Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 176 h David Nicolle 33–37. Bronze arrowheads excavated from the ruins of a large Roman bath-house at Hieropolis in western Anatolia. The archaeological context indicated that they were neither Roman nor early Byzantine, but dated from the 10th to 12th centuries; namely the middle Byzantine period or from a time of transition between Byzantine and Saljūq Turkish domination. While it is not impossible that arrows were being made of bronze rather than iron during this period, it seems unlikely that such relatively expensive and militarily less effective material would be used. Perhaps these arrowheads were totemic objects or “charms” that had been thrown into the mysterious hot and chemically rich waters of what is now known in Turkish as Pamukkale. Even if that were the case, their shapes — all of which are socketed except for a single tanged example —would almost certainly have been the same as “real” arrowheads of iron. (Hieropolis Archaeology Museum, Pamukkale; author’s photographs).