section_path: Analysis
section_name: Analysis
paragraph_text: Analysis
  
  Weighing almost a kilogram, the gold helmet is very well preserved, missing only part of its skull cap. The form of the helmet and its decorations reveal the autochthonous character of this Geto-Dacian artwork. The helmet is decorated with large studs on the top of the skull and two very large apotropaic eyes, meant to ward off the evil eye and magic spells. It was established that it belonged to an unknown local Geto-Dacian king or to a local aristocrat, from around year 400 BC.
  
  The helmet's decorations depict a range of mythical creatures, and an illustration, on either cheek-piece, of a ritual enactment.
  
  The cheek-pieces show a ram being sacrificed by a man who kneels on its body and is about to cut its throat with a short knife. The iconography on the right side of the helmet is of a great interest, and has been interpreted in light of the tauroctony scene from the Mithraic Mysteries. Environment and affluence might well account for a change to a larger beast being offered as sacrifice and a similar interpretation of a bull-slaying episode. This sacrifice of the ram might have been performed by the "king-priest-god".
  
  The pair of "Voracious Beasts" on the Coțofenești neck-guard occupy a lower register along with a similar creature deprived of a victim’s leg. This motif of the "Voracious Beast" is found earlier in Assyrian art, and was popular among the Etruscans. Phoenicia was probably the intermediary for its transferral to Italy and around the Adriatic, but the motif must also have traveled through Asia Minor to appear in a North Thracian idiom not only on the Coțofenești neck-guard but also in high relief on the base of the Aghighiol beakers, named after the village near the Danube Delta in eastern Romania where they were found.
  
  The upper register displays a row of three seated or squatting winged creatures, rather monkey-like with human faces, long forearms, and long tails. These are direct, if run-down, descendants of the sphinxes on a gold beaker from Amlash.
  
  The eyes on a Greek battle-shield may be designated to ward off evil blows, but once translated onto a helmet, and above the eyes of a North Thracian noble who wore it, they could mean "I see twice as well, I have eyes like my hawk". The Thracian gold and silversmiths who manufactured the objects were aware of other contemporary art styles—those of Scythia, Greece, northeast Italy, and what is now modern Slovenia were known through trade, travel and meetings and they adapted conventions of representation suitable for their own purposes. The meaning of these motifs was no doubt context-specific.
  
  The decorations, such as rosettes, strips, triangles, spirals and others are specific Geto-Dacian art motifs. The depiction of the sacrifice of the ram is an Iranian theme that entered Greek art and from there 'barbarian' art. Therefore, the helmet seems to have been realized in a Greek workshop. But, in the same time the awkward technique of execution that contrasts with the perfect technique of a Greek craftsman points out to an autochthonous one.