Terracotta 'Persian rider' from Selemieh

Terracotta 'Persian rider' from Selemieh

Terracotta horse and rider, hand-modelled with stamped or mouldmade face. Brownish buff core with traces of a cream slip.  The horse represented only by support wedges, with a divided base-line to indicate hooves, from which rises the upper part of a man with hood (kyrbasia?) folded over at the top. Mouldmade face with moustache and beard. The rider holds a disk (?) in his left hand, with his right arm bent and the open right hand held against the disk immediately below the chin. From Selemieh, northeast of Homs.
0.108m x 0.042m. 
P.R.S. Moorey, Ancient Near Eastern Terracottas (2005), p.233 no. 378 (Ashmolean 1913.451)

Commentary 

'Persian rider' figurines are very common in Syria and the Levant throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BC: for a general discussion, see P.R.S. Moorey, ‘Iran and the West: the case of the terracotta ‘Persian’ riders’, in Variatio Delectat: Iran und der Westen, Gedenkschrift für Peter Calmeyer (2000), 469-486. The significance of the 'disk' being held by the rider in this example is unclear; similar Persian riders with disks are known from several other Syrian sites (see P.R.S. Moorey, Ancient Near Eastern Terracottas (2005), p.234).