Metropolitan Museum (New York)

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Yes,it is a feature of the new RAT. It happens some times, but not always, and i don't know why!

The bending of the cheek guards of the corinthian helmets is believed to be a ritual "killing" of the helmets. They had been dedicated to a sanctuary and thus now belonged to the god,so they had to be made unuseful for men. The same happened with the killing of swords that they bent around the vase with the ashes of the warrior (8th century bc) or with coins,where they drilled a small hole on the coin,so if someone stole a sanctuary,he couldn't use the money he stole legally.

The holes around the edge of early helmets served of course to secure the linning. In the Greek re-enactment section i offered an interpretation of how this might have worked.
Later helmets usually had the linning glued on,but the distinction early/late isn't very accurate,because even though in the mid 5th century there were almost no helmets with stitched or riveted linning, in the 6th century there were some helmets with glued linning.
Khaire
Giannis

PS. Batavian, do you have a close-up photo of the greaves?