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I promise I will blog more about the kindly yet strange wild goose, LG, who lives on my parents’ farm (there has been a big change in his life!), but first let’s get to what everyone cares about most–princely secession within the aristocracy of a distant foreign federal republic (where royalty isn’t even an official thing).
“What on earth are you talking about?” you might well be saying. “‘Unofficial aristocrats of a distant federal republic?’ Is this some weird version of the Nigerian Prince scam?” I guess the answer to that rhetorical question is: maybe?
Behold! Here is Omo Oba Utienyinoritsetsola Emiko, the brand new Olu (king) of Warri (a tribal nation of Nigeria’s southern Delta, which was subsumed into greater Nigeria during unification in the 20th century). The new olu was crowned on August 21st, 2021 after the death of his uncle (the previous king). Kings, emirs, and other hereditary aristocrats have no actual authority within the Nigerian constitution, however some such noblefolk still possess substantial cultural and religious clout. Accordingly, King Emiko used his new royal authority to reverse a curse cast by one of his ancestors upon the nation of Nigeria. He also remarked upon the power and importance of women and suggested that Nigeria needs to diversify its economy beyond reliance on oil. It is a promising start by the (American educated) ceremonial king.
Yet King Emiko’s coronation did not proceed without incident. King Emiko’s mother was a Yoruba woman and thus born outside of Warri nobility. Some traditional minded Warri, (including the sons of the previous king) felt that this fact might disqualify Prince Emiko from the throne. Also, just prior to the coronation, the ancient crown of Warri went missing and police were summoned to discuss the matter with the late king’s sons. The crown is said to date back to the time of the first Olu of Warri who ruled from 1625 to 1643 and received the gilded headdress from the king of Portugal in exchange for organizing a port for slavetrading at Warri.
Fortunately, the crown was quickly discovered (just after the police became involved). The coronation day was a day of celebration and happiness. Thus far the new king has evinced a forward looking philosophy and it is hoped that he really can use his cultural capital to dispel some of the curses which linger over Warri. If such is his intention, perhaps his majesty should himself hide that crown: I personally wouldn’t want anything from House Aviz OR House Braganza (the Portuguese throne also changed dynasties during the period between 1625 and 1643). Anyway hopefully this little news bulletin has clarified the original source of royalty in the Delta region of Nigeria and answered some questions about the role of kingship in the modern world.
Sometimes when my mind has been hopelessly corrupted by the pointless drudgery of my dayjob (a syndrome which, alas, also impairs efficacious blogging) I like to look at the exquisite golden objects from Indonesia which are on display at the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. Through some strange accident (which almost certainly involved vast fossil fuel wealth) the Houston museum has the finest collection of Indonesian gold outside of Jakarta. We have seen some of these otherworldly status objects here on Ferrebeekeeper before, but today’s golden crown suits my taste even more than previous selections. Unfortunately, the Houston museum’s collection is poorly explained, and the internet simply identifies this as an ancestral gold crown from the Moluccas circa 15th to 17th century. Why are the greatest beauties always so mysterious?
The Moluccas (AKA Maluku) are a pretty mysterious place in their own right, having been continuously inhabited by humans since the first great migration out of Africa 80,000 years ago (dates may be subject to variance!). As Austronesian, Melanesian, and eventually Malay (and then, in historical times, Chinese and European) people traveled through the great ecological and cultural crossroads, all sorts of ideas became mixed together. This headress though is not 100% alien… it has certain similarities to some of the Balinese carvings I have seen–which is to say it comes from a Hindu cultural tradition coming southwards from Malaysia and South East Asia. There are shades of the fantastical headdresses of the apsaras here! Yet I don’t see this piece as completely Hindu or southeast Asian either. The ornament and the figures have a vigorous & sumptuous aspect which strikes me as thoroughly Indonesian. Whatever the case, I could look at this enigmatic crown all day! If anyone out there knows anything about it (or even has any speculative ideas like mine above) I would love to hear from you!
Here is the golden crown of the Sultan of Banten. Manufactured around AD 1700, the crown is made of gold and silver filigree with non-faceted precious stones (presumably rubies, spinels, and garnets). The foliate design of the piece are typical of the Islamic goldsmithing and sculptural traditions of Java.
Straddling the western tip of Java and the south eastern end of Sumatra, the Sultanate of Banten was one of the most important of the Indonesian Islamic kingdoms which the Dutch worked so hard to subaltern and ultimately conquer. You might note that Indonesia’s contemporary capital Jakarta (assuming they haven’t moved it yet) is located in what was once Banten territory. The sultans of Banten derived their wealth and power from trading, and they were initially eager to trade with the Dutch and the English (whom they played against each other). Unfortunately for the Bantens, the Dutch destroyed Jayakarta and built a fortified town, Batavia on the ruins. Throughout the 17th century, Banten influence and wealth waned as the Dutch grew in power. A disastrous fight between father and son rivals for the sultanate allowed the Dutch to seize power and reduce the once powerful sultanate to a puppet kingdom.
Behold the Crown of Liège, an ancient reliquary crown which was acquired by the Louvre in…1947? Well, despite the fact that the French State took a while to get a hold of it, the crown was manufactured back at the end of the 13th century. It consists of eight plaques each of which is ornamented with fleurons set off with precious stones and stamped oak leaves. The plaques are separated from each other by metal angels.
Each plaque also contains a tiny hollow cavity behind the central jewel. This crown was not made for a human head, but was constructed to house the contents of these cavities.
King Louis IX, was one of the most esteemed rulers of the Middle Ages: he was a legal reformer who banned trial by ordeal and introduced the concept of “presumption of innocence” to jurisprudence. Famed throughout Europe for his heartfelt Christianity, Louis acquired what he believed to be Christ’s Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the true cross from Emperor Baldwin II of the Latin Empire of Constantinople (Baldwin’s story involves the bizarre and misdirected 4th Crusade–a story for another day). At any rate, King Louis IX gave away some of the fragments of his dearly bought relics, and this crown houses them.
For a time it was believed that the crown was Parisian in origin, but art historians and jewelsmiths now believe that it was made in the Meuse Valley, which runs through Belgium, Amsterdam, and Germany.
In all of these posts about crowns, I have been ignoring/omitting the royal headdresses which I think are most gorgeous. This is because crowns from this vast syncretic archipelago nation often defy traditional interpretation and classification as crowns (which sounds weird now, but which will become more comprehensible when you see today’s example).
Also, Indonesia is enormous
Indonesia is a land of more than 17000 islands, including Java, the world’s most populous island. Lying between major continents, oceans, hemispheres, and eco-regions, these islands have been reassembled in countless different forms into all manner of different empires, kingdoms, principalities, alliances, satrapies, colonies, and what ever other political units you can think of (although perhaps the most influential was the Majapahit Empire, a Hindu-Buddhist sea-based empire which was headquartered in Java and provided the cultural and aesthetic roots for contemporary Indonesian society). Sometimes almost all of Indonesia has been unified. Other times the islands have gone in different directions.
Anyway, as you can imagine, the complex history of these seventeen thousand islands partakes greatly of Indian, Chinese, South East Asian, Japanese, African, Australian, European (particularly Dutch), Melanesian, Polynesian, Papuan, Philippine, and American influences. The gifted Indonesians (who have a particular genius for sculpture) have figured out ways to take all of these different flavors and make something which is breathtaking and uniquely their own. Here is a crown from Singaraja, a Balinese City which was the courtly center for Dutch influence over Bali and the Sunda Islands between 1850 and 1950. Like the British in India, the Dutch preferred to rule by subalterning small regional kingdoms into the merciless clutches of an anodyne-sounding “company” (The Dutch East India Company).
King’s Crown from the Balinese Royal Court of Singaraja
This crown is from the second half of the nineteenth century (or maybe the early 20th century) when some local monarch had it made in emulation of a Dutch officer’s hat. Look at how much it resembles an [American] civil war cap! And yet, despite its shape, this hat is nothing like an American/European military hat of that era. It is made of gold and gemstones with undulating floral zoomorphic patterns on every inch!
Is this a crown? Certainly. And yet if I pulled it out of a prop box, it would probably not pass muster. Indonesian history has many similar caps, but I have never written about them, because of how hard it is to write about the baffling history of this enormous and complicated (yet not well-studied) part of the world. Keep your eyes open for unfamiliar opulence ans (sigh) confusing and wordy explanations like this one!
We have written about all sorts of jeweled crowns here at ferrebeekeeper (I particularly like spinels and aquamarines), but we have avoided taking about the gemstone which is most often reputed to be accursed–the chaotic & iridescent opal! Can you imagine a cursed opal tiara? That sounds like it could be the McGuffin at the center of a sprawling fantasy epic…or at least a prop in a cozy mystery set in a sprawling manor somewhere. Yet sadly, when I went online and started poking around, opal crowns (and crown-adjacent aristocratic headdresses) seemed a great deal less accursed than folklore would make them sound.
Whatever your thoughts about this superstition, opal headdresses are certainly beautiful. Here is a little gallery of opal tiaras, diadems, coronets, and crowns. Look at the beguiling rainbow of mysterious supernatural stones…
Perhaps opal tiaras are just rare. It has been speculated that the reason opals are reputed to be cursed is because they are fragile. Trapped water inside of amorphous silica is what gives opals their “fire” but it also makes them prone to unexpectedly breaking. Semi-precious jade has a similar problem, but jade sellers solved the problem by creating their own myth–that if your jade talisman or jewelry cracks, it has absorbed a dreadful misfortune aimed at the wearer. Now that is how you do marketing.
Alas, the finest opals are more expensive than jade, and if you spend a king’s ransom on a glittering stone that unexpectedly blows apart into sand and jagged glassy pebbles, it is probably hard to see it as anything other than a curse.
These worries however are for the jewel buying class. We can simply enjoy these opal pieces without worrying about them breaking. Ahhhh, isn’t it delightful not to be overly burdened with fragile costly gemstones?
Today’s post is courtesy of a friend, the renowned silver expert, Benjamin Miller. This is a literal Bohemian Crown (in that it is from Bohemia, the westernmost duchy of Moravia–in what is now the Czech Republic). Manufactured from silver gilt, pearls, and glass/paste “jewels”, the piece is not precious in the ostentatious manner of crowns like the Great Crown of Victory, or the Cap of Monomakh, and yet it has its own winsome beauty. Indeed, the tiny crown reminds me of the garden in the morning when the dew is still on it. The size of the piece is also reminiscent of fairyland: the diameter is a mere 15.25 centimeters (6 inches).
The crown is today in the possession of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Unfortunately, I could find very little additional information about the piece. One imagines that it was crafted as a votive crown or as the ornament for a saint’s statue (although it could have been for a child or for some ceremonial purpose). Such matters notwithstanding, the little silver crown does date back to 15th century, and it is possible that it was crafted before Columbus sailed! Look at how cunning and intricate the articulated silver panels are!
Here at Ferrebeekeeper, we have featured some very ancient crowns (like this ancient Greek funerary crown, the legendary grass crown, the polos, or the pharaoh’s crowns from Ancient Egypt). All of these rich and venerable royal headdresses beg the question: what is the oldest crown we know about? As with most questions, the correct answer depends on how you define the terms of the question. Is a crown a chieftain’s hat or an ornamental star-shaped thing made of precious materials or a very specific royal object made a very specific way? We fed these queries into the Ferrebeekeeper crown algorithm, and it spat out this strong contender for the oldest crown: a copper-age headpiece from the Judaean Desert (by the Dead Sea in what is now modern Israel) which was discovered in 1961 as part of the mysterious “Nahal Mishar” Hoard.
Dating to circa 4000 – 3500 BC, the crown is wrought of copper and features two vultures next to two strange shamanistic portals (or that is how the shapes are generally construed, at any rate…maybe they are elderly flamingos next to peg boards. Maybe this isn’t a crown at all! Perhaps it is a trivet or a potholder or something. The piece did not come with an explanation). Based on the other objects in the hoard (pottery vessels, ossuaries, religious statues, and wands/scepters) it is believed that this crown was utilized in the funerary ceremonies for high status individuals. However the Nahal Mishar hoard is still perplexing to archaeologists. Their best guess is that is that the objects are the sacred regalia of a shrine at Ein Gedi, (a habitation site twelve kilometers away), but nobody really knows what most of the objects are or why they were hidden in a cave. Just to add to the ambiguities of today’s post, here are some of the other objects (sans explanation, of course).
Here is a very classic consort crown from British history. This is the Crown of Mary of Modena, the wife of James II of the United Kingdom. Explaining how it came into being involves a short story from English history. The classic English crown of the Tudors and Stuarts was torn apart and sold as pieces at the order of Oliver Cromwell during the Protectorate (1653-1659). Charles II was the first king of the restored monarchy, but since he was unmarried at the time of his coronation, no consort crown was produced for his queen the Portuguese, Catherine of Braganza. After the death of Charles II in 1685, his brother, James became king for 3 years until deposed in the glorious revolution.
James had never imagined he would become the King of England and had initially married a commoner. When she died in 1671, he took an Italian princess, Mary of Modena as his bride. Above is the state consort crown which Mary bought and paid for (from her own pocket). It was crafted by the jeweler, Richard de Beauvoir, and was originally set with diamonds. Because it was such a lovely piece, the state crown was used as a coronation crown by all subsequent consorts until 1831. Although it was initially crafted with a fortune of diamonds (£35,000 worth of jewels in pre-inflation 1685 money!) the jewels have since been replaced with crystals and the diamonds were cannibalized for use in later crowns. You can see the original crown at the Tower of London, that is if anybody likes crowns by the end of the year.
One of Ferrebeekeeper’s most popular posts of all time was a short essay on the kingly crowns of ancient Egypt: the hedjet, the ancient white (vulture) crown of upper Egypt; the deshret, the red (bumblebee) crown of fertile lower Egypt; and the khepresh, the blue battle crown worn by the pharaoh when he mounted his war chariot to smite the kingdom’s enemies in person! Immediately below are some little refresher pictures to show these three crowns (plus, if you want to know more about them, you could always read the original article).
This is already a lot of crowns, especially considering that the three were combined in various ways (and mixed with various other royal regalia) for sundry ceremonial purposes–and yet there were other crowns in ancient Egypt worn by beings even more important than the pharaoh. Today’s post concerns a prime example–the “atef”, the ostrich crown of Osiris. In the mythology of ancient Egypt, Osiris played a central role as the first pharaoh, the king of the underworld and the lord of death, rebirth, agriculture, and mummification. His all-important story (death at the hands of his wicked brother and reincarnation thanks to his loving wife) was the central myth of ancient Egypt, which informed people about the afterlife. As a pharaoh and the eternal ruler of the underworld, Osiris wore a kingly crown, but the underworld is neither upper nor lower Egypt (nor is it a battle as such) and so the atef crown of Osiris is a whole different crown–a knobbed version of the white hedjet of upper Egypt with symbolic rainbow ostrich feathers rising around it. There is a schematic digital representation of the atef at the top of the post, and here is a 3300 year old painting of it:
Osiris portrayed on a wall frieze from the tomb of Nefertari (c. 1295-1255 B.C.)
The two ostrich feathers respectively symbolized truth and justice (the nearly identical feather of Maat is one of the most important religious symbols of Egypt–with a nearly identical meaning). The bulbous central crown was sometimes pictured as a classic white hedjet (as in the image from Nefertari’s tomb above) and sometimes portrayed as a rainbow hedjet surmounted by an astrological-looking cardioid of gold and midnight blue (as in the crown Osiris wears below).
“Wow” you are probably thinking. “There were so many crowns in ancient Egypt! Were there still more?” Of course there were! However the answers start getting murkier as we move to other rulers (and other crowns). Come back to Ferrebeekeeper to find out more (or, you know, Google it, and find out all you can bear to know.
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