A 2000-Year-Old Sarcophagus Found in Egypt and Its Contents Are Still a Mystery
Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered what is believed to be the world’s largest granite sarcophagus in Alexandria, measuring nearly nine feet long.
The enormous stone casket was buried alongside a massive alabaster head—most likely belonging to the tomb’s owner—more than 16 feet beneath the surface.
The massive stone casket was buried more than 16 feet beneath the surface alongside a huge alabaster head, likely belonging to the man who owned the tomb
The ancient coffin has reportedly remained untouched since its burial thousands of years ago during the Ptolemaic period, according to experts.
Researchers working under the Supreme Council of Antiquities discovered the ancient tomb during an excavation in the Sidi Gaber district of Alexandria.
The team was inspecting a resident’s land ahead of digs planned for the foundation of his building at Al-Karmili Street when they stumbled upon the remarkable Ptolemaic burial, 5 meters deep.
The Ptolemaic period lasted roughly 300 years, from 332 to 30 BCE, making this particular site more than 2,000 years old.
According to the archaeologists who led the dig, the black granite sarcophagus stands at 185 centimeters tall (6 feet), 265cm long (8.6 ft), and 165 cm wide (5.4 ft).
A layer of mortar identified between the lid and body of the stone coffin indicates it has not been opened since it was sealed off, says Dr. Ayman Ashmawy, Head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector.
However, just who is buried inside—and the identity of the man in the alabaster carving—remains a mystery. Back in May, the Antiquities Ministry announced the discovery of yet another Ptolemaic find.
The massive stone casket was buried more than 16 feet beneath the surface alongside a huge alabaster head – likely belonging to the man who owned the tomb. Experts say the ancient coffin has remained untouched since its burial thousands of years ago
Alongside the 52-foot-long red brick structure, archaeologists also found pottery vessels, terracotta statues, bronze tools, a chunk of engraved stone, and a statue of a ram.
The most remarkable artifact, however, is among the smallest.
A gold coin depicting the face of King Ptolemy III, a 3rd-century BCE ruler said to be an ancestor of Cleopatra, was also discovered at the site.
According to the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, the coin was made during the reign of King Ptolemy IV, in memory of his father.
It measures 2.6 centimeters across and weighs roughly 28 grams. On the side opposite the portrait, letters translating to ‘Land of Prosperity’ were engraved, along with the name of the king.
The huge red brick building was likely part of a Greco-Roman era bath, says Dr. Ayman Ashmawy, Head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities.
It is roughly 16 meters long and 3.5 meters wide.
As work continues at the archaeological site, the researchers hope to uncover more details about the building and its function many centuries ago.
Excavations over the last few years have unearthed countless remarkable artifacts from ancient Egypt, which the country hopes will spur tourism to the area.
Antarctica pyramids claim the ‘Oldest pyramid on Earth’ is hidden on icy continent
On the History Channel, conspiracy theorists argued that the world’s oldest pyramids are hidden beneath the deep, cold snow of Antarctica. The History Channel’s TV series Ancient Aliens, which explores various extraterrestrial theories, introduced this incredibly bizarre theory.
Ancient Aliens season 11 episode 1 looked into the possibility that such pyramids were left behind by ancient alien visitors or human civilizations.
Conspiracy theory author David Childress told Ancient Aliens there is a distinct possibility the Shackleton Pyramid is the oldest of its kind on Earth.
Antarctica pyramids
He said, “If this gigantic pyramid in Antarctica is an artificial structure, it would probably be the oldest pyramid on the planet, and in fact, it might be the master pyramid that all the other pyramids on planet Earth were designed to look like.”
Another conspiracy theorist agreed, saying: “All the way around the world, we find evidence of pyramid structures.
“We should start looking at the possibility that there was habitation in Antarctica.
“Was it a lost civilization? Could it be ancient astronauts?
“And just maybe, the earliest monuments of our own civilization came from Antarctica.”
However, the theory was challenged by Dr. Michael Salla, author of Exopolitics: Political Implications of the Extraterrestrial Presence.
The alien expert argued the Antarctic pyramid is just one node in a global network of power-generating pyramids strategically placed around Earth.
A popular pyramid conspiracy claims the triangular structures act as power generators of sorts, built for the purpose of transiting vast amounts of energy wirelessly.
Dr. Salla said: “There has been extensive research done on pyramids throughout the world, in terms of their structure and what they really are.
“One of the theories is that pyramids are power generators, and so if you have these pyramids strategically placed around the world generating a charge, it’s possible to create a general standing wave around the world that is a wireless transmission of energy.”
However, not everyone who saw the Ancient Aliens episode was convinced by the wild theories presented.
YouTube user Derrick commented: “Snow-covered pyramid shape in Antarctica, I believe geologists would call that a mountain.” Lazaros Tsakpounidis said, “I feel like I’m losing my brain cells after watching this.”
And Mohammad Ziaul Mustafa Khan said: “No evidence; only a bunch of authors referred to them as extraterrestrial theorists claimed everything on Earth is conspired by some aliens, now the latest victim is Antarctica.
“Maybe geologists must take lessons from so-called experts.” And according to geologists, there is nothing unusual about the angular shape of the mountain.
Dr Mitch Darcy, a geologist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, argued mountains like this are known as nunataks. Nunataks are exposed and rocky mountain peaks and rides that are naturally occurring and pyramid-like in shape.
Speaking about a similar “Antarctica pyramid” near the Ellsworth Mountains, the geologist told IFLScience: “The peaks are clearly composed of rock, and it’s a coincidence that this particular peak has that shape.
“It’s not a complicated shape, so it’s not a special coincidence either. “By definition, it is a nunatak, which is simply a peak of rock sticking out above a glacier or an ice sheet. “This one has the shape of a pyramid, but that doesn’t make it a human construction.”
A wave of migrating farmers from the ancient Middle East may be the reason why modern Europeans don’t carry as much Neanderthal DNA as today’s East Asians do, a new study finds.
Europeans have less Neanderthal (pictured right) ancestry than East Asians do today because farming Homo sapiens migrated from the Middle East into Europe about 10,000 years ago.
All humans with ancestry from outside of Africa have a little bit of Neanderthal in them — about 2% of the genome, on average. But people with East Asian ancestry have between 8% and 24% more Neanderthal genes than people of European ancestry. That’s a bit of a paradox, because fossil evidence suggests Neanderthals lived in Europe. Why, then, should East Asians carry more of those genes today?
Now, a new study posits a solution to this conundrum: While a wave of human migration out of Africa before at least 40,000 years ago brought Homo sapiens — who were hunter-gatherers — into contact with their Homo neanderthalensis cousins and led to interbreeding, a later wave of H. sapiens migrating about 10,000 years ago diluted Neanderthal genes in Europe only. This was the movement of farmers with minimal Neanderthal ancestry from what is today the Middle East and southwestern Asia into Europe.
These early farmers mixed with local hunter-gatherers, bringing a more H. sapiens-flavored genome to the region. The Homo sapiens who settled East Asia by around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago did not undergo this dilution from newcomers.
“What we propose is a simple explanation,” study lead author Claudio Quilodrán, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of Oxford, told Live Science. “It’s just migration.”
Ever since the Neanderthal genome was first sequenced 13 years ago, there have been questions about the mixture of modern human and Neanderthal genes, said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who was not involved in the study.
Research suggests that having Neanderthal genes didn’t lead to any major survival advantages or disadvantages for humans, so natural selection is probably not the reason why some populations carry more of these genes than others, Hawks told Live Science.
People have suggested that maybe East Asians met and mixed with additional Neanderthal populations in parts unknown, such as India or Iran, but this is just speculation.
“This scenario says that’s not necessary,” Hawks said. “We can explain this difference based on just one expansion.”
To trace the history of human-Neanderthal relations, Quilodrán and his colleagues looked at 4,464 previously sequenced ancient to modern Homo sapiens genomes, dating from 40,000 years ago to today, examining the proportion of Neanderthal DNA in relation to latitude, longitude, time and region.
They found that early on, the proportion of Neanderthal DNA in anatomically modern humans was higher in Europe than in Asia, matching with what would be expected if early Homo sapiens were radiating out of Africa and meeting their cousins in the Near East and Europe. The reduction in Neanderthal genes in European humans came later.
Particularly stark was the difference between European hunter-gatherers and the Neolithic farmers who came to settle Europe about 10,000 years ago.
The hunter-gatherers had a higher proportion of Neanderthal genes than the Neolithic farmers, suggesting that this wave of newcomers diluted Neanderthal ancestry in Europe. East Asia didn’t see a similar influx — their farmers were homegrown, Hawks said — so East Asian genetics weren’t diluted in the same way. The researchers published their findings Wednesday (Oct. 18) in the journal Science Advances.
“What’s so fascinating about this article is that it takes into account a tremendous amount of ancient DNA evidence that’s now out there,” said Richard Potts, a paleoanthropologist and director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the research.
Encounters between Neanderthals and modern humans occurred even earlier than 40,000 years ago, Potts told Live Science. Last week (Oct. 13), a group of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania reported in the journal Current Biology that well before 75,000 years ago, a group of modern humans met Neanderthals in Europe, interbred with them, and then died out, leaving their mark in 6% of the Neanderthal genome.
“It’s a very fluid system,” Potts said. “This particular paper didn’t need to take anything like that into account, but it will be really interesting once that added complexity is considered.”
Archaeologists reveal the face of Peru’s ‘Ice Maiden’ mummy
In a remarkable unveiling, the potential true appearance of “Juanita,” Peru’s iconic mummy, a teenage Inca girl sacrificed over half a millennium ago on the lofty Andean peaks, has been revealed.
The bust was unveiled at a ceremony at the Andean Sanctuaries Museum of the Catholic University of Santa Maria in Arequipa
A lifelike sculpture revealing the potential living face of Peru’s most famous mummy, a teenage Inca girl sacrificed in a ritual over 500 years ago on the Andean peaks, has been unveiled.
The reconstructed mummy, known as “Juanita” or “The Ice Maiden”, is the result of collaborative efforts between a team of Polish and Peruvian scientists, in conjunction with Oscar Nilsson, a Swedish sculptor renowned for his expertise in facial reconstructions.
Johan Reinhard, the US anthropologist who found the mummy said he could not have imagined having a precise reconstruction of the mummy.
It took over 400 hours for Nilsson to reconstruct “Juanita,” from the research given by the Polish team.
Who was “The Ice Maiden”?
The mummy known as “Juanita” and the “Inca Ice Maiden”
Reinhard and his Peruvian climbing partner, Miguel Zárate, discovered the mummy in 1995 at an altitude of more than 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) on the snow-capped Ampato volcano.
Juanita, the mummy, was almost entirely preserved in a frozen state, retaining her internal organs, hair, blood, skin, and even the contents of her stomach.
In addition to the mummy, they stumbled upon a multitude of items that had been left as offerings to the Inca gods.
These included llama bones, small figurines, and fragments of pottery, scattered across the mountain slope from which the body had tumbled down.
Anthropological research places the sacrificial date of Juanita between A.D. 1440 and 1450 when she was aged between 13 and 15.
The likely cause of her death was identified as a severe blow to the right occipital lobe, as determined by researchers at Johns Hopkins University who conducted a CT scan.
She is considered one of the best-preserved mummies in the Andes and her remains can currently be viewed at the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries in Arequipa, Peru
Archaeologists working in Racibórz have discovered stone products from at least 130,000 years ago. These are the oldest traces of human presence in the foreground of the Moravian Gate and proof that Neanderthals visited this region several times, leaving stone products at the bottom of the river valley.
Archaeological work in the western part of Racibórz, called Studzienna, has been carried out for two years by an international team of archaeologists, geologists, and physicists from the University of Wrocław, the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nürnberg, the University of Silesia in Katowice, and the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, in cooperation with the Museum in Racibórz.
‘Our goal was to expose a part of the slope of the old sand pit to collect information about the geological structure and take the necessary samples to determine the age of the sediments using radiometric methods. Quite unexpectedly, we came across stone artefacts, including tools,’ says Dr. Andrzej Wiśniewski from the University of Wrocław and head of the Department of Stone Age Archaeology.
The finds point to the important role of the Racibórz Valley and the Moravian Gate area in the maintenance and development of the human population at that time.
The location of the archaeological site.
The stone products discovered at a depth of 10 m below the ground surface were found in sediments deposited in the cold period approximately 130,000 years ago.
It was a time of reconstruction of the natural environment after a long-term, probably bicyclic cooling, during which the Scandinavian ice sheet advanced to the area of the Ostrava Valley. A huge barrier lake was formed in front of the ice sheet. This barrier disappeared only about 140-130,000 years ago, opening the possibility of free movement of people and animals from the south to the northern lowland areas.
Based on the number of finds discovered in systematically explored archaeological excavations, scientists assume that the area of the former sand pit may still hide several dozen thousand products located in at least three layers.
Exploration of river sediments.
‘This is a basis for stating that after a long break caused by extremely unfavourable climatic conditions that prevailed in the period of approximately 160-140 thousand years ago, this area became attractive for people coming from the south,’ the archaeologist says.
The research, financially supported by the National Science Centre as part of the Opus competition, provided examples of semi-raw materials and stone tools, which proves that people in this place engaged in various activities, from preparing weapons to hunting and butchering.
‘It should be noted that, unlike the areas south of Racibórz and the Moravian Gate, where there are no such good siliceous raw materials, in the Odra Valley area there are and were deposits of erratic rocks with the desired properties, located in the area of valley depressions.
However, we believe that the migrations whose traces we discover in Racibórz were also organized for other reasons, namely the need to obtain appropriate food during the annual cycle of migrations of hunters and gatherers,’ says Dr. Wiśniewski.
The unexpected discoveries of stone products also opened a discussion about the patterns used by stone tool makers at that time.
According to the archaeologist, the recent discoveries show that tools with double-sided surfaces, asymmetric in outline, somewhat reminiscent of today’s wide-bladed knives, played a very important role.
The edges of these tools are shaped with a single strike running parallel to the edge. Similar tools are known from only a few archaeological sites from that period, located north of the Carpathians and the Alps. It cannot be ruled out that they were associated with specific activities, e.g. butchering hunted animals.
The dating of a human presence in the area of the find was made in the laboratory of the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice, more precisely in the Gliwice Absolute Dating Methods Centre, thanks to the use of an innovative technique based on optoluminescence.
Dr. Wiśniewski says that the results are largely due to new methods used during excavations, as well processing the results in the privacy of offices and laboratories. During the search, the sediments are carefully sifted to extract all stone artefacts and archaeological excavations and geological layers are documented with a 3D laser scanner and a series of photos to obtain photogrammetric models. ‘Digital copies’ of historical objects are also made with 3D scanning.
According to archaeologists, the work in Racibórz confirms the need to return to already known places, in this case the river site.
‘Interestingly, this specific path of archaeological searches in river valleys for the oldest manifestations of human presence in the Pleistocene was set at the beginning of research on the Palaeolithic, which took place in France nearly 200 years ago. So it was not the caves, but the open valley sites that opened the discussion on the prehistoric origins of man,’ says Dr. Wiśniewski. (PAP)
An inscription is seen on the west wall lararium, a shrine to the guardian spirits of the Roman household.
Archaeologists have found new inscriptions in a house in Pompeii inviting voters to elect a man named Aulus Rustius Verus to office. The discovery was made in the Regio IX area, where elaborate food-themed frescos were discovered in another home earlier this year.
The findings were published on September 28 in Pompeii Scavi, the online scientific journal of the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
“I beseech you to make Aulus Rustius a true aedile, worthy of the state,” reads part of the inscription as translated from Latin. The Latin text was deciphered despite missing letters and abbreviations.
Verus was running for the office of aedile, an elected office in the Roman Empire who had powers to maintain public buildings and infrastructure, regulate public festivals and enforce public order.
An inscription is seen on the south wall lararium, a shrine to the guardian spirits of the Roman household. Photo courtesy of Pompeii Archaeological Park
Archaeologists and historians have already established that Verus would go on to hold the higher office of duumvir—a position he held jointly with a man named Giulio Polibio. Verus’s precise outcome is not known but it’s possible he died when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.
Normally, such political ads were written on the outside of buildings, but the inscriptions were found inside a room containing the lararium, or household shrine.
The home believed to have belonged to either a friend or a Verus freedman, a class of former slaves who remained in a socially obligated patronage with their former master.
The researchers suggest that the presence of the inscriptions in the home, which housed a bakery and was going under renovation at the time of the volcanic eruption, shows an example of the campaign practice of organizing events and dinners in the homes of the candidates and their friends.
The presence of the bakery further shows how Verus understood that “the voter lives on bread” and suggested that politicians were engaging in questionably legitimate election practices.
Archaeologists also discovered the final sacrifice made on an altar in the home where the inscription was found. Photo courtesy of Pompeii Archaeological Park
“The electoral passion was lived with intensity in Pompeii: it filled the streets, it warmed soul,” archaeologists wrote in a post on the Pompeii Archaeological Park’s website.
“The electoral programs of Pompeii are a precious source for reconstructing the history of the city, for tracking down the characters who shaped its political events and sketching a first prosopography of the ancient Pompeiians, for giving a name to their supporters, reconstructing their social relations and understanding the reasons for their support for one or the other candidate.”
Archaeologists said that almost all the texts in support of the candidates, essentially electoral posters, are visible along the streets of Pompeii.
Archaeologists in Turkey have unearthed a nearly 11,000-year-old statue that may depict a giant man clutching his penis, along with a life-size wild boar statue.
This human-like sculpture was found at Karahan Tepe. The person represented may actually be depicted as being dead. The newly found sculptures date back about 11,000 years.
The two statues come from the neighboring sites of Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe, which are among the oldest temple sites in the world.
The wild boar statue, which is carved from limestone, was found at Gobekli Tepe and dates to between 8700 B.C. and 8200 B.C.
It measures 4.4 feet (1.4 meters) long and 2.3 feet (0.7 m) high, the German Archaeological Institute said in a statement. Archaeologists detected red, black and white pigments on its surface, indicating that the sculpture was once painted.
Archaeologists unearthed the large sculpture of the manat the site of Karahan Tepe, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) from Gobekli Tepe. It depicts a 7.5-foot-tall (2.3 m) man, according to a translated statement from Turkey’s ministry of culture and tourism.
The person’s ribs, spines and shoulders are particularly pronounced, and the person may actually be depicted as being dead, the statement said.
These discoveries, “represent the latest spectacular finds from these sites which are transforming our understanding of pre-agricultural communities,” Benjamin Arbuckle, an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who was not involved with the excavations, told Live Science in an email.
Researchers also found a small sculpture of a vulture nearby at Karahan Tepe. While archaeologists didn’t say how old the newfound statues at, Karahan Tepe are, the site is around 11,000 years old and contains other sculptures and buildings.
Archaeologists used to think that the hunter-gatherer communities in southwest Asia around 11,000 years ago “were relatively simple, small in scale, and generally egalitarian,” Arbuckle said. But the discoveries at Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe over the last 30 years have disproved this idea, Arbuckle said.
Gobekli Tepe is a sprawling, megalithic site filled with T-shaped pillars and sophisticated sculptures depicting animals, abstract symbols and human hands.
The site was likely used in funerary rituals, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
The presence of such a massive, sophisticated complex suggests that hunter gatherer communities in the region were not as simple as once thought but rather were organized in a way that allowed them to build great works of architecture.
What was the sculptures’ purpose?
The purpose of the recently found sculptures is unclear. “The Karahan Tepe finds strike me as the most interesting,” Ted Banning, an anthropology professor at the University of Toronto who is not involved with the research, told Live Science in an email.
“Any interpretation of the statue is conjectural at this point,” Banning said but suggested it was likely that the person shown is dead. It may represent “an important ancestor associated with the building in which it was found.”
The figure’s pose may give a further clue about its purpose. “The fact that the figure is clutching its penis is also consistent with this interpretation by potentially symbolizing that this person was the progenitor of a social group, such as a lineage or clan, associated with the building,” Banning said.
Banning thinks that structures at Karahan Tepe and Gobekli Tepe may have been used as houses rather than temples, “in which case it makes a lot of sense that each would have its own lineage ancestor,” Banning said.
It’s not surprising that the wild boar sculpture has pigments, he added. “I think it’s plausible that much or even most of the sculpture at these sites was originally painted”, Banning said, noting that paint doesn’t preserve well in the archaeological record.
Archaeologists involved with the excavations did not return requests for comment at time of publication.
Roman Coin Hoards Found In The Conwy Valley Declared Treasure
The two Roman coin hoards were discovered by metal-detectorists David Moss and Tom Taylor in Caerhun Community, Conwy, during the winter of 2018-2019.
Larger Roman coin hoard found in ceramic vessel. Credit: Museum Wales
The larger hoard (Treasure Case 19.01) was found in a ceramic vessel. It contained 2,733 coins, a mix of silver denarii minted between 32 BC and AD 235, as well as silver and copper-alloy radiates (also known as antoniniani) struck between AD 215 and 270. The copper-alloy coins appear to have been put loosely in the pot, but most of the silver coins were held in two leather bags, which were placed at the very top of the hoard.
The smaller hoard (Treasure Case 19.03) comprises 37 silver denarii, ranging in date from 32 BC to AD 221, which were found scattered across a small area in the immediate vicinity of the larger hoard.
When the finders Tom and Dave discovered the larger hoard, they remembered what they had seen on Time Team and carefully excavated the pot, before wrapping it in bandages and reporting both hoards to Dr Susie White, Finds Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales (PAS Cymru) based at Wrexham County Borough Museum & Archives.
David Moss, one of the finders of the coin hoards, said: “We had only just started metal-detecting when we made these totally unexpected finds. On the day of discovery, just before Christmas 2018, it was raining heavily, so I took a look at Tom and made my way across the field towards him to tell him to call it a day on the detecting, when all of a sudden, I accidentally clipped a deep object making a signal. It came as a huge surprise when I dug down and eventually revealed the top of the vessel that held the coins.”
“People do not realise the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes at the national museum, from excavating the coins, to looking after them and identifying them so they can be reported on as treasure……. it’s a huge process to be able to see the work unfold……to be involved at first hand as finders is an incredible experience.”
The hoards were then taken to Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales for micro-excavation and identification.
“In the conservation lab, investigation at the top of the pot quickly revealed that some of the coins had been in bags made from extremely thin leather, traces of which remained. It is very rare for organic materials such as this to survive in the soil. The surviving fragments, which included two fragments of a stitched seam, were preserved and will provide information about the type of leather used and how the bags were made,” Louise Mumford (Senior Conservator of Archaeology at Amgueddfa Cymru) said in a press statement.
TWI Technology Centre Wales in Port Talbot kindly offered to CT-scan the larger hoard in the ceramic vessel, to see whether more information could be gleaned before extraction of the coins began.
Consultant engineer at TWI, Ian Nicholson, said: “Our main focus is to provide our services for industry. However, we also like to support non-industry projects and offer a wider benefit. Radiography was the only inspection technique that had the potential to volumetrically reveal the inside of the coin hoard without damaging it.
Our state-of-the-art Computer Tomography inspection equipment uses high X-ray energy to penetrate thick metals, which is typically four times greater than the X-ray energies that dentists and hospitals use. We found the inspection challenge interesting and valuable when Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales approached us – it was a nice change from inspecting aeroplane parts.
Using our equipment, we were able to determine that there were coins at various locations in the bag. The coins were so densely packed in the centre of the pot that even our high radiation energies could not penetrate through the entire pot. Nevertheless, we could reveal some of the layout of the coins and confirm it wasn’t only the top of the pot where coins had been cached.”
The scan of the larger hoard found no evidence of further bags in the pot below the two visible at the top, and this proved to be correct as the pot was emptied. Along with the CT scans, a series of photographs and 3D models were created during the micro-excavation of the hoard. These will be used in further research, publications and displays.
Taking the coins out in layers revealed that the older coins were generally closer to the bottom while the last coins of the hoard were found in the upper layers. The hoard was probably buried in AD 270 at a time when the Roman Empire was split between the Central Empire and the Gallic Empire, which included Britain. The final coins in this hoard were issued during the reigns of Quintillus (AD 270) and Victorinus (AD 269-271).
Alastair Willis (Senior Curator: Numismatics and the Welsh Economy at Amgueddfa Cymru) said: “The coins in this hoard seem to have been collected over a long period of time. Most appear to have been put in the pot during the reigns of Postumus (AD 260-269) and Victorinus (AD 269-271), but the two bags of silver coins seem to have been collected much earlier during the early decades of the third century AD.”
The smaller hoard was probably buried in the AD 220s. The two hoards were found close to the remains of a Roman building which was excavated in 2013 and identified as a possible temple dating to the third century AD. The discovery of these hoards supports this suggestion.
It is very likely that the hoards were deposited here because of the religious significance of the site, perhaps as votive offerings, or for safe keeping under the protection of the temple’s deity. The coins may have belonged to soldiers at the nearby Roman fort of Canovium (located near Caerhun).
Llandudno Museum holds collections from Canovium fort and are keen to acquire these two important hoards with the support of Conwy Culture Centre and Amgueddfa Cymru.
Silver coins are found in the smaller hoard. Credit: Museum Wales
Dawn Lancaster, Director of Amgueddfa Llandudno Museum, said: “This is very exciting news for Amgueddfa Llandudno Museum. The opportunity to purchase these important coin hoards which are associated with Kanovium Roman Fort will allow future generations to see and experience a significant collection of ancient silver coins dating from 32BC and representing 50 rulers.”
“Llandudno Museum holds all previous finds from the excavation of Kanovium Roman Fort sited at Caerhun in the Conwy valley, so it is fitting the hoard is put into context along with the rest of the artefacts. Working with Amgueddfa Cymru we can share the story of their discovery and the importance to Welsh cultural heritage of our area these amazing finds represent.”
Amgueddfa Cymru belongs to everyone and is here for everyone to use. We are a charity and a family of seven national museums and a collections centre, located across the country. Our aim is to inspire everyone through Wales’ story, at our museums, in communities and digitally.
The two Roman coin hoards were declared treasure on Monday 9th October, by the Assistant Coroner for North Wales (East & Central), Kate Robertson.
