Tullie House Museum is Loaned Helmet

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This eerily familiar, shimmering androgynous face with lips slightly parted and squinting eyes is not the infamous Crosby Garrett helmet, "for which a small museum in Cumbria raised an astonishing £1.7m last year, only to be outbid at auction, sparking a continuing controversy over protection for major archaeological finds in Britain" (Maev Kennedy, ('Shock and awe: Nijmegen helmet gives Carlisle museum a boost', The Guardian 14 June 2011). This is the Nijmegan helmet from the Netherlands which is being loaned to the Tullie House museum in Carlisle for the opening of its new Roman gallery ("Roman Frontier: Stories beyond Hadrian’s Wall" which opens on 25 June. The Museum has succeeded in getting loans of a number of items for the display, including from the British and foreign museums as well as private collectors - all except one asked.

The borrowed object is a cavalry display helmet from a findspot that (unlike the Crosby Garrett piece found in secret by metal detectorists in - they say - Cumbria) is known. It was found in the gravel on the left bank of the Waal river south of Nijmegen in 1915. It is now one of the treasures of the Het Valkhof museum, at Nijmegen.This stunning object is described in The History Blog:

Like the Crosby Garrett helmet, it has an elegant face mask visor topped with a head piece. It also features a diadem with five busts in high relief, two male figures and three female. It dates to the 1st century A.D., probably the latter half; the busts are Flavian in style, so from between 69 and 96 A.D. The visor connects to the diadem via a single hinge in the middle of the forehead.

The Nijmegen helmet will remain on display until October. When it returns to the Netherlands, apparently the Carlisle Museum has arranged the loan of yet another one from a foreign collection. Sadly Britain will be unable to reciprocate by loaning them the recently discovered Crosby Garrett one because nobody knows where it is.
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