02-02-2012, 10:10 PM
Quote:Not strictly Greek , but a beautiful helmet someone posted on FB today.
Does anyone know where it is displayed and where it was found?
I am waiting on an answer from the poster but as usual, impatience gets the better of me....
I think it is a phrygian... but is that just a classifcation or style...Thracian?
Phrygians were largely considered in antiquity to be of "Thraecian stock" and that various myths indicate a place of origin in what is today eastern Macedonia (in modern Greek state to avoid confusion with other innovations), said to have emigrated in the era prior to the Trojan war (in Iliad we find them already in deep Minor Asia). Interestingly, after more than 1000 years after their migration in deeper Minor Asia where they intermingled more with the local Luwo-lydian stock Minor Asians for most of the timeframe than with coastal Greeks, they possessed a language that is formally classified as the closest known language to Greek making it a Helleno-Phrygian family and this makes no reference to loan-words but the essence of the language (they retained archaisms found in Linear-B but lost in Greek mainland and Ionian dialects)
Speaking of Phrygian or Thraecian can be a point to discuss then. For me for example, if you want to make a Phrygian cap, take a long Pilow, wear it under your helmet stuffed and there you are. Or else, Myceneans (like many others) did have already curved crests worn in both directions - so why Thraecian or Phrygian? Reminds me of the "Illyrian" helment that was never Illyrian which still troubles so many thousands of people. Names can be misleading. Fashions came and went. We call lorica segmentata (a term that Romans never used I think) an armor that is actually a downsized iron evolution of the Dendra armor.
However if I am to stick to titles, this beautiful helmet (where it comes from so well preserved - if not a reconstruction, hope not though?) looks like an ornate Attic-thraecian cross.