The Bronze Age Golden Hat was bought by the Museum for Pre- and Early History, Berlin in the year 1996. Depending on its fine state of conservation it could be interpreted as a headdress of a chieftain or a priest.

Morphology of the object:

The 74,5 cm high Berlin Golden hat was made by a specialized gold-smith in embossed work. Therefore he used one paper-thin sheet of gold of less than 400 g of weight and a thickness of 0.06 mm. The hat consists of a hollow conical body with an oval calotte, a tall conical shaft and a wide brim with. The Golden Hat is decorated on the whole surface with indented patterns. It can be regarded as a masterpiece of the goldsmith’s work in the Bronze Age.

The decoration of the Berlin Golden Hat was made by the use of 17 different stamps. Possibly the hat was imprinted from outside with totally negative stamps and positive stamps from the inside, mainly consisting of discs, circles and concentrical circles. Aside the stamps there are 19 lying half moons, 19 eye models and an eight-radiated star on the top.

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Aside the Berlin Golden Hat three further objects of the same type are known till today. The 29.6 cm high golden hat from Schifferstadt was found in the year 1835 by chance. Because of its excellent conservation with a brim, it was regarded as a headdress from the beginning. Further golden cones were found in Ezelsdorf-Buch in Bavaria in 1953 and in the year 1844 in Avanton, France.

Following the latest scientific results the four golden cones can be interpreted as hats or crowns. The latest research works, especially on the Berlin Gold Hat, make it probable that priests or chieftains wore them during ritual actions as symbols of power. Parallels and models of such hats are known in the glyptic and plastic art from the Middle East, Sardinia and Scandinavia. Since the 18th century BC these motives occur in the Middle East glyptic art. Here they are connected with mythological sceneries having a clear astronomic-cosmological context. The so called “Moon pectoral” of the Tutenchamun tomb also includes such elements. For this reasons there seems to be a connection between the symbolism and the reduced pictorial program of the “Gold Hat“ and the Middle East and Egyptian cosmology. The altogether 1739 symbols are systematic arranged in 19 horizontal ornament zones. Among them are 1701 concentric rings and each coincides with a day. Taking astronomic calculations as a basis the number of symbols on the Gold Hat corresponds nearly exact with 57 solar (= 3 * 19) and 59 lunar months. The result of multiplying 57 * 4 is 228 solar months (= 12 * 19) of the Metonic Cycle and also corresponds approximately with the 135 lunar months of the moon cycle, both cycles last 19 years. Consequently the number system represented on the decoration of the “Berlin Gold Hat“ can be considered as the copy of a lunar-solar calendar from the time 3000 years ago, long time before the Babylonians and Greeks developed similar calendar systems.

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