Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/33

Inland Tribes. 15 rather than similarity distinguishes them. What characterizes the Shardana helmet is the ball on its apex (Fig. 6) ; but no Sardinian statuette exhibits anything of the kind. A great deal has been made of the horns with which both helmets are furnished, but these, when taken separately, have in common nothing but the name. They are almost horizontal on the Shardana helmet, forming a crescent, of which the concavity rests upon the bell of the headpiece ; whereas the Sardinian helmet has two high points, which first slightly project forward, and rising approach each Fig. 6. — Shardana Warrior. Champollion, Monuments, Plate CCIII. Medinet-Abou. other towards the extremity. There is, it is true, some analogy between the two sets of helmets ; but that of itself is of small account, and does not compensate for entire difference of form ; whilst the widely diffused custom of applying horns to helmets among people of antiquity is too well known to need further mention at our hands ; l nor will it justify singling out two people with whom it was the usual headdress, to deduce therefrom that 1 Relative to this subject, see Pais, La Sardegna, p. 14, note 2. In it the author, without claiming to have exhausted the subject, points out that Thracians, Gauls, Macedonians, various Libyan tribes, and Scandinavians had horned helmets, and that on a Mycenaean clay fragment a similar headpiece is figured.