The iconic kausia hat of ancient Macedon

 While researching artwork of ancient Macedon this morning, I stumbled across an interesting image of a 3rd Century BCE Macedonian wearing a kausia, headgear said by some scholars to be adapted from a style worn in the Hindu Kush during Alexander the Great's campaign there.  Other scholars think the kausia was identified with Macedonia for too long to have been imported from Asia.  

Depictions of the kausia can be found on a variety of coins and statues found from the Mediterranean to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom and the Indo-Greeks in northwestern India. The Persians referred to both the rest of the Greeks and Macedonians as "Yauna" (Ionians), but made a distinction between "Yauna by the sea" and those "with hats that look like shields" (yauna takabara), probably referring to the Macedonian kausia hat.  You can see Alexander himself wearing a kausia and fighting an Asiatic lion with his friend Craterus in a late 4th century BCE mosaic from Pella as well.

The hat was later adopted by the poorer classes in Rome as protection against the sun. I remember when I read Colleen McCullough's "The Grass Crown" that Lucius Cornelius Sulla easily sunburned so often wore a hat as protection. Perhaps it was a kausia! A modern descendant of the hat may be the Pakol - the familiar and remarkably similar men's hat from Afghanistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Alexander (left), wearing a kausia and fighting an Asiatic lion with his friend Craterus (detail); late 4th century BCE mosaic, Pella Museum courtesy of Flickr user miriam.mollerus (CC BY 2.0) and Wikimedia Commons.

Boy wearing a cloak, boots and a kausia (Macedonian cap). Terracotta, made in Athens, ca. 300 BCE at the British Museum courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Macedonian terracotta statue 3rd century B.C.E. Short blue chiton, coat with fibula, as headgear a kausia, which was taken over from the Hindu Kush during the Alexander campaign now in the collections of the Glyptothek Munich courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor MatthiasKabel .


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