8th century AD. A nearplete military belt set of twenty-two elements,prising: an openwork hinged buckle with a central foliage motif, three pierced lugs to the reverse; eleven openwork rectangular belt stiffeners with a pair of long-eared quadrupeds; ten bigger openwork belt stiffeners with four long-eared quadrupeds; mounted in a ctom-made lined display case. Cf. Daim, F., Die Awaren am Rand der Byzantinischen Welt, Innsbruck, 2000, pp.299ff., belts from Micheldorf-Kremsdorf; pl.2, belt from Cataj, Slovakia. 2.75 kg total, buckle: 60mm long (box: 90 x 18cm) (2 1/4 (35 1/2 x 7)"). Tagawa collection, Tokyo, Japan, before 1986. Apanied by an archaeological expertise by military specialist Dr Raffaele D’Amato. This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is apanied by AIAD certificate number no.11071-183988. The belt is ofposite type, decorated with scrollwork in Byzantine style. Many authors discs the possibility these belts were produced in the Eastern Roman capital or if they were made in the workshops of the Avar Khaganate, maybe with Roman matrices for producing sheet ornaments. The Vrap Belt, divided between the MET, the Archaeological Meum of Istanbul and the Walters Art Gallery of Baltimora, represents a similar example of artistic melange between the Nomad Style of the Avars and the foliage and openwork ornaments of the Eastern Roman Empire. [22]