Crowns

Numerous crowns of various forms were used in Antiquity, such as the White crown, Red Crown, combined Pschent crown and blue crown of Pharaonic Egypt.
The corona radiata, the "radiant crown" known best on the Statue of Liberty, and perhaps worn by the Helios that was the Colossus of Rhodes, was worn by Roman emperors as part of the cult of Sol Invictus prior to the Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity. It was referred to as "the chaplet studded with sunbeams” by Lucian, about 180 AD (in Alexander the false prophet).
Perhaps the oldest Christian crown in Europe is the Iron Crown of Lombardy, of Roman and Longobard age, later again used to crown modern Kings of Napoleonic and Austrian Italy, and to represent united Italy after 1860.
In the Christian tradition of European cultures, where ecclesiastical sanction authenticates monarchic power, when a new monarch assumes the throne in a coronation ceremony, the crown is placed on the new monarch's head by a religious official. Some, though not all early Holy Roman Emperors travelled to Rome at some point in their careers to be crowned by the pope. Napoleon, according to legend, surprised Pius VII when he reached out and crowned himself, although in reality this order of ceremony had been pre-arranged (coronation).