Another visit to Solomon's profile resulted in piqued interest in the Golden Hats photo he has posted there. A little research turned into a lot more because I was skeptical but fascinated with these objects. Very little is known of this era, and these objects elevate the general understanding of the status on man during that period. But wizards? Maybe, maybe not.
- Bart
Four tall conical golden hats dating to between 1400 BC and 800 BC, have been found in Central Europe: one find in 1835 near Schifferstadt near Speyer dated to 1400-1300, one fragmentary find in 1844 near Avanton near
Poitiers, one at Ezelsdorf near N?rnberg in 1953, dated to 1000-900, and one find of unknown origin, probably from
Switzerland or
Swabia, bought in 1996 by the National Museum of Berlin, dated to 1000-800. The tallest of these is the Ezelsdorf cone, measuring 90 cm.
The hats are associated with the pre-Proto-Celtic Bronze Age
Urnfield culture. Their close similarities in symbolism and techniques of manufacture are testimony to a coherent Bronze Age culture over a wide-ranging territory in eastern France and western and southwestern Germany. A comparable
golden pectoral was found at Mold, Flintshire, in northern Wales.
The gold hats were first brought together for comparison and set in the broader context of the culture of Bronze Age Europe in a 1999 exhibition in Bonn,
Gods and heroes of the Bronze Age: Europe in the time of Odysseus (link below).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hat
Mysterious gold cones 'hats of ancient wizards'
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
17/03/2002
WIZARDS really did wear tall pointed hats - but not the crumpled cloth kind donned by such fictional characters as Harry Potter, Gandalf and Merlin.
The wizards of early Europe wore hats of gold intricately embellished with
astrological symbols that helped them to predict the movement of the sun and stars.
This is the conclusion of German archaeologists and historians who claim to have solved the mystery behind a series of strange yet beautiful golden cone-shaped objects discovered at Bronze Age sites across Europe.
Four of the elaborately decorated cones have been uncovered at sites in Switzerland, Germany and France over the past 167 years. Their original purpose has baffled archaeologists for decades.
Some concluded that they were parts of Bronze Age suits of
armour; others assumed that they served as ceremonial vases.
A third theory, which had gained widespread acceptance until now, was that the cones functioned as decorative caps that were placed on top of wooden stakes that surrounded Bronze Age sites of worship.
Historians at Berlin's Museum for Pre- and Early History, however, claim to have established with near certainty that the mysterious cones were originally worn as ceremonial hats by Bronze Age oracles.
Such figures, referred to as "king-priests", were held to have supernatural powers because of their ability to predict accurately the correct time for sowing, planting and harvesting crops.
"They would have been regarded as Lords of Time who had access to a divine knowledge that enabled them to look into the future," said Wilfried Menghin, the director of the
Berlin Museumwhich has been carrying out detailed research on a 3,000-year-old 30in high Bronze Age cone of beaten gold that was discovered in Switzerland in 1995 and purchased by the museum the following year.
Mr Menghin and his researchers discovered that the 1,739 sun and half-moon symbols decorating the Berlin cone's surface make up a scientific code which corresponds almost exactly to the "Metonic cycle" discovered by the Greek astronomer Meton in 432BC - about 500 years after the cone was made - which explains the relationship between moon and sun years.
"The symbols on the hat are a logarithmic table which enables the movements of the sun and the moon to be calculated in advance," Mr Menghin said. "They suggest that Bronze Age man would have been able to make long-term, empirical astrological observations," he added.
The findings
radically alter the standard image of the European Bronze Age as an era in which a society of primitive farmers lived in smoke-filled wooden huts eking out an existence from the land with the most basic of tools.
"Our findings suggest that
the Bronze Age was a far more sophisticated period in Europe than has hitherto been thought," Mr Menghin said.
Another cone, found near the German town of Schifferstadt in 1835,
had a chin strap attached to it. The cone, which is also studded with sun and moon symbols, is the earliest example found and dates back to 1,300 bc.
Other German archaeologists have suggested that the gold-hatted king-priests were to be found across much of prehistoric Europe. Prof Sabine Gerloff, a German archaeologist from Erlangen University, has found evidence that five similar golden cones were exhumed by peat diggers in Ireland during the 17th and 18th centuries.
These objects, described at the time as "vases", have disappeared. Prof Gerloff says, however, that her research suggests almost conclusively that they were hats worn by Bronze Age king-priests.
She is also convinced that a Bronze Age cape of beaten gold - the "Gold Cape of Mold" discovered in Wales in 1831 - was part of a king-priest's ceremonial dress.
Prof Gerloff has used computers to create an impression of a Bronze Age oracle wearing a golden hat and with an elaborately decorated golden cape wrapped tightly around the shoulders.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/03/17/wwiz17.xml
