The small bronze statuette depicted here was cast by Italian sculptor Franco D’Aspro. D'Aspro held a fascination with (and made copies of) the bronzes of the Mediterranean sea raiders known as the Shardana, who were active around 1200 B.C.

Many bronzes from around that time depict these helmeted and shield bearing warriors. One might reasonably speculate the double shields to be connected to the much more ancient symbol of the sun disk. The Shardana wreaked havoc across the civilisations of the Mediterranean in the early Bronze Age leaving a thick layer of ash and arrow heads in archeological digs across the region and may well have been responsible for the sacking of historical Troy. The symbol seems entirely pertinent to our contemporary world.