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The Negau helmets are 26 bronze
The Negau helmets are 26 bronze helmet
A helmet is a form of protective gear worn to protect the head. More specifically, a helmet complements the skull in protecting the human brain. Ceremonial or symbolic helmets (e.g., a policeman's helmet in the United Kingdom) without protect ...
s (23 of which are preserved) dating to c. 450 BC–350 BC, found in 1812 in a cache in Ženjak, near Negau, Duchy of Styria
The Duchy of Styria (german: Herzogtum Steiermark; sl, Vojvodina Štajerska; hu, Stájer Hercegség) was a duchy located in modern-day southern Austria and northern Slovenia. It was a part of the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 180 ...
(now Negova
Negova (; German: ''Negau'') is a village in the hills to the west of Gornja Radgona in northeastern Slovenia.
Negova Castle is a castle immediately to the north of the main settlement. It is a complex of buildings that are 16th- and early 17th-c ...
, Slovenia
Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...
). The helmets are of typical Etruscan __NOTOC__
Etruscan may refer to:
Ancient civilization
*The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy
*Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization
**Etruscan architecture
**Etruscan art
**Etruscan cities
** Etrusca ...
' vetulonic' shape, sometimes described as of the Negau type. It is not clear when they were buried, but they seem to have been left at the Ženjak site for ceremonial reasons. The village of Ženjak was of great interest to German archaeologists during the Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
period and was briefly renamed Harigast during World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. The site has never been excavated properly.
Inscriptions
On one of the helmets ("Negau B"), there is an inscription in a northern Etruscan alphabet. The date of the inscription is unclear, but it may be as old as 350–300 BC (Teržan 2012). It is read as: : :''harigastiteiva\\\ip'' Many interpretations of the inscription have been proffered in the past, but the most recent interpretation is by Tom Markey (2001), who reads the inscription as ''Hariχasti teiva'', 'Harigast the priest' (from *'' teiwaz'' 'god'), as another inscribed helmet also found at the site bears several names (mostlyCelt
The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient ...
ic) followed by religious titles. Markey believes the text is Germanic mediated through Rhaetic
Rhaetic or Raetic (), also known as Rhaetian, was a language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by around 280 texts dated from the 5th up until the 1st century BC, which wer ...
which accounts for some of the difficulties in the reading, such as the lack of a declensional ending in the first element ''Hariχasti''. In any case, the Germanic name ''Harigasti(z)'' is almost universally read. Formerly, some scholars have seen the inscription as an early incarnation of the runic alphabet
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
, but it is now accepted that the script is North Etruscan proper, and precedes the formation of the Runic alphabet.
This inscription has been of particular interest to historical linguists, since it has been argued that it provides the earliest attestation of Grimm's law
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gr ...
(also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift), the sound shift which distinguishes the Germanic languages from other Indo-European languages. If ''teiva'' is a Germanic cognate of Latin ''deus'' 'god', it would reflect Grimm's shift *''d'' > *''t''. This would be the earliest attestation of the shift, which would have relevance for the dating. However Smith warns that there are major problems with seeing the helmet as conclusive evidence for such a development.
The four discrete inscriptions on the helmet usually called "Negau A" are read by Markey (2001) as: ''Dubni banuabi'' 'of Dubnos the pig-slayer'; ''sirago turbi'' 'astral priest of the troop'; ''Iars'e esvii'' 'Iarsus the divine'; and ''Kerup'', probably an abbreviation for a Celtic name like Cerubogios.
See also
*Meldorf fibula
The Meldorf fibula is a Germanic spring-case-type fibula found in Meldorf, Schleswig-Holstein in 1979. Though the exact circumstances of the recovery of the fibula are unknown, it is thought to have come from a cremation grave, probably that of a ...
References
* * Teržan, B. 2012. ‘Negau (Negova), Slowenien: Benedikt V’, in S. Sievers, O.H. Urban and P.C. Ramsal (eds.), Lexikon zur keltischen Archäologie, pp. 1357-59. Vienna.External links
* {{helmets 5th-century BC works 4th-century BC works 1812 archaeological discoveries Ancient helmets Archaeological discoveries in Slovenia Etruscan artefacts Etruscan inscriptions Iron Age Individual helmets