10-01-2007, 01:35 AM
Quote:Nah,I don't believe so.Restauration is possible,but I don't believe they added anything out of their mind.If the lop was missing,the only visible thing would be two wholes!And restauration,as far as I know,can be done only in some missing parts,not re-shaping it.But I'm not sure.It seems every manufacturer had dia own way to attach crests.
Giannis
Reference the bottom photo. That is helmet H1 as described in Herbert Hoffmann's Early Cretan Armorers, 1975. The loops were intact as excavated at Afrati. Almost identical loops exist on a similar helmet from Axos. The loops helped hold the two halves together. Another Afrati helmet, H3, had three tubular crest attachments, at the forehead, the apex, and the nape of the neck, the last two noted attachment tubes survived intact. These helmets date around 640 to 625. Crest attachments may have both a regional and temporal component to them.
Hoffmann is an extremely detailed source, but hard to find, and expensive, costing me $150 bucks. Most Cretan helmets were embossed, which added to the strength of the relatively thin bronze (.5 - 1.5 mm). Making them in two halves actually made the embossing possible to begin with. The structural strength was supplemented by the brow plate. Clever, these Cretans, although Snodgrass attributes the metallurgy to Cyprus. Hoffmann notes the antecedent techniques to the Danube area and the Near East, but describes the technique as a Cretan innovation.
Ralph Izard
[size=75:3983je1q]with loops more or less intact[/size]
