Image Details

O.E. Nelson/courtesy Robert S. Merrillees

Cast nearly 1,000 years earlier than the Vix diadem, these two gold pins from Anatolia, now in the Norbert Schimmel collection in New York’s Metropolitan Museum, date to the Hittite Empire (roughly 1400–1200 B.C.). The pinheads are hollow, fluted and capped with small roseate crowns, resembling the poppy bulb. Inside each pinhead is a loose object that rattles, much like poppy seeds in a desiccated capsule (compare with photo of gold diadem).