Berthouville Treasure

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Silver jug with votive inscription to Mercury donated by Q. Domitius Tutus, Italy, mid-first century CE

The Berthouville treasure is a hoard of Roman silver uncovered by ploughing in March 1830^[1] at the hamlet of Villeret^[2] in the commune of Berthouville in the Eure département of Normandy, northern France. Purchased at the time of discovery for a modest 15,000 francs, the treasure is conserved in the Cabinet des Médailles at the Bibliothèque National, Paris.^[3]

[edit] History

phiale from the Berthouville Treasure, part of Q. Domitius Tutus' gift to the shrine

Achilles mourning Patroclus on a silver jug, also from Domitius Tutus' votive gift

The Berthouville hoard was discovered when the ploughblade struck a Roman tile, which, once dislodged, uncovered, a mere 20 cm beneath the modern surface, the hastily buried temple treasure^[4] belonging to a shrine dedicated to Mercury Canetonensis, who Julius Caesar identified as one of the main deities of Gaul.^[5]

The treasure consists of silver and other metalwork, of varying type, quality and dates in the first to late second centuries of the Common Era. The trésor de Berthouville is one of only three pagan depositories securely associated with pagan cult as yet recovered in Gaul and Britannia.^[6] The hoard was secreted in the late second or early third century but contained heirloom pieces like the repoussé silver jug (illustration) that was made in Italy in the first century CE.

The find totalled ninety-three items, some of which however were dissociated handles and silver appliqués, with a total weight of 25 kg. Most of the items are bowls, cups and jugs,^[7] but there is a phiale for libations^[8] and there are two silver statuettes of Mercury (the larger 60 cm tall) and a silver bust of a goddess, probably his mother Maia, suggests Leader-Newby,^[9] who also remarks in more general terms that "the cults may well have been Romanized versions of Celtic deities", in which case a nymph associated with Gallic Mercurius would likely have a local Gallic name. Four of the bowls have incised emblemmatic designs associated with Mercury, and the inscription VSLM, "votum solvit libens merito".^[10] Nine of the vessels form a group of luxury domestic silver of first century date^[11] with iconographic connections to Dionysus rather than to Mercury, marked as votive gifts of one Q. Domitius Tutus; they include a matching pair of silver drinking cups (scyphi) with Dionysiac imagery of centaurs,^[12] and a pair of silver wine-jugs (one illustrated).^[13]

Excavations near the find-spot in 1861-62 and 1986^[14] revealed a Gallo-Roman theatre and a shrine that may have been the shrine to which the silver objects had been dedicated.

The Mildenhall Treasure, a Roman family's personal silver hoard, also was uncovered by a farmer's plough in Mildenhall in the English county of Suffolk.

[edit] Notes

^ The 21 March, by Prosper Taurin, according to Auguste Le Prévost, who had been born nearby at Bernay (Prévost, Mémoire sur la collection de vases antiques trouvée en 1830 à Berthouville (arr. de Bernay), Caen, 1832:6); Archives relative to the acquisition of the Berthouville Treasure, B.N. 8 AMC 35 (1830).
^ Date and location as noted in Mémoires de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France 6th series, vol. 8 (1897:228-32), reporting M. Join-Lambert's excavations of two temples, a theatre and wells near the site in 1896.
^ Ernest Babelon (director of the département des monnaies, médailles et antiques, BN), Le trésor d'argenterie de Bertouville près de Bernay (Eure) conservé au Département de médailles et antiques de la Bibliothèque national, Paris 1916; Ruth E. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate (Ashgate) 2004; D.E. Strong, Greek and Roman Gold and Silver Plate (London 1968)
^ On Roman temple treasures in general, see A. Henwood Griffiths, Temple Treasures: A Study Based on the Works of Cicero and the Fasti of Ovid (Philadelphia 1943).
^ Caesar, Commentaries on the Gallic War vi. §17.
^ Leader-Newby 2004:72. The other two are the Notre-Dame d'Allençon Treasure and the Thetford Treasure.
^ Karl Lehmann-Hartleben, "Two Roman Silver Jugs" American Journal of Archaeology 42.1 (January-March 1938:82-105).
^ Charles Waldstein, "A Hermes in Ephesian Silver Work on a Patera from Bernay in France", The Journal of Hellenic Studies 3 (1882:96-106).
^ Ruth E. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate Ashgate; 2004; p. 73
^ Ruth E. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate Ashgate. 2004.
^ Similar to silver found at Boscoreale and in the House of the Menander at Pompeii, overwhelmed by the eruption of 79 CE, and similarly composed of drinking vessels (Leader-Newby).
^ Jon van de Grift, "Tears and Revel: The Allegory of the Berthouville Centaur Scyphi" American Journal of Archaeology 88.3 (July 1984:377-388).
^ K. Lehmann, "Two Roman silver jugs", American Journal of Archaeology 42 (1938:82-105).
^ Noted in Leader-Newby 2004:114 note 64.A bust of Hermaphroditus was discovered at Bernay in 1864 occasioned some correspondence with M. Cornu of Bernay in 1864-65 (Archives, B.N., 12 AMC 12, 12 AMC 14).