Lady with the inverted diadem found in Archaic cemetery

A excavation on the eastern slopes of the dried Lake Kopaida in central Greece has unearthed a rich Early Archaic-era burial of a noble woman wearing an upside-down bronze diadem. The burial dates to the second half of the 7th century B.C., a period when the power of ancestral hereditary kingship in Boeotia was waning while the nobility’s was on the rise. Her diadem was symbolic of the new power of the non-monarchical elites.

Archaeologists with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Phthiotis and Evrytania have been carrying out a rescue excavation in advance of construction of a photovoltaic park. They have so far unearthed 40 graves from the Archaic and Classical periods. Different types of burials, including pit graves, burial pyres and graves with tile roofs, were found grouped in clusters.

The lady with the diadem was found in a cluster of three pit graves. Analysis of her teeth identified her as an adult woman between 20 and 30 years of age. She was buried wearing a banded bronze diadem with a large rosette shaped like a radiant sun in the center of her forehead. The band of the diadem is embossed with pairs of male and female lions facing each other, symbols of royal authority. The crown was placed upside-down, so the lions are on their backs. This likely symbolized the fall of a monarch, in this case dethroned by death.

She was buried with a multitude of other valuable objects, including two oversized bronze brooches of the Boeotian type, ornamented with stylized geometric horses, a necklace with a large central vase-shaped amulet, bone and ivory beads and bronze rosettes, copper earrings, a bracelet, and spiral rings on all of her fingers. This was a woman of immense wealth and status in the community, not a queen, but powerful enough to adopt the symbols of monarchy.

One of the other pit burials in the cluster with her also contained the remains of a bronze diadem with rosettes. This one belonged to a young girl about four years of age, and in addition to the diadem on her head, she wore similar jewelry to the noblewoman, including a necklace with a vase-shaped amulet. The burial dates to the same period, so it’s possible the two were related in some way.

Other notable finds from the cemetery include a Siana-type kylix (drinking cup) decorated with roosters and a trefoil-shaped oenochoe (wine pitcher) decorated with Hermes as psychopomp (guide of souls) and harpies discovered in a mid-6th-century B.C. grave, bronze flasks and black-figure and black-lettered pottery from the renown ceramic workshops of Akraiphia.

* This article was originally published here