Rekonstruktion av rustning och vapen för en mykensk lawageta (härförare).
View attachment 15677
Större version, med länk till skaparens inlägg med det, och beskrivning:
Mycenaean lawageta by JFoliveras on DeviantArt
"MYCENAEAN “LAWAGETA” (leader of the king’s army). The Mycenaean civilization was the last phase of the Bronze Age in mainland Greece, lasting from 1750 BC to 1050 BC approximately. Mycenaean art and material culture was heavily influenced by the Minoan civilization of Crete (3100-1100 BC), which the Mycenaeans seem to have eventually conquered, although both civilizations were unique in many aspects. Unlike the relatively peaceful Minoans, the Mycenaeans were very war-like, with many independent centres of power. Most Mycenaean warriors were lightly equipped, often wearing only a tunic (unlike Minoan men, that went bare-chested, wearing only a loincloth or a kilt-like lower garment) and a helmet usually made of boar tusks. But members of the Mycenaean elite wore extremely bulky and heavy bell-shaped armours with massive pauldrons that encircled the whole torso and high neck guards that practically left only the eyes visible. Although later examples of these armours are lighter and smaller, the most famous one was found at Dendra, which is the one used as reference here. Mycenaean helmets could have horns, as represented in the famous Vase of the Warriors, and Homer describes Achilles wearing a helmet with four horns in the Iliad. Surviving examples of horns that may have been attached to a helmet were also found at Dendra. This warrior also carries an “epsilon” axe, a type of axe used all over the Middle East and Egypt, and a “dipylon” shield based on Minoan and Mycenaean artistic representations.
The Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean ended in chaos, and Greece was no exception. Most Mycenaean centres of power were eventually destroyed, possibly by the obscure tribes known as the “Sea Peoples”, that brought the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean to an end (all except Egypt). The Iron Age in Greece began with a period known as the “Greek Dark Ages”, at the end of which Homer wrote the Iliad, inspired by a heroic Mycenaean past that would become eternally associated with the mythical Trojan War.
Some parts of this illustration have been inspired by the reconstructions of Mycenaean weapons and armours made by Dimitrios Katsikis:
www.hellenicarmors.gr/en/"
Och lite mer bronsåldersbilder av samma snubbe:
Meda of Odessos by JFoliveras on DeviantArt
"MEDA OF ODESSOS was a Thracian princess of the Getae, daughter of king Cothelas, and one of the many wives of Philip II of Macedon, so, she was a barbarian stepmother of Alexander the Great. The Getae were a northern Thracian tribe related with the Dacians, who lived around the Danube River in what is now northern Bulgaria and southern Romania. During the reign of Philip II and his son Alexander, the Getae, like the rest of Thrace, became vassals of Macedon. Alexander fought the Getae during his Balkan campaign, at the beginning of his reign.
She wears a scale armour with a skirt of “pteruges” (shorter in the front and longer in the sides to facilitate riding a horse), a scale “gorget” and decorative appliques based on a real armour found at the Golyamata Mogila tumulus, an Odrysian tomb from Bulgaria. The gilded helmet is based on a find from the tomb of the Odrysian king Seuthes III. The greaves are based on several finds from northern Thrace, and in other greaves like these we can see female faces with horizontal lines that have been interpreted as tattoos, which have been used here as reference for the face tattoos of Meda. The tattoos on the arms are based on those worn by Thracian women in Greek vase paintings. Thracian tattoos are also mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus as a sign of status. Thracian women painted on Greek vases are represented wielding comically large double axes known as labrys. Fancy double axes made of very thin bronze or gold were used as ceremonial objects in Minoan Crete, but in Thrace, there are countless finds of much simpler and thicker double axes made of iron, dating to the Classical and early Hellenistic periods. I also gave her a Thracian “akinakes” dagger, like those used by the nomadic Scythians and the Persians. While the southern Thracians living closer to Greece didn’t wear pants, the northern ones like the Odrysians and the Getae, more influenced by the Scythians, did wear them."
Yue warrior by JFoliveras on DeviantArt
"BAIYUE (THE HUNDRED YUE), CHINA’S SOUTHERN BARBARIANS
Yue or Baiyue is the name by which the Han Chinese knew the tribes living in what is now southern China and the jungles of Southeast Asia. This was an umbrella term including many peoples with common traits as well as differences (something like the nomads of the steppes), and their ethno-linguistic diversity is still a matter of debate, although there is some consensus that at least part of them were Austronesian peoples. The northernmost Yue ended up assimilated into Han Chinese culture and their territory became today’s southern China, but the rest of the Yue evolved into the Vietnamese, the Thai, and the Khmers, among others, eventually adopting Hinduism and Buddhism and becoming Indianized. The Yue are also believed to have a common ancestry with insular Austronesians, and that means being related with Polynesian peoples such as the natives of Hawaii, the Maori of New Zealand or the Rapa Nui of Easter Island. In modern-day southern China, there was a Yue kingdom called Nanyue, ruled by a dynasty of Chinese descent and considerably more sinicised than any other Yue. Chinese influence in Nanyue began as soon as the Qin dynasty, the dynasty of China’s first emperor, so, by the time emperor Wu of Han (Wudi) conquered Nanyue, this was very much a mix of barbarian and Chinese cultures. Emperor Wu, famous for his Siberian campaign against the Xiongnu, the War of the Heavenly Horses against the Dayuan, and for having sent the envoy Zhang Qian to Hellenistic Bactria, also annexed Nanyue to the Han Empire. The tribes further south, the Hundred Yue or Baiyue, would be much more primal than the half Chinese / half barbarian Nanyue. The Chinese described the Yue in their original form as being completely tattooed, having their hair either short or untied (opposite to the Chinese who wore it in a bun), blackening their teeth, worshipping animal totems, practicing cannibalism, wearing clothes and armours made of plant fibres, and living in huts. The Yue were also described as skilled seafarers and sword-makers, knowing both bronze and iron metallurgy."
Nordic Bronze Age girl by JFoliveras on DeviantArt
"Sun dancer girl from the NORDIC BRONZE AGE. With this illustration I start a new project in which I’ll reconstruct characters from different Bronze Age civilizations. This one is roughly based on the clothes and artifacts found in the burial of a young girl who died in 1370 BC (some 30 years before the birth of Tutankhamun) and was buried in a bog in Egtved (Denmark). The acidic soil of the bog completely disintegrated her bones, but other organic materials were well-preserved. The coffin was cut from a single tree trunk, and the short blond hair and well-trimmed nails are all what’s left of the girl. The inside of the coffin was covered with an ox pelt, which still has the silhouette of the girl’s disintegrated slim body imprinted in the fur. The clothes consisted of a kind of “crop top” and a short string skirt that would have been slightly see-through when dancing. All the clothes were made of wool. Similar skirts are worn by bronze figurines of what seem to be female ritual dancers, who probably took part in a Sun cult. The Egtved girl was also buried with a bronze disk that was attached to the waist with a woollen belt, for which there are many similar finds throughout Scandinavia. I also added a necklace of amber beads and a hair comb, also based on burial finds. In the background, you can see petroglyphs representing boats. Such rock carvings can be found all over southern Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
THE NORDIC BRONCE AGE lasted from 2000 BC to 500 BC. For comparison, it started when the last mammoths went extinct in Siberia and ended around the time of the Persian invasion of Greece. During the Bronze Age, Scandinavians exported Baltic amber to the rest of Europe, as far as Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, pharaonic Egypt, and Mesopotamia. In return, Scandinavians imported blue glass beads from the eastern Mediterranean. The Nordic Bronze Age was followed by the Pre-Roman Iron Age, known in archaeology as the Jastorf culture, period during which northern Europeans started to be known collectively as the Germanic tribes by Classical authors."
Saka warriors by JFoliveras on DeviantArt
"SAKA warriors (Scythians from Central Asia and southern Siberia), 4th century BC. The world of the early steppe nomads is a very obscure one, and the names by which we know them make it even more confusing. I’ll try to make it as understandable as I can. First, let me explain the difference between historical names (known from ancient sources) and archaeological names (used by modern archaeologists based on common material culture). In ancient sources, the words “Saka” and “Scythian” refer to the same peoples: the Iranic-speaking nomads that roamed the steppes between southern Ukraine and the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan. The only difference between these names is that “Scythian” is how the Greeks called these nomads, and “Saka” is how the Persians called them. Although nowadays we tend to use “Scythian” for the nomads of eastern Europe and “Saka” for the Siberian and Central Asian ones, historically, the Persians would call the European Scythians “Saka beyond the (Black) Sea” and when Alexander the Great fought the Saka in Central Asia, to the Greeks these nomads were Scythians as well. Despite the Greek and Persian names being applied to both eastern and western Iranic nomads, the material cultures of the European Scythians and the Central Asian Saka had differences. In the field of archaeology, the Scythians and Saka mentioned in Greek and Persian historical sources are considered part of the “Scythian horizon”, which is an umbrella term for all the material cultures of the steppes that have some specific common characteristics (like the same types of weapons, a common “animal style” art, similar horse gear, similar clothing…). The “Scythian horizon” extends from eastern Europe (including parts of Thrace in the Balkans) to the Ordos desert in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, and from the forest-steppe of Siberia to, at some point in history, north-west India. In such a vast territory one could expect to find quite a lot of ethno-linguistic diversity, with not only Iranic speakers but also Finnic, Ugrian, Turkic, Mongolic and Yeniseian peoples, to name a few. The problem is that none of these Scythian-like peoples left any written sources."