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The Dating of Helmets and Corselets in Early Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Extract

Kukahn, Der Griechische Helm, has traced the development of the Corinthian helmet—(1) a ‘stove-pipe’ shape, longer than it was broad; (2) (a) back adapted to the human head; (b) necessary modifications of the side; (3) plastic adjustment of the cap. His catalogue follows this scheme, but he makes nonsense of it by dating nos. 44–69 about 600 B.C. (p. 32, see pl. 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6), and a more developed helmet no. 76 (pl. 32) about 640 B.C. He has seen (p. 26) that 2a is depicted on vases dated before 650 B.C.; so is 2b, with a bend in the side, though Kukahn has missed it (p. 28). See Payne's photograph of the plastic aryballos in Berlin and of the Macmillan vase, PV p. 23; also the helmet of the kneeling man on an aryballos, Johansen, pl. XXIII, 1. ‘Stove-pipe’ helmets continue to occur long after 600 B.C., the foot often hidden by a shield, but the best helmets of 600 B.C. are not shaped like a pipe (see Payne, NC pl. 31, 9 and pi. 32, 2); more like the ‘fly-away’ helmet, Kukahn no. 134, pl. 3, 6 than like no. 55, pl. 2, 6, which he dates about 600 B.C.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1940

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References

page 81 note 1 The curls below the neck of this bronze have never been satisfactorily explained. They begin and stop in a completely arbitrary fashion. They are shaped like the curls of lion's manes (e.g., the lion of the Chigi vase), or like the locks on the chest of a Hittite warrior, the ‘Watcher by the Gate’ at Boghazkoi (O. Puchstein, Boghaskoi, Die Bauwerke, pl. 19; Schaeffer und Andrae, Kunst des Alten Orients, p. 554). Do the curb on the bronze also represent a hairy chest?

page 81 note 2 Nierhaus (JDI 53 p. 106, 1) considers them later than the articulated corselets, ‘perhaps sixth century.’ Long plain corselets are sometimes shown on Attic vases in the sixth century, e.g., Tyrrhenian neck-amphora in the Louvre (CVA III, H d, pl. 11,3); amphora by Lydos in Berlin (Pfuhl, no. 241); especially on Amazons. All plastic illustrations, e.g., neckamphora in Würzburg, Langlotz, pl. 48, 202, are articulated; see Béquignon's illustrations, BCH 1929, pp. 102, ff.