from a significant number of the pictures, which all show eagles in one way or the other. We're looking at gold clasps, belt buckets, coins, gold discs, amulets, pendants, figures, and they all have the same subject. But the box, of course, is much larger, much heavier, and a very, very important work of art. The literature comparison shows also a goldfish from the Hamanid Empire, which is larger, 25 centimeters. So, this proves that they have made very large gold objects as well, not only small figures, amulets, and pendants. So, overall, we're looking at a gold value here of approximately 80,000 euros, give or take. Of course, no one's ever going to melt that, but just saying. We started at 40,000 with an estimate of 80,000. So, there's very little risk in bidding right now because you're essentially bidding only below the gold value. But, of course, this is a museum piece, and so if you can acquire it, I wish you the best of luck in the auction and hope to see you there.