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The 1st Artist and helmet, "Artist's Feast". Sogdian mural from Panjakent


A larger image of the 1st Figure in the "Artist's Feast", Piandjikent. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.


Fig. 11. Wall painting of the so called feasting artists: a close-up of the helmet (though one cannot exclude a possibility that it is only a cap). First half of the 8th c. AD, Penjikent, XXIV, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, photograph courtesy of S. Miszanin.

As far as the feature of parallel evenly dispersed ribs on Sasanid helmets is concerned, such a form is also attested in the case of certain cross-band helmets, for instance the one from Cheragh Ali-Tepe held in the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels or the one from Amlash housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.81 A similar ridge solution is depicted on a 4th c. AD terracotta statuette from Tepe Yaya.82 This form was in use in Iran until the post-Sasanid times and was still depicted on early Islamic coins.83 Furthermore, a similar type of helmet appears with one figure of the so called ‘feasting artists’ on a painting from Sector XXIV in Penjikent, which is now in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in Russia. Interestingly, the bottom band of it is considerably wide, a feature which makes it reminiscent of the helmets from Niniveh84 held in the British Museum in London.

81 MIKS (2009) Abb. 6.
82 LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY, LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY (1971) 109-110; AHMAD (2014) fig. 12.
83 AHMAD (2014) fig. 15.
84 GUIDE (1922) 169; SIMPSON (1996) 97-98.

Source: pp.89-90, Adam Lech KUBIK (Siedlce University, Poland) "Introduction to studies on late Sasanian protective armour. The Yarysh-Mardy helmet" in HISTORIA I ŚWIAT, nr 5 (2016) ISSN 2299-2464

Back to the Artist's Feast, Mural, Sogdian Piandjikent (Penjikent). State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.