Image © Trustees of The British Museum
This finely-worked cape of beaten gold is still shrouded in mystery. Is it indeed a cape? Or a pectoral decoration? Even a breastplate for a horse? Symbolically powerful, a cape or cloak is certainly known to have been a mark of authority in this region at the time; the fact that this ceremonial piece was made in pure gold adds an obvious connotation of royalty or religious status.
Yet we still know virtually nothing about the individual who wore this in death; the cape carried many of its secrets to the grave. Despite acquiring the fragments of this work in the 19th Century, it took the British Museum until the 1960s to decipher the skills and techniques necessary to attempt its restoration.