The ''polos'' crown (plural ''poloi''; el, πόλος) is a high cylindrical crown worn by mythological goddesses of the

Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...

and

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

and adopted by the

ancient Greeks Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...

for imaging the

mother goddess A mother goddess is a goddess who represents a personified deification of motherhood, fertility goddess, fertility, creation, destruction, or the earth goddess who embodies the bounty of the earth or nature. When equated with the earth or t ...

es Rhea and Cybele and

Hera In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; grc-gre, Ἥρα, Hḗrā; grc, Ἥρη, Hḗrē, label=none in Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she ...

.Liddell and Scott define πόλος as 'a head-dress worn by goddesses.'
/ref> The word also meant an axis or pivot and is cognate with the English, 'pole'. It was often open at the top with hair cascading down from the sides, or it could be reduced to a ring.
In the classical period, mortal women seem not to have worn poloi, but they are more commonly seen in terracotta statues of women from the

Mycenaean period Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC.. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland ...

, thus the use in statues of goddesses can be seen as a deliberate archaism. Some poloi seem to have been made by weaving though it is not clear what material. None have been found in archaeological digs, suggesting that they were not made of metal. Indian women in Rajasthan still wear those kind of rings made of cotton on their head to easily transport heavy pots of water. Many construction workers all over the world still wear these to carry bricks.

Notes

{{reflist Crowns (headgear)

See also

Notes