DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0247
196 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
a leather cap, more or less fearfully and wonderfully gar-
nished.1 The monuments present several varieties
of helmet, but none of metal. Metal decorations,
however, may be recognized with a degree of probability on
some of them. Thus the helmets of the men on the War-
rior Vase are dotted with white, — possibly representing
bronze bosses or the like. The Homeric Greeks decked
their helms with the gleaming tusks of the wild boar,2 and
this was in all probability an early Mycenaean practice.
At least Dr. Schliemann found in Grave IV. sixty of these
tusks, — each with the reverse side cut perfectly flat, and
with the borings to attach them to some other object; and
with them a large quantity of flat quadrangular pieces from
1 to 2 inches long and \ to | of an inch broad, cut out
of boars' teeth, and pierced with a hole at each extremity.
He inclined to the opinion that they had belonged to
horse-trappings, but Bruckner and Reichel assign them to
helmets. They were found in a veritable funeral armory;
and we can hardly conceive that helm and shield were left
behind when sword and spear uniformly accompanied these
heroic chiefs to the tomb. In Grave V. we have identified
some of the woodwork of a shield ; and here we have, no
doubt, the flashing tusks that once decked out a helmet.
The helmet is represented on monuments of various
kinds, —in the round, in relief, in intaglio, and in painting
(the Warrior Vase). One of the best reproductions is the
ivory head (Fig. 85), from a tomb in Lower Mycenae. It
shows a conical cap, surmounted by a button,—possibly
with a socket to hold the plume; and apparently a cheek-
1 The common Homeric designation kuWtj apparently points to an original
"dog,-skin" cap, though Thrasyinedes' kWjj is expressly described as of bull's
hide (Iliad, x. 253), and Dolon's of weasel skin (ibid. 335), while Odysseus
wears a kiWtj irdyxt^Kos (Odyssey, xviii. 378).
2 Iliad, x. 263 f.
a leather cap, more or less fearfully and wonderfully gar-
nished.1 The monuments present several varieties
of helmet, but none of metal. Metal decorations,
however, may be recognized with a degree of probability on
some of them. Thus the helmets of the men on the War-
rior Vase are dotted with white, — possibly representing
bronze bosses or the like. The Homeric Greeks decked
their helms with the gleaming tusks of the wild boar,2 and
this was in all probability an early Mycenaean practice.
At least Dr. Schliemann found in Grave IV. sixty of these
tusks, — each with the reverse side cut perfectly flat, and
with the borings to attach them to some other object; and
with them a large quantity of flat quadrangular pieces from
1 to 2 inches long and \ to | of an inch broad, cut out
of boars' teeth, and pierced with a hole at each extremity.
He inclined to the opinion that they had belonged to
horse-trappings, but Bruckner and Reichel assign them to
helmets. They were found in a veritable funeral armory;
and we can hardly conceive that helm and shield were left
behind when sword and spear uniformly accompanied these
heroic chiefs to the tomb. In Grave V. we have identified
some of the woodwork of a shield ; and here we have, no
doubt, the flashing tusks that once decked out a helmet.
The helmet is represented on monuments of various
kinds, —in the round, in relief, in intaglio, and in painting
(the Warrior Vase). One of the best reproductions is the
ivory head (Fig. 85), from a tomb in Lower Mycenae. It
shows a conical cap, surmounted by a button,—possibly
with a socket to hold the plume; and apparently a cheek-
1 The common Homeric designation kuWtj apparently points to an original
"dog,-skin" cap, though Thrasyinedes' kWjj is expressly described as of bull's
hide (Iliad, x. 253), and Dolon's of weasel skin (ibid. 335), while Odysseus
wears a kiWtj irdyxt^Kos (Odyssey, xviii. 378).
2 Iliad, x. 263 f.