large bronze helmet with crest decorated with the enigmatic sphinx

The prototype for these glorious helmets is the plain, uncrested Corinthian style of the 6th century BCE. Originals of these can be seen in museums across the world. Those in the Goulandris Collection in the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, and in the Museum of Ancient Olympia are the inspiration for this collection, created by the late Kostas Semitekolo.

The motifs on the crests are either geometric designs, such as the Greek key meandros motif, or symbolic creatures such as the griffin, the sphinx, or the serpent.

Original helmets are much thinner and lighter than these, and the largest 'life-size' copies here are also smaller than the circumference of today's average male head. They are most definitely not to be worn! The crested ones are cast in two pieces, then the separately cast crest is inserted. If you look inside the helmets, you can often see the marks left by the wax during the casting process. Where mounted, they are on a solid marble base.

A note about variations in height if the helmet is on a base: As they are not mass produced, the little (fixed) pole in the smaller size helmets can vary in height up to 2cm either way. If you need a specific height, email me before you order! The larger helmets have a detachable pole which is (usually!) the same height. The marble base can also vary in dimensions, but only by millimetres.

The bronze pieces are cast in Greece using the traditional lost wax method. As nothing is mass-produced, there will inevitably be slight variations in texture, patina, and colour. No two pieces are ever the same. If mounted on a marble base, it will be a black or very dark grey base. There may be a variation of some millimetres in the dimensions of the base from time to time.

It's All Greek is so grateful and so proud to have been working closely with the Semitekolo family foundry since 1999. It has been a privilege and a joy to handle, live with, and photograph these gorgeous pieces and to pass them on to customers all over the world.

The hybrid mythical enigmatic sphinx, with the face of a woman, the body of a lion and the wings of a bird of prey, has an interesting duality in ancient Greek art and literature.

The male sphinx of ancient Egypt, benevolent guardian of pharoahs and of sacred places, was integrated into archaic Greek culture, but with a significant difference, namely that she was now a female hybrid. The Greek sphinx retained - at first - the role of silent guardian, as seen in archaic pottery and in many apotropaic funerary markers, to watch over the dead, and to ward off evil. (If you have been to the museum in Delphi, you'll have seen the monumental sphinx dedicated by the people of Naxos to Apollo's panhellenic sanctuary.)

Gradually, during the archaic and the early Classical periods, there is a distinct shift in the representations of the sphinx in both Greek art and literature. Hesiod set the tone for this change by rewriting the sphinx' genealogy... she was now the offspring of terrifying, primeval Greek monsters Typhon and Echidna. Smaller sphinx statues were now placed on top of gravestones as boundary markers between the living and the dead, and the sphinx became intimately linked to mortal grief, death, and the terrifying transition to Hades. By the time Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannos (ca 429 BCE), the silent stone guardian had been reimagined as a speaking, riddling, destructive devourer of any who failed to solve her cryptic riddle. The point at which, outwitted by Oedipus, this symbol of mystery and ruin hurls herself to death from a steep cliff, in some ways represents a transition from primeval chaos to civilised reason.