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The Hermitage described a diadem with a Hercules knot found in Kuban
The Hermitage displayed a crown with the Hercules knot found on the Taman Peninsula. The ancient decorations were discovered by archaeologists between the Artyukhova farmstead and Mount Tsymbaly. It dates back to the 2nd century BC. E.
"Rings and crowns with the Hercules knot served as protective amulets for our ancestors and were supposed to help their owners at turning points in life," the Hermitage press service reports.
The stone contains iron, calcium, aluminum, and magnesium impurities. In addition, the color of the mineral depends on the proportions of each substance. It can be reddish-brown, black-violet, or dark cherry.
– The name of the mineral is a distortion of the word “Alabanda”. This is the name of a city in Asia Minor, where this stone has long been cut. The museum stated that only pure almandines, the price of which exceeds the price of pyrope, are considered samples of precious stones.
In addition to the stones, the crown is decorated with small sculptural compositions representing the plot of the Iliad about a young man kidnapped by an eagle.
- Zeus, enchanted by the youth's beauty, ordered his sacred bird, the eagle, to take the boy to Olympus. There, Ganymede gained immortality, and the story of his abduction became one of the most popular in ancient art, the Hermitage staff recall.
However, the researchers were not entirely sure whether the Homeric plot was reproduced in the jewelry they found, since the young man depicted by the ancient master did not resemble the Ganymede depicted in the poem.
Later, the famous archaeologist and antiquarian Maria Maksimova in her article “The Myth of the Abduction of Ganymede According to the Legend of the Bosporan Masters” proved that the figurine of Eros was added in place of the image of Ganymede lost by its owners.