Love on the second glimpse
 

Sometimes interesting what you can find in the web.A powderhorn,nothing spectacular,like hundrets others on the market.Around 22 cm long,made from horn, stag horn and wood.It seems to be loved and often used by his owner,because the condition is not the best .After the second glimps on the engravings it becomes interesting.On one side there is a lying hind and a stag, scratching his ear with his leg.Both are shown in in a landscape and it looks, as if they were taken from a Disney movie, seomehow looking funny.Similar engravings you can find on riflestocks and huntingsword blades in the middle of the 18.Century.On the other side of the powderhorn it becomes dramatically.Under a latin inscription you can see a creature , half human half stag,which is heavily attacked from 3 dogs.Two of them are already biting into the creatures ears.If you know,that the antique greece ans roman mythologie plays a significant role in the european culture of the 18.Century, you can assume,that the creature is Actaeon.Diana transforms him into a stag after he had observed she and her nymphs taking a bath in a spring.His hunting dogs did not recognized him anymore and killed him.The inscription " Acta on ego sum, Dominum cognoscite ves Trium " i would translate very free to " I am hunted,you wii know the master of the three " Certainly somebody else can translate it better. The great craftsmanship of the engravings is fascinating.A lot of art and hunting history on a rather simple object.

Great powderhorn, Akanthus :cool:.
Perhaps the engraved text would be Actaeon ego sum: dominum cognoscite vestrum! meaning I am Actaeon: know your master.
Actaeon, in Geeek mythology, was a great hunter.


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Love on the second glimps
 

What a lovely thing. Reminds me of seventeenth century priming flasks that incorporate a wheelock spanner. The construction seems unusual in that it looks like two slices of horn have been riveted together. Maybe you could confirm this is correct.

[QUOTE=fernando;280694]Great powderhorn, Akanthus :cool:.
Perhaps the engraved text would be Actaeon ego sum: dominum cognoscite vestrum! meaning I am Actaeon: know your master.
Actaeon, in Geeek mythology, was a great hunter.


Thank you Fernando.I think the latin in Germany of the 18.Century is so bumpy as my english today

Yes,i think you are right.It seems to be a bent bigger piece for the corpus and a smaller for the back.Both riveted together.

I wonder why the text is split like it is. And what do you think is depicted under the stag? It appears to be a man-made structure.

Maybe the engraver copied the inscription from another implement, split in context, and did not know Latin enough to recompose it.


Actaeon himself ?


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I think Dmitry means the architectural looking structure below the image of the stag scratching his ear. Fences for shooting driven game ?

I was considering the same thing as suggested by Fernando - the text is split in two columns of approximately equal size, as it would be in the following, or similar scenarios: On the sides of a blade with a wide fuller; On the sides of a blade with rhomboid-cross section; On the sides of a hexagonal, or similar, gun barrel.

Raf is right. This is what I'm wondering about.

Deer hunting with nets.

Raf, I agree with your sentiments; this is something hunting-related, perhaps a ditch with stakes...

From the Complete German Hunter 1724. A small shooting party firing from cover.
Even Von Fleming, the author was outraged by the slaughter. One wonders whether this flask might have been presented as a prize or momento of such an event. Hence the classical allusion to Actaeon the victorious hunter.