Brazen head

A brazen head, brass, or bronze head was a legendary automaton in the early modern period whose ownership was ascribed to late medieval scholars who had developed a reputation as wizards, such as Roger Bacon. Made of brass or bronze, the male head was variously mechanical or magical. Like Odin's head of Mimir in Norse paganism, it was reputed to be able to correctly answer any question put to it, although it was sometimes restricted to "yes" or "no" answers. Thomas Browne considered them to be misunderstanding of the scholars' alchemical work, while Borlik argues that they came to serve as "a metonymy for the hubris of Renaissance intellectuals and artists".

Legend

Medieval Arabic poetry has references to brazen horses that could fly swiftly enough to traverse the world in less than a day, disappearing and reappearing upon command, and describes the Trojan horse as having been one of their ilk. It is likely that these accounts had their origin in allegorical treatments of alchemy and in early machines whose owners pretended to have given them life or speech. They may also have found inspiration in the Greek legends concerning Talos, the brass guardian of Minoan Crete.