The most famous "helmet with horns", of course, this one - the helmet of the English king Henry VIII, which since 1994 has been exhibited at the Royal Arsenal in Leeds.
Stele of King Naram-Sin of the XXIII century. BC NS. Akkad. Pink limestone, bas-relief. Height 2 m, width 1.05 m. (Louvre, Paris)
To begin with, the image of a warrior in a helmet with horns can be seen on a bas-relief of Naram-Sin from the Louvre, which depicts how he defeats some lullubi. On him, the helmet is clearly decorated with horns, and a very characteristic shape. Then we know of two bronze figurines dating back to the 12th century BC. e., which were found in Cyprus during excavations at Enkomi. They depict warriors (or at least one depicts a warrior) in helmets with horns.
"The Horned God of Enkomi" (Archaeological Museum in Nicosia).
The second (or first?) Statuette from Enkomi.
Two bronze helmets dating back to 1100-900 BC were found by archaeologists near the town of Vexo in Denmark in 1942. But these are clearly non-combat helmets, but ritual ones, and they have nothing to do with the Vikings (and even the Celts!). (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen)
Celtic bronze helmet - the so-called "Waterloo helmet" (150-50 BC), discovered at the bottom of the Thames in central London near Waterloo Bridge in 1868. The helmet is made of very thin metal (bronze) and, most likely, was a ritual headdress.
Naked Celtic warrior in a horned helmet. 3rd century BC The find was made in northern Italy. (Berlin Museum)
Horns could be found as decoration even on the helmets of the ancient Greeks.
The image of a warrior in a horned helmet is on the "cauldron from Gundestrup" - a chased silver vessel of La Tene culture (about 100 BC), found in Denmark (North Jutland) in a peat bog near the village of Gundestrup in 1891. And this is clearly Celtic work. So it is quite possible that it was among the Celts that "horned helmets" were used, but still were not a characteristic attribute of their military culture.
Here it is - the image on the boiler from the Gundestrup. Plate S. (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen)
The famous horse forehead with horns also belonged to the Celtic culture. (Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh)
Helmet ornaments maedate, which looked like flat horns made of metal plates, adorned many helmets of Japanese samurai, but they were located above the visor. However, there were also helmets with huge water buffalo horns, reinforced, as it should be on the sides. Such "horned helmets" were usually worn by victorious generals.
Images of samurai in such helmets, as well as the helmets themselves, have survived well, just a lot. This, for example, is an image of a samurai wearing a helmet with maedate horns in the US Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Department.
And here is one of the Japanese horned helmets of the suji-kabuto type, XVIII century. Copper, gold, lacquer, silk, wood. Weight 3041.9 g. He wears a helmet-mounted maedate decoration and real horns on the sides! (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Indo-Persian warriors also wore horned or spiked helmets. The helmet in front of you is an exhibit of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. (Photo by N. Mikhailov)
It is known about him that this is a helmet called kukhakh hud, from the middle of the 19th century. Steel, copper; forging, gold notching. The horns, as you can see, are attached in such a way that it would be difficult to deliver a strong side impact on them. (Photo by N. Mikhailov)
There were obviously a lot of such helmets. Therefore, there are many of them in museums. Helmet from the Central Museum in Jaipur, India.
Well, the fact that in popular culture the Vikings are portrayed in horned helmets is not surprising. This myth arose thanks to the efforts of the Catholic Church, since it was she who was the main supplier of information about the Vikings. The priests and monks declared them "the offspring of the devil", described their "devilish cunning", "devilish cruelty" - in a word, they created an extremely repulsive image of the enemies of the Christian faith. And then, in the 1820s, Swedish artist August Malmström painted horns on Viking helmets in illustrations to the poem "The Fridtjof Saga" by Swedish poet Esaias Tegner. The book was reprinted many times, and in different languages, and this myth gradually spread. In Germany, for example, the artist Karl Doppler used precisely these drawings when he designed costumes for Wagner's opera "The Ring of the Nibelungen".
Wooden panel depicting a Viking wearing a helmet from a church in Setesdal, Norway (12th century). (Viking Museum in Oslo)
In the XIII-XIV centuries, knightly helmets of the topfhelm type, both combat and tournament (which can be clearly seen from the miniatures of medieval manuscripts), also sometimes had helmet-like ornaments in the form of "horns".
Maximilian helmet arme 1525, Germany. Weight 2517.4 g (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
As for the helmet of the English king Henry VIII, it appeared in the era of "Maximilian armor" (that is, corrugated), but it looks very specific. It is believed that this strange horned helmet, along with the armor, was presented to Henry VIII by Maximilian I, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who invented this armor and contributed to its distribution. What did he want to say or show with this gift? That Henry was a jester and not a king? Or something different? In any case, in terms of value, it was a truly royal, or rather, an imperial gift, and Henry, even if he thought something bad about it, nevertheless could not help but accept it.
A helmet on display at the Royal Arsenal in Leeds.
Close-up of the same helmet.
The design of the helmet is a typical arme, although it differs from conventional helmets of this type in the presence of a number of specific details. Well, first of all, these are the gilded drum horns, crudely attached with two large and one small rivets. The "cheeks" follow the shape of the skull and are similarly bordered with rivets. Both ears have an engraved flower rosette with six punched holes. The mask is a visor of the helmet, has an original design with a loop fixed on the forehead. It depicts a face with a long hooked nose, and many holes have been made on it, undoubtedly serving for ventilation. The engraving on the "face" depicts stubble, folds at the corners of the eyes, eyebrows and hair above the upper lip. Such a careful reproduction of such details could well have been calculated for a humorous effect. And, of course, bronze glasses are striking on him. The left ring of the frame is riveted from two halves, the right one is one-piece. Framed glasses were not provided initially.
At one time it was believed that this was armor for the royal jester Somers, but you need to imagine their cost, and then decide whether the king (even the king!) Could order armor for the jester, or the jester himself, even of a noble family, would have such an opportunity.
As you can see, such details are reproduced on the helmet, which, in general, are not needed at all for a combat helmet …
The helmet is quite heavy, its weight is 2.89 kg. It was made by the master from Innsbruck Konrad Seusenhofer in 1512. Later, namely in the 17th century, this helmet was shown at an exhibition in the Tower, where it was reported that it was part of the "armor of Will Somers", the court jester of Henry VIII. For a long time no one knew who he really belonged to. Recently, there have been serious scientific doubts about the authenticity of this helmet. For example, were the ram's horns and glasses really part of it, or were they added later? But most importantly, why should such a bizarre object be a gift from one monarch to another? In any case, this helmet is truly unique and expensive as a historically "priceless" relic.
P. S. The author and editors of the VO website are grateful to N. Mikhailov for the shooting of the Hermitage exhibits and the photographs he provided.
