Item ref: 3892
Collection of Major William Joseph Myers (1858 - 1899), a collector of Egyptian and Saracenic art, who gifted a significant collection of Egyptology to Eton College.
By the end of the fourteenth century a form of helmet with a characteristic onion-shaped skull had become the usual head defence for the heavy cavalrymen of the Ottoman, Timurid and ak-Koyonlu armies, probably developed in parallel with the bacinet in Europe, which replaced the great helm as the principal head defence for men-at-arms in the 1340s and 1350s. Unlike their European counterparts these helmets were by the middle of the fifteenth century lavishly decorated in gold and silver overlay with dedicatory inscriptions often extolling the virtues of the sultan, combined with intricate foliate scrollwork.
The skull is extended to a point at the apex where it is surmounted by a twelve faceted knop and an inverse conical final. The central band is decorated with fine vertical fluting, with bands of arcaded palmettes running round the upper and lower borders. the upper and lower bands are decorated with calligraphy on a plain ground, retaining fragments of the original silver decoration. At the centre front to a staple for the original nasal. The lower edge has cut outs for the eyes, with reinforcing bands running around these and around the lower edge, all decorated with fragments of geometrical ornament in silver koftgari. At the lower edge are four of the original vervelles for the thong retaining the mail aventail, with rivet holes for the missing ones. At the front is stamped with the Kayi tamga mark of the Hagia Irene arsenal. The style of decoration is associated with the court of the White Sheep Turks, the ak-Koyonlu, during the reign of the Sultan Ya’qub (r. 1478–90), and the helmet bearing his name among the series of titles that forms its calligraphic ornament is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, no. 04.3.211 (Alexander 2015, 72–3, no. 23), while very similar decoration, with similar arcaded bands around the top and bottom of the fluted section, appears on the helmet at the Royal Armouries, no. xxvia.142, which retains much of the silvered and gilded decoration which once adorned this helmet.