Relief frieze with busts between pilasters, grey schist, 1st century AD, Swat valley.

This narrow frieze has a row of squat pillars, each ornamented with an incised longitudinal line down the middle with a capital and stepped base. Busts of youthful-looking men with plump cheeks and bulging eyes peer out in alternate directions from between them. The figures all have hair tied in top knots and are wearing uttariysa wound over the front of their upper bodies, with the ends of some draped over a shoulder. They rest one arm on a ledge while an unidentified segmental object rests on their other side On the right hand end there is a rectangular panel and the frieze has a plain fillet along the bottom and a convex moulding along the top decorated with a foliate motif.
There is a slot at either end along the top edge which runs from front to back. There are also traces of mortar on the back of the stone IM.861939 (the left hand part) has a V-shaped incision on the top edge and the other right hand part, IM.86A-1939, has a pair of parallel diagonal scratch marks. Additionally there is a back slot on the rear of the piece running down from the slot on the top edge.

Presented by Barger and White

Acquired from Evert Barger and Philip Wright, as part of the collection of finds excavated during their expedition to the Swat valley in 1938. This is no. 58 in Barger's lists.
The site of Gumbat (Pashto for ‘stupa’) was first visited by Sir Aurel Stein in 1926 (Stein. M.A. An Archaeological Tour in Upper Swat and Adjacent Hill Tracts. Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, 42. Calcutta). It was visited in 1938 by E. Barger and P. Wright during their expedition to Swat and Afghanistan. Despite considerable looting it has been and continues to be an important site and it has been excavated further by the Italian Archaeological Mission (IsIAO) from 1956, in 2005 and from 2011and 2012 in collaboration with the Pakistan government under the Pakistan-Italian Debt Swap Agreement (PIDSA).
Evert Barger, Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Bristol, and Philip Wright, from the Indian Section of the V&A Museum, undertook a survey and excavation of the site during their expedition to Swat. Philip Wright with T.D. Weatherhead, working as surveyor and photographer, were largely responsible for the excavation work in Swat where they stayed for two months in the summer of 1938 while Barger travelled on to Afghanistan. Forty fragments of architectural and sculptural objects were brought back to England, of which 16 were acquired by the V&A Museum. The residue of the collection, which had been left in store at the museum was acquired in 1961. Photographs of the expedition by Weatherhead are in the British Library in the collection of William Vernon Emanuel, who was also a member of the expedition.

IM.86&A-1939