Reverse and obverse

Late 4th-5th century

Gold, garnets

H 6.1 cm, l 8.6 cm, wt 75.45 g

Volgograd Province, village of Verkhne-Kurmoyarskaya

This kolt consists of a roughly circular plate of gold with short tubular rays spreading from the disk. On the obverse the disk is divided by a filigree ornament of two parallel twisted wires into two sections, a segment and an oval. The segment contains three settings for inlays; the oval has seven garnets in their settings, surrounded by granulations. The space between the stones is filled with triangles composed of granulations. The disk is edged with a narrow band of metal soldered on edgewise and to this are attached the ‘rays'. The ‘rays' have spherical terminals decorated with minute pyramids of granulations. The reverse of the kolt is decorated with a religious subject: the Tree of Life with a bird on top and ibexes on each side of it. All the figures are depicted using granulations. Attached to a gold diadem, such kolts formed a part of a woman's headdress.