Beschreibung:

Greek Chalcidian Helmet with Horns of Zeus Amun 3rd century BC A Chalcidian Type V bronze helmet, possibly worn by a soldier who fought under Alexander the Great; the bowl forged in two pieces with the left part overlapping the right one; small reduced nose-guard, a moulded band traced around the eye perimeters, while the crown shows the typical carinated perimeter of the type; the carinated crown with median ridge; the front upper parts of the bowl embossed with two volutes, shaped like ram horns, connected across the perimeter by shallow ribs; the cheek-pieces a later replacement. 722 grams, 27cm (10 3/4"). Fine condition. A rare variant. Provenance Property of a European businessman; from his private Belgian collection formed in the 1990s; previously in a North American collection formed in Illinois in the 1980s; accompanied by a metallurgic analytical report written by Metallurgist Dr. Brian Gilmour of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, report number 135239, and an academic report by military specialist Dr Raffaele D'Amato Literature See Pflug, H.,'Chalkidische Helme'; 'Italische Helmen mit stirnkehle' in: Antike Helme, RGZM Monographien 14. Mainz, 1988, 137-150; 276-292; Connolly, P., Greece and Rome at war, London, 1981; Christie's, The Axel Guttmann Collection of Ancient Arms and Armour, part 1, London, 2002; Christie's, The Axel Guttmann Collection of Ancient Arms and Armour, part 2, London, 2004; Симоненко А. В., 'Шлемы сарматского времени из Восточной Европы' (Sarmatian Age Helmets from Eastern Europe), in Stratum Plus, n. 4, 2014, pp. 249-284. This helmet is very similar to various examples in private collections (Christie's 2004, p.99, cat.103), but belongs to the variant V of the category, fitted with movable cheek-guards and mainly having a South Italian origin. In South Italy, especially in the Western part of the Lucania, the Chalcidian helmet developed with movable cheek-guards, in various imitations and variants of the originals. Helmets of this typology were exported also into the Balkans, the continental Greece and the Macedonia, as well as the Black Sea area, and we are not able to say if our specimen was used by a Italiote warrior or a noble Sarmatian or Meotian aristocratic warrior of the Pontus Euxinus. However the absence of the neck guard points towards the second hypothesis, and the possibility of the helmet being modified by Greek craftsmen of the Pontus. Footnotes This helmet is decorated with the Horns of Zeus Amun, possibly used by a soldier who fought under Alexander the Great, who, after the visiting of the Oasis of Siwa, proclaimed his divine descent from Zeus-Amun. Before Alexander, the Greeks of the lower Nile Delta and Cyrenaica, combined features of the supreme god Zeus, with the features of the Egyptian god Amun-Ra. He was usually depicted with horns that curved downward, a characteristic common to rams in the Nile region. Greek travellers to Egypt would report that Amun, who they determined to be the ruler of the Egyptian pantheon, was similar to the king of the gods of the Classical Greek pantheon, Zeus, and therefore they became identified by the Greeks as the same deity. Moreover, Amun's consort Mut became associated by the Greeks with Zeus’s consort in the Classical pantheon, Hera. At Megalopolis, the god was represented with the head of a ram (Pausania, VIII, 32 § 1), and the Greeks of Cyrenaica dedicated at Delphi, a chariot with a statue of Ammon. Such was its reputation among the Classical Greeks that Alexander the Great journeyed there after the battle of Issus and during his occupation of Egypt, where he was declared ‘the son of Amun’ by the oracle.