Warrior headgear

I was quite right to think that I wouldn't be able to keep writing about Christmas for a week. Enough of all that, let's move on to something else.

Here is a reconstruction of the rather splendid kind of helmet with visor, called a rhizopoda, worn by the Mongol horsemen, who, operating from the Mongol base in Persia and led by Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulegu Khan, destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad in 1250.

Halegu Khan himself used to top his helmet off with an impaled baby, which was said to give him a fearsome aspect and discourage the opposing forces.

[From an 1862 engraving by Dr Ernst Haeckel in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin]