Monomachos Crown: The 1,000-year-old diadem of an emperor who shared the Byzantine throne with 2 sisters
Name: Monomachos Crown
What is: A series of enameled gold panels
Where he comes from: Ivanka Prit nitre, a village in the center of Slovakia
When it was done: Between AD 1042 and 1050
In relation: Assyrian swimrs: 2,900 -year -old soldiers sculpture using inflatable goat skin to cross a river
What he tells us about the past:
In 1860, a farmer plowed a field in central Slovakia when he found a Byzantine crown in spectacular paneled gold. For more than a century, the experts argued if it belonged to the 12th century leader Constantine IX Monomachos and how the crown was found in the extreme north of the Byzantine Empire.
Constantine IX reigned from 1042 to 1055. His family name Monomachos – which means “the one who fights alone” or essentially “the gladiator” in Greek – distinguished him as part of an aristocratic family which was active in the policy of the Byzantine Empire. But he was not born in the royal family and ruled as an emperor only because he was the spouse of Empress Zoë, and they shared the throne with Zoë Theodora’s sister.
The Crown of Monomachos, in the collection of Hungarian National Museum in Budapestconsists of seven gold plates, each with a high rounded and colorful enamel decorations. The largest of the plates measures 4.5 inches (11.5 centimeters) in height and represents Constantine IX holding a cavalry standard in his right hand and a roller of purple silk in his left, which were both imperial leadership symbols. An inscription in Greek on the central panel can be read as follows: “Constantine, Emperor of the Romans, the Monomachos.”
Flanking Constantin IX are panels representing the Empress Zoë on her right and the Empress Theodora on her left. The two are labeled as “the most pious” in Greek. To complete the crown, four panels decorated with dancers and the personification of two virtues: justice and humility.
According to the Hungarian National Museum, the symmetrical holes on the sides of the gold plates can mean that they were originally attached to a fabric cap rather than fixed together in an autonomous crown.
But the sense of the crown and the person who really had it has been debated for decades.
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In 1994Byzantine Scholar Nikolaos Oikonomides argued that the crown was actually a 19th-century forgery, basing this claim on unusual choices in the Imperial Clothing, Errors in the Greek Inscriptions, Along with the Crown’s Discovery in Present-Day Slovakia, Far from the Seat of Imperial Byzantine Power in Istanbul.
But art historian ETELE KISS refuted these claims in a 2000 studyHighlighting the similarities between imperial clothes and other Byzantine arts, the fact that Greek errors are largely accents that suggest a simple change of pronunciation, and noting that the crown found itself in Nitra as a diplomatic gift from Constantine IX to a local sovereign.
The crown of Monomachos is one of the three surviving Byzantine crowns, but it is currently impossible to draw final conclusions in many aspects, Kiss said. Additional research is necessary to fully understand the importance of gold coaches in gold.
