Skull cup
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The use of a defeated enemy's skull as a drinking cup is reported by numerous authors through history among various peoples, especially nomads roaming the steppes of Eurasia.
The Scythians are reported by Herodotus and Strabo to have drunk from the skulls of their enemies. Krum of the Bulgars was said to have made a cup from the jeweled skull of Byzantine emperor Nicephorus I. The Russian Primary Chronicle reports that the skull of Svyatoslav I of Kiev was made into a chalice by the Pecheneg Khan Kurya. He likely intended this as a compliment to Sviatoslav; sources report that Kurya and his wife drank from the skull and prayed for a son as brave as the deceased Rus warlord.
According to Paul the Deacon, the Lombard Alboin defeated the Lombards' hereditary enemies, the Gepids, slew their new king Cunimund, whose skull he fashioned into a drinking-cup, and whose daughter Rosamund he carried off and made his wife.
Lord Byron used a skull he had found as a drinking vessel, and even had a humorous drinking poem inscribed upon it.
