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 protecti ...
s (23 of which are preserved) dating to –350 BC, found in 1812 in a cache in
Ženjak, near Negau,
Duchy of Styria
The Duchy of Styria (; ; ) 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 1806 and a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary until its dissolution i ...
(now
Negova,
Slovenia
Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...
).
The helmets are of typical
Etruscan __NOTOC__
Etruscan may refer to:
Ancient civilization
*Etruscan civilization (1st millennium BC) and related things:
**Etruscan language
** Etruscan architecture
**Etruscan art
**Etruscan cities
**Etruscan coins
**Etruscan history
**Etruscan myt ...
'
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 (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
period and was briefly renamed Harigast during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. 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,
right-to-left
A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...
, as:
:
:
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 , 'Harigast the priest' (from 'god'), as another inscribed helmet also found at the site bears several names (mostly
Celt
The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...
ic) followed by religious titles. Markey believes the text is
Germanic mediated through
Rhaetic
Rhaetic or Raetic (), also known as Rhaetian, was a Tyrsenian 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 through the 1st century BC ...
which accounts for some of the difficulties in the reading, such as the lack of a declensional ending in the first element . In any case, the Germanic name is almost universally read. Formerly, some scholars have seen the inscription as an early incarnation of the
runic alphabet
Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were ...
, 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
Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how language change, languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of language ...
, since it has been argued that it provides the earliest attestation of
Grimm's law
Grimm's law, also known as the First Germanic Consonant Shift or 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 first millennium BC, first d ...
(also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift), the sound shift which distinguishes the Germanic languages from other
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
. If is a Germanic cognate of Latin 'god', it would reflect Grimm's shift > . This would be the earliest attestation of the shift, which would have relevance for the dating. However,
Jeremy J. Smith argues 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: 'of Dubnos the pig-slayer'; 'astral priest of the troop'; 'Iarsus the divine'; and , probably an abbreviation for a Celtic name like Cerubogios.
See also
*
Meldorf fibula
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 artifacts
4th-century BC artifacts
1812 archaeological discoveries
Ancient helmets
Archaeological discoveries in Slovenia
Etruscan artefacts
Etruscan inscriptions
Iron Age Europe
Individual helmets