Here it is folks, the shaft grave helmet is all done. Sorry it's taken me so long to get this post up; life gets in the way sometimes.
This helmet was much easier to make than my last beehive helmet, and definitely faster, mainly because this time I had a better idea of what I was doing. Otherwise it's fundamentally the same thing as my Phaistos helmet; the differences in shape and style are largely superficial although, as I'll explain, I do think the shaft grave style would offer better head protection.
So how historically accurate is it? That depends on how correct our understanding of beehive helmets is, which we don't know for sure. Unfortunately we don't have any surviving Mycenaean helmets to study, so any reconstruction necessarily involves some conjecture. Based on art, literature, and archaeological finds it is possible to make deductions about how Mycenaean helmets were made and what materials they were made from, and I like to think this is a reasonable reconstruction based on the evidence available.
Here's what the shaft grave helmet looks like when worn:
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| Selfies are acceptable for research and/or educational purposes. |
As you can see there's a lot of bulk in the helmet to cushion my skull in the event of an enemy hitting me over the head with a blunt object, or firing a sling stone at me. Even at the lower edge of the helmet, which is its thinnest point, there's a good inch and a quarter (30mm) of padding and tough leather.
Although my shaft grave helmet is the same basic construction as the Phaistos helmet, I think it would do a slightly better better job of protecting the wearer's skull because of the extra padding. Helmets made this way are naturally thinner around the lower edge, and placing curved pieces of leather stuffed with linen around the lower edge is one way to increase the level of protection the helmet provides in this area.
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| This is the internal structure of my Phaistos helmet. You can clearly see how the thick bundle of leather strips at the top gives more protection than the lower rim, which is just one layer of leather. Adding extra padding around this area makes sense. |
