We continue to acquaint the readers of "VO" with the culture of the Bronze Age, which left behind impressive monuments both quantitatively and qualitatively. In fact, this was the second era of globalization, when after the Stone Age, on a new basis of metal exchange (before that they exchanged stone and bone), they established cultural ties between lands that lay thousands of kilometers from each other.
People dispensed with writing or it was just in its infancy, but they already had a concept of astronomy (the same "disk from Nebra") and knew how to build monumental structures of stone. They began to create stone sculptures the size of a human being, in which they immortalized the memory of their fellow tribesmen-contemporaries. One of these statues, a figure of a naked warrior carved out of sandstone, was found by archaeologists in 1962 during the excavation of the Hirschlanden burial ground in Dietzingen, which belonged to the Hallstatt culture. It dates back to the 6th century. BC NS. and is a completely unique monument, since the earliest human-height statues north of the Alps are unknown to historians. This find is exhibited in the Old Stuttgart Castle (in German, Altes Schloss), where the State Museum of Württemberg is located today.
"Hirschlanden Warrior" - a sculpture installed at the place of its discovery, and the very place of the Hirschlanden burial ground.
A statue of a standing man was found during a 1962 excavation at Hirschlanden, near Ludwigsburg and about five kilometers south of Hochdorf. The statue was found lying directly behind a low stone wall that surrounded a hill two meters high and no less than twenty meters in diameter. Erosion of the mail and leveled part of the mound, but scientists managed to unearth sixteen burials of the late 6th - early 5th century BC, or the end of the Hallstatt era. The results of the excavations were published in 1975, and the attention of scientists was almost entirely focused on the found figure of the "warrior".
The building of the State Museum of Württemberg.
Made from local sandstone, which is mined just seven kilometers from its location in the Stuben area, the statue is very badly weathered, which suggests that it has been outdoors for a long time. The lower legs were found separate from the body and attached to a figure in a museum. As a result, the height of the figure turned out to be about one and a half meters. Compositionally, the figure is very simple, with hefty calves and thighs appearing illogical and disproportionate in relation to the relatively thin upper body with a tiny head, which is a real mystery for art historians who do not understand why this was done this way. Indeed, the skill of the ancient sculptor is clearly not to be denied. The bony shoulders are extended up and forward and are accentuated by sharply delineated triangular shoulder blades. As a result, the front of the torso is very flat and slab-like. Skinny arms are pressed tightly to the body. However, they are not crossed or extended along it. The small head is slightly tilted back; the preservation of the face is rather poor, so it is very difficult to talk about his features. Two things are certain. Before us is a man and he is armed.
A figure at the excavation site.
The sculpture is called both "stele" and "kriegerstele" (warrior's stele), and "kuro-keltos" or "celtic kouros". It is certainly not a "stele" in the traditional form of an ancient Greek tombstone, as it does not have a rectangular slab behind it. The interpretation of the statue as a warrior is suggested due to the fact that he has a characteristic-looking dagger with an antenna handle on his belt. Originally the conical hat was declared a helmet, but since the discovery of the birch bark hat in the Hochdorf burial, the Hirschlanden warrior is believed to wear a similar hat. There are two thin stripes around his waist, and around his neck there is something like a thick hryvnia.
Photo taken at the site. So they found him.
Now let's try to answer the question, what could it be? The custom of setting up funerary stones on a votive basis or for some similar purpose was fairly common in Iron Age Europe. Northern Italy had a very long prehistoric tradition of carving stone slabs with more or less stylized human features. For example, in Philae in northern Tuscany, a stone slab was found dating from the 6th century BC with an image of an armed figure; the upper body is separated from the lower body by two ridges, similar to the belt worn by the Hirschlanden warrior. The legs are presented in profile in shallow relief. A dagger with a handle in the form of a Hallstatt-type antenna is carved on the right side of the slab.
This is his rear view.
The area around Stuttgart is particularly rich in Hallstatt and La Tien steles. There is a stele from Lindele, Hallstatt era, there is a find from Stammheim, 162 m high. But there is no doubt that the "warrior Hirschlanden" is much more … "sculpted" than these slabs. That is, the genesis of such steles or funerary sculptures is evident.
Many Celtic steles and stone sculptures have been found in or near the mounds, which suggests that they originally stood on the top of the mound, like our "Polovtsian women". According to a number of scholars, this idea came to Europe from Greece, and some say that "there can be no doubt that the idea of crowning the burial mound with a stone portrait of the deceased finally arose from the Greek world of ideas." The attribution of the Celtic cultural phenomenon to the influence of the Greeks lies in the plane of the long-standing diffusionist tradition; however, there are a number of "buts". First, the archaic Greeks did not bury their dead in mounds; secondly, marble statues - kuros and barks, depicting naked men and dressed women, are more often found in sanctuaries, and their "portrait" character is still a subject of discussion.
"On the face of the terrible, kind inside" - this is clearly about our Galstadt. "And also in a hat!" - a typical ancient intellectual.
The designation "kuro-keltos" was given to the warrior because his huge legs seem disproportionately muscular in comparison with the rest of the figure, and really reminds art critics of the Greek kouros, statues of youths placed on graves or in temples. On this basis, a number of German scholars suggest that the sculptor was either Greek or trained south of the Alps in the ancient Greek tradition. In various scenarios, either the Greek sculptor was responsible only for the lower part of the statue, while the local craftsman carved the upper part, or the entire statue was the work of a sculptor trained in both local and Greek traditions.
If we assume that the upper half is the more important part of the figure, and this is so by the logic of things, and if the Greek style was valued more than the local one, then it becomes incomprehensible why the Greek sculptor should have carved out the least significant part of it. Again, if there was only one sculptor who knew about Greek technique, why didn't he carve the top of the figure in the Greek style? That is, you haven't made a more or less typical kouros?
There was also an explanation for this. Some scholars have suggested that the entire sculpture was originally carved as a Greek kouros. Then it was damaged or, for some other reason, restored by a local sculptor who worked in the tradition of Celtic stelae.
This is what will happen if you combine the "warrior" and the kouros.
But if you superimpose the figure of the "warrior Hirschlanden" on one of the kouros we know, then … nothing will come of it. The figures do not match, so it is still impossible to say that the "warrior" was made of kouros. The statue was probably erected on a mound around 500 BC. And if this is so, then again it is not clear how and why a life-size Greek kouros was carved from local stone and was kept somewhere for a long time (since the “era of kouros” in ancient Greek art lasted about 650 BC. - 500 BC), and then for some reason was converted for reuse. And in general, almost all kuros are at least half a century older than the "warrior Hirschlanden". And if not older, then they are not at all like him.
Marble kouros from the island of Cyprus, 500 - 475 BC BC. (British Museum) As you can see, the proportions are completely different!
Kouros from Ptun, Boeotia, approx. 530 - 520 BC. Height 1.60 m. (National Museum, Athens)
That is, in general, it is obvious that the "warrior Hirschlanden" was not carved out of the Greek kouros. There was no Greek sculptor either. The achievements of Greek culture are not supported by sculpture from Hirschlanden; there is nothing similar in proportion, position, scale, material or surface modeling that indicated any influence from Greece. The mere fact that the space between the legs is free and the legs are well developed is not sufficient to prove the Greek origin of this figure.
True, this kuros has legs … they really are legs! (Archaeological Museum, Athens)
All in all, "Warrior Hirschlanden" is a very fascinating and mysterious local work. And it hardly serves as proof of the Hellenization of the late Celts of the Hallstatt culture. There was enough of its own identity. Although … who knows, maybe some ancient Celtic visited archaic Greece, was captivated by the local kouros, and then, returning, he described what he saw to the familiar master stonemason, and he cut out from the local stone what he could imagine according to his story. Well, and about the position of the hands, this ancient traveler simply did not tell him anything …
Fortunately, the Greeks do not need to prove anything and do not put forward dubious hypotheses. Otherwise they could have said: “All the European sculptor descended from our kouros and the proof of this is the“warrior Hirschlanden”!
