Rare inscription on combat helmet from 2,400 years ago could reveal historical data from pre-Roman era

A 2,400-year-old Etruscan helmet has revealed a “rare” inscription inside that had gone unnoticed by Italian archaeologists and that could provide new information about the military organization of this pre-Roman people.

The discovery, advanced today by the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia and which will be illustrated in the magazine “Archeologia Viva”, occurs more than ninety years after this bronze helmet was found in the necropolis of Osteria di Vulci, in 1928 .

The epigraph is engraved on the neck protector and consists of seven letters -HARN STE-, probably a name that indicates a place of origin -the object or the owner- and that must be read as a single word, the museum explains in a statement.

It is, in fact, a “very rare” inscription that “offers fundamental information for the reconstruction of the military organization and the evolution of the art of war” in the Italian peninsula before the hegemony of Rome.

The helmet surely belonged, judging by its typology, to an Etruscan warrior, a people that dominated an important part of present-day Tuscany, and has been dated to the middle of the 4th century.

At that time, central Italy was characterized by bloody conflicts between local tribes, who competed for the dominance of the peninsula or for simple survival, threatened by the advance of the Celts, who in 390 BC put Rome itself to the sword.

And it is that the city, founded according to tradition in 735 BC next to the Tiber River, was still far from the power and expansion that it would achieve in imperial times throughout the Mediterranean.

The helmet somehow narrates those years of blood and iron for the dominion of the territory. For example, it is possible to assume that the fact that the inscription is inside it indicates to its owner, a custom, that of marking possessions, very current.

This “reinforced the feeling of belonging to an object of vital importance” for the warrior, the museum maintains.

But it also offers information about the system of forges in which the Etruscans made their weapons and it is believed “possible” that the helmet was not made in Vulci, where it was found, but at some point near the current city of Perugia (center).

The historian of the 1st century BC Tito Livio revealed the existence of an Etruscan camp called “Aharnam” which rallied the troops on the eve of the third battle of the Samnite war in 295 BC, between Rome and a league of Etruscans, Gauls, Umbrians, and other tribes.

The toponym “Aharnam” sounds very similar to the current town of Civitela d’Arna, near Perugia, so the name of the helmet, Harn Ste, read as a single word, “could have been formed from the name of that city” or its surroundings.

And it is that other gravestones or Etruscan objects have been found that share roots, such as “Havrna”, “Havrenies” or “Harenies”.

However, the museum stresses that “it is not possible to establish with certainty whether the name preserved matches that of its last owner”, since these pieces were often passed from hand to hand as a war trophy. (I)