So with RIAT being cancelled this year my trip to London back in July ended up including me re-visiting a number of museums I've already been to. Luckily places like The British Museum have collections that won't loose their lustre too badly form one visit every fourteen years or so, and in case anyone's around here who were actually here for my photo dump form there back in 2012, well, I've gotten a better camera nowadays...First out a helmet of the Corinthian type. Greece, 650-570 BC.
A pair of swords, Sassanid Persia, 6th-early 7th century AD.Iron or steel blades, hilts and scabbards covered in gold and silver respectively. And I see the hilt on the gold one is still on the wrong way around...
>>65461773Looking forward to this thread, always excellent. The edge details on that helmet are incredible.
How w can be certain it's the golden sword that has the hilt on the wrong way. On one side the hilt is plain and the scabbard decorated...
...and on the other side it's the opposite. Whereas on the silver sword it all matches up.>>65461782Yeah, someone who knew what he was doing spent a lot of time on that one.
Gilt-silver shield boss. Iran, 6th-7th century AD.
Copper-bladed cutting tools, artic/subartic America. The blades were made with some cold hammering and a whole lot of grinding, originally from chunks of native copper. When trade with European settlers began smelted copper blocks became a more abundant source, and at that point they also started hard soldering on reinforcing ribs on some.
>>65461782>>65461773When you are a mighty, peerless warrior, you want your helmet decorated with the finest lacy
Greek podium frieze, can't recall if it's from the Pantheon marbles or not.
And now for some assorted Assyrian palace decorations. 900 to 600 BC, from Nineveh, Khorsabad and Nimrud.Helmet, shield, cuirass (lamellar in this case) and a sword/dagger. An infantry load-out that lasted through the ages.
Shields appear to be woven rattan or some such. Another one of those things that saw service for a four digit number of years.
Siege towers with battering rams trundling up prepared ramps during the siege of Lachish.
>>65461821>>65461826Reminds me that I got a stack of books about the Alex Guttmann collection. Probably worth it if you're into bronze armour.
The king (likely Ashurbanipal) hunting lions. This was given considerable prominence, and so appears to have been something of considerable importance. It also appears to have been something of a ritual affair, as there's a bit (not pictured here) where we can see servants releasing captured lions from cages. So it wasn't a full on hunt out in the wilds, and they saw no reason to pretend it was either. Apparently in Egypt the pharaoh was often portrayed as a great hunter to show his role in subjugating the wilderness in favour of ordered civilisation, this might perhaps be something similar.
Mounted archers to assist.
Returning to regular military affairs.
As a side note regarding survival in the museum, please note that the ventilation system in most of the building(s) is itself an ancient relic. Combined with the often massive crowds and the occasional ceiling window...
Katar, 18th century
"Helmet" (c'mon now BM, you should know a great bascinet when you see it), ca 1430, probably Italian manufcature.Mail collar, ca 1375-1400, probably English.
Sword, likely German export blade finished up in England, ca 1250-1330.Part of a gauntlet, German, ca 1350.
Hardened leather rerebrace, probably English, ca 14th century. I suspect intended primarily to be worn on top of mail for a bit of extra protection.
Anglo-saxon woodworking axe, 800-1000 AD. To remind us that there's a lot of difference between axes.
Seax, 10th century. The rune inlay (something almost unheard of for sword blades) spells out the name "Beagnoth" (likely either the maker or the customer who commissioned it) and the futhark, that is to say, it's just the runic alphabet.So if you want a large knife or dagger with the alphabet inlaid in soft metals, well, there's torchlit precedent.
The Sutton Hoo helmet. Similar enough in style and construction to the Vendel finds in Sweden that there was clearly extensive contact between Britain and Scandinavia in the era preceding the Viking age.
A modern reconstruction of said helmet.
And it isn’t just the helmets, here's the remains of a sword hilt from the same period, found in England but could just as well have been ploughed up in Upplands-Väsby.
And for those who prefer their gold without garnets.
Head's of a francisca and a spear. The former is a type of throwing axe, that ended up giving it's name to the Franks, and thus France.
Shield boss.
Sword with a "ring hilt", ie a hilt with a ring attached. Maybe as a sign of authority, maybe for magical aid, maybe both. These hilts later evolved into a simplified/stylised form where the ring ceased to be a loose ring and we instead get, well, two lumps by and large to represent it and the ring it's attached to.
Viking age sword and spearhead. Hilt wire wrap directly over the tang probably isn't original, though the wire itself might be.
Where the Vendel period had been all about gold, Viking age fashion leaned more on silver and copper.
Going back a bit in time to the Roman days in Britain.Cavalry sports helmet and a set of phalerae awards.
A ring pommel spatha (3rd century AD) and a pair of gladii.
Lamellar armour fragments.
Shield bosses.
Lighting of this display was just as arse for photography as I remembered it.
Gladius and scabbard, 1st century AD.
On the Celtic side... The Battersea shield, ca 350-50 BC. Probably for display or sacrifice, as it's quite short and made of rather thin metal.
The Chertsey shield, 400-200 BC. Also likely not a fighting shield. The only known one from the period to be made purely from bronze, without a wooden backing.
The Kirkburn sword, buried ca 300-200 BC.
The Enderby shield. A sheet of willow bark with four straps of crab apple wood inserted to help it keep its shape. Woven willow boss, poplar grip, no metal components whatsoever. Traces of red pigment remain on the front.
Iron dagger with cast bronze hilt and scabbard.I'm not so sure about the ergonomics here.
Swords with anthropomorphic hilts.
Longer sword, shorter sword, spearhead, and two arm rings. Likely the kit of a single (high ranking) warrior, as it's fro a late bronze age hoard that contained four such sets.
Bronze axe, North Ossetia, 9th-7th century BC.
Silver sword hilt, iron sword, a pair of bronze axe heads, and a whetstone with a bronze handle. Luristan, 9th-8th century BC. Of some note is that the flat of the sword blade and the flat of the grip are twisted 90° relative to each other, a thrust-focused design I would assume.
Sassanid helmet, similar date to the swords up above, found in Nineveh.
>>65461773Saving this thread for later. As always, thank you for your work.Tack så mycket, KM! (I hope that's right, apologies if it's not)
And a second one.>>65462103>I hope that's rightIt is.
The pharaoh being a nuisance down in Nubia.
Bronze daggers from Kerma, 1750-1450 BC.
Egyptian flint dagger, Middle Kingdom ca 1900-1800 BC. Traces of adhesive tell us it once had a handle attached.
Flint and rock crystal arrowheads. Abydos, first dynasty (so 3200–3000 BC).
And for the pharaoh or other bigwigs, arrowheads of ivory and ebony.
Stone mace heads.
Fenestrated axes from Byblos, ca 2400-2000 BC.
A pair of daggers/dirks form northern Syria, ca 1650-1550 BC.
Two copper alloy axeheads from Ur.
And a silver one.
>>65461999The placement of the holes mean they're scale, as they're suited for being sown onto a backing and not for being linked to each other vertically.
Speaks for itself.
Babylonian swords, found up in Luristan, ca 1100-900 BC. The edges apparently show plentiful signs of use an re-sharpening.
Assyrian armour fragments, ca 800-600 BC.
Copper alloy spearhead, from the Temple of Ishtar in Nineveh, 2000-1800 BC.
Persian guardsman, possibly one of the "Immortals". Iran, 521-500 BC.
Sword, spearhead, spear butt, La Tene I period (Celtic), from various places in the British isles.
Bronze spear butts.
Iranian helmet, 19th century.
>>65461935>that there was clearly extensive contact between Britain and Scandinavia in the era preceding the Viking age.People have been traveling between England, Scandinavia and Spain since Doggerland.>>65462158>>65462153Funny thing here... they apparently made bronze axes of this type in gold, white and red from various copper alloys. Whether the ones of silver and gold were imitations of the copper alloy ones is up for debate, so is the question of what colour all the bronze implements actually were, because they clearly weren't uniformly golden.
>>65462223>so is the question of what colour all the bronze implements actually were, because they clearly weren't uniformly golden.To go out on a limb with some sorta rampant guesswork, the fact that they describe these as "copper alloy" rather than bronze makes me suspect it's a lot of copper and not a lot of alloying elements in there, possibly to the point of it being uncertain if we're looking at intentional alloys or just impure copper. As such, I'd expect the colour to simply be that of copper in most cases.
Mughal fashion: just plain solid jade's far too pedestrian, better get at the very least some silver decoration on there, but ideally gold and assorted jewels. Rubies are nice.
>>65461890I've been to the British museum twice, once in July 2022 during the heatwave, and again almost exactly a year ago. Both times I got kicked out because the AC sucked and it got too hot lmao.
Pesh-kabz with pulad blade and walrus ivory hilt, 1600-1800. Walrus ivory was often paired with pulad blades, for both daggers and swords, as its somewhat mottled surface (this is a quite even and bright-white example) was thought to be a good pairing with the patterned steel.
>>65462244I was lucky enough not to hit any of the more severe heatwaves during my visit, but I can see why they'd have to close the museum if things got too toasty outside.
Sword and dagger, Iran, 19th century. The museum describes the sword as inlaid with gold, but I would guess it's rather an overlay there (much as on the pesh-kabz above). As a bit of trivia, overlay is also called damascening, so the sword would be damascened with gold, not to be confused with damascus (steel).
Sword (kilij I think) of Sultan Selim III, late 18th-start of the 19th century.
Kampilan, Philippines, 1800-1930Keris, Malaysia, 18th-19th century.
Breastplate, made by Holman Helmschmid in Augsburg, ca 1520.
Morion, Northern Italy (...so probably Milano), ca 1580.
Ca 1590. Possibly intended for signal flares, or straight up recreational fireworks, rather than grenades.
Parade shield, Flanders or Burgundy, ca 1475-1500.
Maori kotate made form jade.
Whalebone dito.
Mayan lintel showing the ruler Bird Jaguar standing over a captive noble, possibly holding a spear or some such.
North American war clubs.
Massai swords.
Shotel, Ethiopia or thereabout. Held with the belly of the curve backwards (so like a sickle, contrary to "sickle swords" like the khopesh, where the belly is forwards), and primarily employed with the point to try and stab around shields and the like.
Shield, 19th century. Sudanese, with Ethiopian decorations added.
Mandingo sword, 20th century.
Four ge and a spear, jade, bronze, and in two cases with turquoise decorations. China, 12000-1000 BC. Probably all ceremonial.
Bronze jian, 400-200 BC.
Jade hitl and scabbard fittings, 400-200 BC.
Sword or dagger hilt, 600-400 BC.
>>65461890Damm those shields are gigantic
Crossbow holders for chariots
Jian with an iron blade and lacquered wood fittings, 300-100 BC, probably southern China.>>65462376For a proper shield wall, even when you're down to the last man standing.
Japanese sword blades imported into China during the early Ming dynasty. Bizen school.
Iron/steel dagger, Nilgiri hills culture (southern India), first millennium AD.
Dagger, Sri Lanka.
The Mughals also went for rock crystal as a base hilt material at times.
Tulwar from the palace of Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore. Taken in 1799.
Tsuba, Edo period or later.
Tanto koshirae, second half of the 19th century.
High end Japanese armour, Edo period. Made for a member of the Mori family.
Daito blade, made by Sukesada of Bizen, 1521. Looks significantly shortened. With itomaki no tachi mounts, 18th century.As a side note, the British Musuem seems to really like calling things inlay, as not only did we have the Iranian sword above, but in the Japanese section there was also a vase made from mokume-gane which they also described as inlay.
Another set of tanto mountings.
Battle of Adwa, 1896. Oil on canvas, unknown artist, ca 1940.A decisive Ethiopian victory over an Italian army, and a popular subject with Ethiopian artists ever since. Peple of note here includes the Ethiopian commander Fitawrari Gääbäyyähu on horseback near the centre, Emepror Menelik II in the upper left, Empress Tatu with a revolver in the lower left, and St George at the top providing moral support.
Ceramic hand grenade casings. A Japanese war shortages solution from the latter days of WW2. The brown one looking more like a "normal" hand grenade was thrown on the potter's wheel by master potter Yamato Toshu, while the round ones are porcelain formed in moulds.
Persian arrowheads from Marathon, 490 BC.
Perikles of Athens, Roman copy (2nd century AD) of a now long lost Greek original (ca 440-430 BC).
Black figure amphora with Achilles fighting Penthesilesia, Athens, ca 540-530 BC. Attributed to the painter Exekias.
Same origins as the previous pic.
3: Bronze sword, Mycenaean, 1400-1100 BC. The type had a rather narrow tang, prone to breaking off, as has happened to this one.5: Bronze dagger(?), Mycenaean, 1300-1100 BC
Durga beating the snot out of the demon Mahisa, 13th century. As we can see the origins of the Indian "tulwar hilt" can quite easily be traced a good bit back.
Bronze daggers, Korea, 400-300 BC
Sword dance, from a set of scenes of everyday life, Gisan Kim Jun-geun, 1880-1900.
Axe head from Ur.
Spear but(?) and head, Ur.
Marble mace head, dedicated to the god Shamash of Sipar by the Akkadian king Shar-kali-sharri (2217-2193 BC)Green marble mace head, dedicated to the god Nergal by a man named Labashum on behalf of Shu-Turul (2168-2154 BC), last king of the Akkadian empire.
Black-figure oil bottle with warriors arming, Athens, ca 490 BC.
Helmet of the Corinthian type, made in Apulia about 510 BC.
Bronze cuirass, southern Italy, ca 350-300 BC.
Bronze greaves, the gorgon's mouths showing traces of bone inlay. Southern Italy, 550-500 BC.
Early Etruscan helmet, ca 775-750 BC.
Apulo-Corinthian helmet. South Italian, 350-300 BC.A helmet that leaves the face uncovered, but styled to look like a full Corinthian helmet worn tilted backwards as seen in >>65462461
Gladius with tinned bronze scabbard, ca 15 BC.
Helmet of the Attican type, 5 century BC, possibly Athenian.
Copper alloy axe heads, found in south-east Iran, 2500-2000 BC.Some with intentionally blunt edges, suggesting ceremonial/ritual use.
Mace heads, western Iran, 2500-2000 BC.
Copper dagger, Tepe Giyan, western Iran, 2500-2000 BC.
And as we should be hitting the image limit here: a flyssa to round it off. Northern Algeria, 19th century.As per usual I have more photos than this, so the whole pile in one archive: https://www.mediafire.com/file/md2jns6ftq2ir7o/England_-_British_Museum_2026.zip/file
>>65461935There's basically no mention of the Saxons and Danes (catch-all for vikings/scandinavians per the Saxons) ever using a translator to communicate; if they didn't speak the same language, they spoke similar enough languages not to need them.But yeah also between the Roman withdrawal and the Norman invasion (Francophone Danes) England was fully part of the Scandinavian World
Good work, OP.
>>65462109but.. we wuz kangs?
Good thread OP, Bring some class to this cesspool.
>>65461781I believe it is rusted in place and can no longer be removed.
>>65462792>There's basically no mention of the Saxons and Danes (catch-all for vikings/scandinavians per the Saxons) ever using a translator to communicate; if they didn't speak the same language, they spoke similar enough languages not to need them.There is in fact direct mention of this in the Icelandic Sagas. One particular tale directly states that it occurred in the past, and they had no issue conversing with the English at that time, as they spoke the same language.To people of that era who were used to languages before standardization, widespread literacy, and uniform universal education in a single national language, English (Anglo-Saxon) would be little different than a regional dialect.
Thanks OP. I never been to the B.M. but its fun to see how much shit the bongs have hoovered up from around the world while having their run at imperialism.
>>65462043>no metal components whatsoever. Training shield?
>>65462497 >Spear but(?)In several ancient military practices, you were supposed to use the butt as a second spearhead, in case the tip broke during fighting.
>>65463519I would guess it's rather a shield you can afford, especially since they tend to get rather mauled in battle. At the time metal was bloody expensive, so replacing the various nails or so with lime bast probably made a noticeable difference to the cost.
>>65461791Kek, you've been there a couple times in 14 years and you know shit the museum doesn't
>>65461983better than sports equipment of today
>>65462069those are nice
>>65462312Those often taken several generations to finish making, so a grandad starts, kept working on it and sanding it all his life and his grandson finally finished. If the maori was captured he would request that he gets brained with his own weapon too
>>65463871>>65463519I recall that other Celtic shields with wooden bosses were found. They're probably good enough if you're mainly trying to deal with flint head arrows. I recall that some dude interested in native American warfare tested arrowhead types and found that flint and bone performed differently against wooden armour.
>>65463938>and found that flint and bone performed differently against wooden armour.Makes sense, a multitude of very sharp but questionably aligned edges in an overall somewhat flat-ish package vs what I assume is more of pointy roundel, that seems like it could easily have very different behaviour, especially through a highly isotropic material.
