Find Situation
Original Placement
View of restored bronze and iron drinking horn with gold foil
ornament. Length ca. 89 cm; diameter at lip ca. 14.5 cm; weight ca.
2.7 kg; capacity 5.5 liters. Missing in the photo are the pendant
objects made of horn and bone that were probably suspended from the
antenna-shaped finial. The iron horn is the best preserved of the
nine drinking horns found in the tomb.
The plan shows
the tomb chamber as seen from above, with the area (shaded in red)
where the remains of nine drinking horns were found along the south
and west walls. The large iron drinking horn hung above the head end
of the couch was broken and crushed but could be reconstructed; some
gold foil details and parts of the pendants of bone or horn remain
somewhat speculative. However, the other drinking horns were
originally made of animal horn; only the bronze fittings that
functioned as sleeves to hold the hanging wires in place, some gold
foil, and several bone or horn finials are preserved. The information
concerning the organic horns is not nearly as complete as what can be
determined about the iron horn; much of the data derives from
reconstructions based on the fragmentary finds.
The nine drinking horns were attached by means of iron hooks to the textile-covered wooden walls of the burial chamber -- the textiles themselves were attached with iron hooks and serpentine fibulae. It is not always clear which hooks go with which items, and the poor preservation of the horn remains has contributed to several quite different reconstructions of the original placement of the assemblage. Krauße's exhaustive 1996 study places one organic horn along the west wall with the opening facing south, quite near the corner of the chamber at the head end of the couch. The iron horn faces the same corner along the south wall, while the remaining horns are lined up along the south wall with all the openings facing east. It is not entirely clear to me that the iron horn should be arranged differently from the organic horns -- the find situation, with the antenna-shaped finial and bone pendants to the east and approximately the lower half of the conical body sections folded over the top half, might be explained by a fall onto the end with the opening, with the lower half flipping over the top and to the east as the horn disintegrates. We do not know the height at which the horns were hung, but Krauße assumes, I think rightly, that they would not have been placed much below the top of the chamber, which was approximately 1.2 m high (1996, 48).
Alternate view of
iron, bronze and gold drinking horn.
Publication: Krauße 1996; also
Biel
1985, 92, f., 149 f.
Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum.
Original images courtesy Württembergisches Landesmuseum; some
digitally altered and reassembled after photographs published by D.
Krauße and J. Biel.
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