4th century BC. A bronze openwork horse frontlet with the lower part shaped as a stylised head of a horse, incised detail to front surfaces including stylised horse heads; a fixing loop to lower reverse. See Melyukova, A.I., Stepi evrope?skoy chasti SSSR v skifo-sarmatskoe vremya (Steppes of the European part of the USSR in the Scytho-Sarmatian period, Moscow, 1989; Leskov, A.M., Grabschätze der Adygeen, Munich, 1990; Galanina, L.K., Die Kurgane von Kelermes: 'Königsgräber' der frühskythischen Zeit, Moscow, 1997; ????????, ?.?., ‘??????? ?????????? ?? ????????? ?????????????? ??????????, ?????????? ? ??????????????? ???????? (???????? ?.?. ???????????? 1914, 1915, 1917 ??.)’ in ????. ???.38. ?????-?????????.: ??????????????? ???????, Saint Petersburg, 2010, pp.107-122.275 grams, 39.5cm (15 1/2"). From a private collection; formerly in the New York private collection of Dr V. Gorovits, part of the Gorovits family collection, since at least the 1940s; accompanied by a copy of a four page examination report number 137/2015 by Dr. Habil Mikhail Treister, and an archaeological report by Dr. Raffaele D’Amato; this lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by AIAD certificate number no. 10416-170709. Usually the Scythian warrior burials were accompanied by horses - the number of which corresponded to the status of the deceased (Galanina, 1987, p.54, fig.16) and were buried with their complete harness. A typical horse bridle consisted of a bronze bit with stirrup-shaped ends or an iron bit with looped ends and cheek-pieces joined to these with straps. The cheek-pieces were usually made of iron with three loops and a curved or straight end, or they were made of bone with three holes in and with extremities decorated with depictions in animal style; less often they were made of bronze and have three holes (Meljukova, 1989, pl.35"). Wooden cheek-pieces with bone ends were also used. These bridles also incorporated separators at the points where muzzle straps crossed, so that they would not become tangled, as well as decorative plaques. Nose-plate chamfrons, like our specimen, were high decorative parts of the horse harnesses. Bronze open-worked frontlets like these ones were found with horses in the Barrow-mound no 5 of the Ulyap burial-ground in the Kuban basin, and their secure dating at the 4th century BC was established by the Thasian amphoras found in the respective graves (nn. 14-15-21, see Leskov, 1990, figs.180,183"). Also the decoration of the chamfron with incised lines finds various parallels both on frontlets from Barrow-Mounds nos. 4/1913 and 4/1917 near Elizavetinskaya Kossack-Village, in Kuban Basin, and from Gyuenos in Abkhazia (Galanina, 2010, pl.7,12"). The piece belongs to a rare type of chamfron, known only from rare finds in the Schythian and Maiotian burials of 5th – 4th centuries BC. These frontlets were most probably realised in the Kuban Area, and mostly dated, considered the Greek Amphoras of Herakleia Pontike and Thasos found with them, from the middle to the second half of the 4th century BC.