Monomachus Crown
It consists of seven gold plates depicting Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX Monomachus, his wife Zoe, her sister Theodora, two dancers and two allegorical figures.
Two gold medallions enamelled with saints and a small piece with cut glass in a setting were also found; probably they did not form part of the same object.
The objects passed to a member of the local landowning nobility, who sold them in four transactions to the Hungarian National Museum between 1861 and 1870, the last sale posthumously via a dealer named Markovits.
In 1057 Solomon was besieged by Geza I and escaped with the crown and treasure in the direction of Pozsony in order to seek the protection of his brother-in-law Emperor Henry IV.
[7] When Henry IV launched an expedition in September 1074 to restore Solomon to the Hungarian throne, the army of the Emperor abandoned him and rode along the Valley of the Váh in the direction of Nitra and Šintava.
A Greek inscription on the panel reads: Κῶνστάντινος Αυτοκράτο<ρ> Ρομεον ο Μονομαχο<ς>, Constantine, Emperor of the Romans, the Monomachos.
The Emperor is depicted standing, with the labarum in his right hand and in his left the akakia, a fabric pouch which held dust and symbolised the transience of the material world.
Both women wear the complete regalia of an Empress with the female version of the loros costume, including the shield-like thorakion hanging diagonally from a belt.
However, sacred dancing is rare in Christianity, at least before the Renaissance, and the iconography is most unusual in a context to do with public imperial ceremony and coronation, where the Byzantines placed great stress on the emperor as God's agent on earth.
[3] Two even smaller panels each depict a female figure with a halo on a plain golden background, with cypresses on either side of them, symbolising the Garden of Eden.
He was led to this opinion by the plain design, coarse finish and the erroneous and unusual captions, when combined with the circumstances of the discovery and plausible models for a forgery.
[17] Already in 1997, Henry Maguire had argued that the plaques were intended to be sewn to a leather or cloth backing, and suggested a belt, for which there are some sources, or diadem.
[18] In 2009 Timothy Dawson elaborated on these arguments, proposing that the crown was actually a ceremonial armband, a grand version of an armilla given to soldiers as an award.
[19] The De Ceremoniis of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos written a century earlier describes how the emperor was presented with a crown on returning after a victory, which he then wore on his right arm.
Dawson suggested that the most likely recipients in Constantine IX's reign were Stephanos Pergamenos [de], a court eunuch who was a surprising success as a general, for his victory over George Maniakes at the Battle of Ostrobos on 2 February 1043, or the emperor himself on the same occasion.
[23] If it belonged to the emperor, or came to do so when Pergamenos' possessions were later confiscated, then after the celebrations it would have been stored in the Imperial treasure chamber and then later sent to Hungary as a diplomatic gift.
