Investigation of 23 iron tools found by Flinders Petrie together with a helmet and a bowl (and a trumpet, now lost) near the temple of Tausert at Thebes. Petrie assigned them to the Assyrian occupation (ca. 667 BC), but the archaeological study of the second author proves that the date is uncertain, although not impossible. The pointed helmet may have come from Urartu. The first author presents a technical analysis of the material of the tools.

The helmet and the bowl could have been brought to Egypt at any time after the seventh century BC. If these objects originated in Urartu they could have been looted by a Scythian, brought to Syria and captured by an Egyptian during Apries’ campaign in Philistia and Palestine in 586 BC. Alternatively, in the later sixth century they could have arrived with a mercenary of Amasis a soldier in the army of Cambyses, or have been brought by a Greek soldier from Asia Minor who came to Egypt when the Athenians sailed up the Nile to Memphis is 460 BC. The remarkable condition of the helmet could, however, be due to the possibility that it had not been worn more than a few times in battle; we know that the Olympia helmet was dedicated to Zeus, and Herodotus, when in Egypt, noted the use of helmets in temple rituals. The suggestion that a carpenter or blacksmith employed by the Egyptian army had collected the helmet bowl and trumpet as loot after the Persian invasions of 343 or 344 BC is a possibility, albeit remote.

Das hieroglyphische Ägyptisch ahmt das altpersische armina nach, wohingegen das Babylonische den Namen Urartu beibehielt, mit dem die Assyrer das mächtige Reich von Biaïni bezeichneten, das sie bedrohte und ihnen Widerstand leistete von ca. 832 bis 714.