Emile DRIANT

An ancient Corinthian bronze helmet from the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) is displayed alongside a human skull, which is famously reported to have been found inside it... Associated with the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC during the first Persian invasion of Greece. While widely shared online as having been discovered with the soldier's skull trapped inside, archaeologists note that because the Greeks were generally thorough in burying their dead after winning the battle, the exact association between this specific skull and the helmet remains debated. . . . In 1834, a British aristocrat named Lord Nugent said he had dug up something remarkable on the plain of Marathon in Greece: a bronze Corinthian helmet with a human skull still inside it. Marathon is where, in 490 BC, the outnumbered Athenians and their Plataean allies drove back the invading Persian army. According to the historian Herodotus, 192 Athenians fell in the battle and were buried together under a great earthen mound that still stands on the plain today. The Corinthian helmet was the classic headgear of a Greek hoplite. It was hammered from a single sheet of bronze, and the tiny holes around its edges once held a padded lining. Today the helmet and skull are in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, which bought them at a London auction in 1926. Their story isn't fully proven. The helmet is a genuine Greek piece from around the time of the battle, but the Marathon find was recorded only decades later, and the skull has never been DNA-tested or carbon-dated. Nobody knows whether the man was an Athenian, a Plataean or someone else entirely. Even so, standing in front of them is a powerful reminder that real people fought and fell in one of history's most famous battles. #archaeohistories