Gold Crown, attributed to Gyo-dong

This crown consists of a headband and three upright ornaments. The headband itself is unadorned, except for two rows of round pendants. The back of the band is not continuous but connected with an additional gold plate. Each upright ornament has a central stem with branches extending to either side. The tips of the uprights are shaped like flower buds, with convex settings from which leaf-shaped pendants are suspended by gold wire. Additional convex settings appear at the points where the side branches extend from the central stem, also hung with similar leaf-shaped pendants. Other pendants are round in form, like those on the headband. Instead of being individually attached, the pendants are threaded in succession on long strands of gold wire, almost like stitching—a feature reminiscent of the crown ornaments excavated from the Southern Mound of Hwangnamdaechong Tomb.
The crown was originally looted from a tomb at 64 Gyodong, Gyeongju, before being seized and preserved in the collection of the Gyeongju National Museum. Because it was looted, differs in form from typical excavated Silla crowns, and has a headband with a back plate added later, its authenticity was once questioned. However, the discovery of similar gilt-bronze crowns in Tombs No. 10 and 11 at the Bokcheon-dong burial ground in Busan has led scholars to view it as an early type within the standard Silla crown tradition. Its small size and simple ornamentation suggest that it may have been worn by a child. The flower-bud uprights and leaf-shaped pendants vividly express the symbolic meaning inherent in Silla crowns.