Ancient sculpture from Umayyad era fetches £4.2 million at Sotheby's auction

Bronze buck has two lines of Arabic Kufic inscriptions on its body

The sculpture is in a 'remarkable state of preservation' despite its 1,200-year history, experts said. Getty Images

A bronze buck from the Umayyad era sold for £4.2 million ($5.4 million) at a Sotheby’s auction dedicated to artworks from the Islamic world and India.

The eighth-century sculpture surpassed its initial estimate of £3 million. The buck had been on display in Sotheby’s Dubai, alongside other lots from the sale, before going under the hammer in London on Wednesday. The buyer was not revealed.

“This bronze buck represents one of the earliest expressions of artistic creation in the Islamic world,” Benedict Carter, senior director at Sotheby’s, tells The National. “The buck has an extraordinary force and energy as an object, combining both technical mastery and beauty, not to mention its remarkable state of preservation, showing that it has always been a prized object throughout its 1,200-year history.”

The artefact features a cylindrical body with minutely crafted details, such as the ridges on the buck’s antlers, as well as its teeth and nostrils. However, what makes the bronze buck particularly coveted is the two lines of Arabic Kufic inscriptions – the signed names of the buck's maker and patron.

“The significance is perhaps more that it is signed at all, as we know little about the actual craftsman Abdallah ibn Thabit,” says Carter, who is head of the house's Islamic and Indian art.

“Having a documentary inscription in Arabic, in a particularly early form of Kufic script, places the buck in the Arab Islamic world, rather than in pre-Islamic times, alongside only a handful of other early metalwork pieces, adding to the art historical knowledge of this period.”

Other significant sales during the auction include an illuminated Quran by the master calligrapher Ya'qut al-Musta'simi in Baghdad dated around 1275. The work fetched £720,000.

Meanwhile, a 1630 portrait of the Mughal nobleman Mirza Asaf Khan sold for £480,000 and an 18th-century painting showing Maharaja Raj Singh of Kishangarh celebrating the festival of Holi sold for £174,000.