QUICK FACTS
Name: Elamite helmet with divine figures
What it is: A bronze helmet with gold decorations
Where it is from: Southwestern Iran
When it was made: Circa 1500 to 1100 B.C.
This unique helmet comes from the Elamite culture, an ancient civilization that flourished for nearly three millennia in what is now Iran. Likely worn by a warrior king more than 3,000 years ago, the helmet has been decorated with a large bird of prey that is swooping down over three divine figures.
The dome-shaped bronze helmet measures roughly 8.5 inches (21.6 centimeters) in diameter and has a thin, cutaway area on the front that would have gone over the wearer's eyebrows. Originally, a small projection would have extended down between them to cover the wearer's nose. Gold-covered silver studs line the edge of the helmet, and a bronze tube on the back likely once held a plume of feathers or hair.
The helmet, which is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was made by a master artisan of the Elamite culture, one of the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East. The Elamites lived in what is now southwest Iran, along the eastern Persian Gulf, from roughly 2700 B.C. until they were conquered by the Persian Empire in 539 B.C. Elam was frequently at war with neighboring Mesopotamian cities, including Ur and Babylon, and archaeologists have found numerous examples of the culture's elaborate weapons and armor.
But this particular helmet is "a masterpiece of ancient art" that "has no parallels in either the representative art of the ancient Near East or from excavations," archaeologist Oscar White Muscarella wrote in a 1988 book about the ancient Near Eastern bronze and iron artifacts in The Met's collection. This helmet's unique shape and decorations make it stand out from other Elamite armor.
On the front of the helmet are three gold deities: two females and one male. The male deity carries a vessel with water cascading out of it, suggesting he is an Elamite water god. The two identical goddesses wear horned headdresses and jewelry, and they are holding up their hands in a gesture of prayer. A raptor is positioned vertically over the water god, possibly symbolizing the bird of prey of the battlefield that awaits the victims of the warrior king who wore the helmet, Charles K. Wilkinson, curator emeritus of Near Eastern art at The Met, wrote in a 1965 study of the object.
The helmet certainly would have been worn by someone of high rank in the Elamite culture, Muscarella and Wilkinson both wrote, but it was likely symbolic as well as functional. The representations of important deities were probably intended to ward off evil and conflict on the ancient battlefield.
For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.
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