The Ziwiye hoard is a treasure hoard containing gold, silver, and ivory objects, also including a few Luristan pieces, that was uncovered on the south shore of Lake Urmia

Lake Urmia

Lake Urmia , ancient name: Lake Matiene) is a salt lake in northwestern Iran, near Iran's border with Turkey. The lake is between the Iranian provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, west of the southern portion of the similarly shaped Caspian Sea...

 in Ziwiyeh

Ziwiyeh

The castle at Ziwiyeh which has been ruined through digging for archaeological purposes, was an ancient and strong building situated on the top of a mount above the wide Ziwiyeh Cave, Iran. It is located in an altitude of 1,835 m above sea level in Kurdistan province of Iran on the south of...

, Kurdistan Province

Kurdistan Province

Kurdistan Province or Kordestan Province or Kurdestan Province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran, not to be confused with the greater geographical area of Iranian Kurdistan. The province of Kurdistan is 28,817 km² in area which encompasses just one-fourth of the Kurdish inhabited areas of Iran or...

, Iran, in 1947. These objects provide a link between the cultures of the Iranian plateau

Iranian plateau

The Iranian plateau, or Iranic plateau, is a geological formation in Southwest Asia. It is the part of the Eurasian Plate wedged between the Arabian and Indian plates, situated between the Zagros mountains to the west, the Caspian Sea and the Kopet Dag to the north, the Hormuz Strait and Persian...

 and the Scythia

Scythia

In antiquity, Scythian or Scyths were terms used by the Greeks to refer to certain Iranian groups of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian steppe...

n art forms known as the "animal style

Animal style

Animal style art is characterized by its emphasis on animal and bird motifs, and the term describes an approach to decoration which existed from China to Northern Europe in the early Iron Age, and the barbarian art of the Migration Period...

". "The Scythian motives adopted by Urartu

Urartu

Urartu , corresponding to Ararat or Kingdom of Van was an Iron Age kingdom centered around Lake Van in the Armenian Highland....

 account for the decoration of the great Treasure of Sakiz brought to light on the south shore of Lake Urmia," was Leonard Woolley

Leonard Woolley

Sir Charles Leonard Woolley was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia...

's assessment (Woolley 1961 p 176). The hoard contains objects in four styles: Assyrian, Scythian, proto-Achaemenid (with strong Greek influences), and the provincial native pieces. Dated ca. 700 BC, this collection of objects illustrates the situation of the Iranian plateau as a crossroads of cultural highways— not least of them the Silk Road

Silk Road

The Silk Road or Silk Route refers to a historical network of interlinking trade routes across the Afro-Eurasian landmass that connected East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean and European world, as well as parts of North and East Africa...

— which fused disparate cultures to inform early Iranian art.

Examples of the "Ziwiye Treasure" are scattered among public and private collections. A "Ziwiye" provenance may have been applied to comparable objects that have passed through the trade since the 1960s.