A Late Bronze Age helmet from the island of Cyprus. Cultural contacts among the Urnfield Culture, Mycenae and Cyprus

Abstract

In this paper the authors present a new documentation of the finds assemblage from tomb 40 of the Kaloriziki necropolis near Kourion on the southern coast of Cyprus. The grave represents the richest and  culturalhistorically most significant finds complex of the Late Cypriote III B period. Securely dated by the pottery 84 M. Matthäus · G. Schumacher-Matthäus · Ein spätbronzezeitlicher Helm von der Insel Zypern finds it can be paralleled with the sub-Minoan and sub-Mycenaean phase in the  Aegean (11th century B. C.). The grave is a double burial of a man and a woman, both cremated and with both ashes placed in bronze amphorae, which were several generations older than the burial itself. In addition, a gold sceptre richly adorned with enamel inlays, a smaller as well as a larger rod tripod stand belong to the older objects. The contemporary grave-goods, among which were an iron dagger with a hilt tang, a bronze lance-head with facetted socket and three phalerae, indicate Late and sub-Mycenaean forerunners, which in turn reflect developments
in the area of the Urnfield Culture. One can deem as a sensational discovery the identification of two cheek-pieces with an embossed rosette-decoration in the Late Mycenaean or Urnfield period tradition from a helmet. This is the hitherto only known bronze helmet of the Cypriote Late Bronze Age and only has affinities with the well-known helmet from Tiryns. The authors are attempting to reconstruct the helmet with the help of further bronze fragments originating from the grave. The funerary ritual, characterised by the double burial, rich weapons, the placing of older luxury objects and cremation, which is unusual on Cyprus, where collective and more seldom individual burials are dominated by inhumations, connects the grave, the earliest in the cemetery of Kaloriziki, with Aegean foundation tombs such as in Knossos (North Cemetery, grave 201-202), Tiryns (grave XXVIII) and the burials in the socalled Heroon at Lefkandi. The mortuary ritual is clearly affected by the sub-Minoan or sub-Mycenaean, just as Cyprus’s material culture as a whole during the Late Cypriote III B period displays strong influences from the Greek cultural region, influences, which perhaps can be associated with the immigration of groups of Greek people at that time.