444 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



is made of gilt-bronze. The hilt is extremely short and made of 

 thin gilt-bronze so that it would never have been strong enough for 

 use as a fighting sword. 



Iron helmet and body armor. — The tomb contained many objects 

 related to warfare, such as silver tips of wooden bows, arrowheads, 

 swords, knives, and armor. Perhaps the best preserved was the 

 armor. The iron helmet (pi. 4, A, right) is 19 centimeters high, 26 

 centimeters in depth, and 20 centimeters from side to side. It is made 

 of seven iron plates ; the saucer-shaped top plate and the long and nar- 

 row side plates are all held in place with rivets. The neck pieces had 

 rusted so badly that they had broken and their shape could not be 

 be reconstructed. The body armor consisted of 1,574 small iron plates 

 which must have been joined together somehow on a perishable 

 material to form a covering for the chest and back. 



Horse trappings. — The harness, saddles, stirrups, and ornaments 

 worn by horses included over 130 pieces, most of which came from 

 outside the coffin. Three sets came from the excavations conducted in 

 1950, but fragments found in the road construction which damaged 

 the tomb in 1932 suggest that four sets of harness and trappings 

 existed originally. Three saddles made of iron (pi. 4, B, top) and 

 covered with gilt-bronze plates came from inside the chamber. All 

 the wood, leather, and cloth had decayed except for a few pieces of 

 lacquered cloth. Around the saddles some decorations could be seen 

 which had been made of bronze plate and with a gold hem design 

 in cloth in the form of a dragon. There is little doubt that when new 

 these saddles must have been highly ornamented and beautiful objects. 

 The bridles were decorated with heart-shaped plates of bronze. Two 

 pieces of iron stirrups covered with bronze plates were found in 

 association with the harness. Bronze horse bells, such as were tied 

 around the horse's neck and hung in front of his chest, came from 

 both inside the coffin and outside of it in the chamber. The six bells 

 are of two sizes, 22.5 centimeters long and 19.5 centimeters long. 

 These specimens are unusually large, for most horse bells average only 

 15 centimeters long. The larger ones are decorated with a sort of 

 pendant with raised bumps and diagonal and parallel lines (pi. 4, B, 

 bottom, right) while the smaller one is decorated with cross stripes 

 with eight sections demarked by vertical and horizontal lines with 

 small raised bumps all over the surface (pi. 4, B, bottom, left). 



Gilt-hronze hells and ornaments. — Fifty-four gilt-bronze bells and 

 18 gilt-bronze ornaments were taken out of the coffin. Although the 

 small bells usually decorate the the trappings of horses, in Kinreizuka 

 the bells and ornaments were undoubtedly sewn on a large cloth 

 which was draped over the body and objects inside the coffin. The 

 bells range in size from 3.5 to 27.0 centimeters ; some of them contain 



