Senior Officers of the Marcomannic Wars

[MVinc]

I notice, meanwhile, that the Bishop and Coulston illustrations show another interesting helmet, apparently dated to the Antonine period - it's number 3 (top right) on plate 87. 'Cavalry Sports' again, but not one I've seen before. Might look good on an officer, perhaps?...

B&C Plate 87

Yes, that helmet looks interesting. But I was not able to find out more. No pictures no description. Only short description and this picture in Bishop and Coulston and thats not enough. I would be interested how the top of the helmet looked like - for example could it have a crest attached?

[Decebalus]

The helmet Bishop/Coulston pl. 87, 3 was found by grave diggers in the Roman necropolis of Tell Oum Hauran (Roman NAWA, Syria) in 1955.
It was badly crushed and the published photographs show a plaster reconstruction.
Material is bronze and the dating 2nd Century. It belongs to the Guisborough/Theilenhofen type helmets (Cavalry 'Sports' Type I; CSI01 in the database).
Height is 25 cm (cheekpieces 18 cm).
There is no sign that some type of crest could have been attached and the skull is decorated in relief overall.
With it was found another helmet (of Nijmegen-Kops Plateau Type / CSD) which mask has a rather 'Oriental' expression with moustache. The decoration is similar and it is possible that they've been manufactured in the same (Syrian?) workshop.
They're now (together with some parts of armour, weapons and horse equipment, which might belong to the helmets too) in the National Museum Damascus (Inv. C 7364ff.).
I've no pictures of the other finds but could send you some of the helmet(s).

Greets

[Alexandr K]

I have checked the mentioned references. Indeed the information about the material is inconsistent. I have looked at some other articles and in the absolute majority the armour is described as silver. Anyway, I will try to get more details about this.

I tried to investigate this a little bit, but I have no definitive answer (no hard data at hand). First the armour had been regarded as made of silver. But later some analysis was allegedly done in Vienna and the result was that the armour is from silvered bronze. So the latter is most probably true. This makes more sense also from a practical point of view (silver armour would not probably be very useful).

Greetings
Alexandr