Listed 2 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "HILDESHEIM Town LOWER SAXONY".
Hildesheim (Niedersachsen) Germany.
A Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial silver treasure, found by chance in 1868
by soldiers setting up a rifle-range 0.5 km SE of Hildesheim at the foot of the
Galgenberg. The treasure consists exclusively of silver tableware, mostly dishes
and drinking vessels. These objects had been packed into a pit (ca. 1.2 x 0.9
m at the top and ca. 2.5 m deep), the smaller vessels hidden inside the larger
ones. Later investigations have made almost certain that this was not a grave
hoard but hidden treasure.
There is nothing now to be seen at this place, which lies ca. 250
km as the crow flies from the Roman Rhine border, in a district of Germania Libera
which remained outside Roman domination except during the Roman offensive war
E of the Rhine (11 B.C.-A.D. 16). Considering the geographical location of the
find spot, it is tempting to connect the treasure with these offensive wars and
to view it as originally the property either of P. Quinctilius Varus, killed in
A.D. 9, or of Germanicus, who campaigned there in A.D. 14-16. More recent investigations
have shown, however, that the latest pieces of the treasure were produced ca.
mid 1st c. A.D. Concerning the assembling of the various pieces of the treasure
and the occasion for their burial, nothing is known. The treasure is now in the
Staatliche Museen, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, in West Berlin
R. Nierhaus, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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