Oldest Christian Amulet Found in Germany

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A Roman era grave, known as the Heilmannstraße is located on the right bank of the Rhine river, in the once known Roman town, NIDA, a part of Roman Germania.

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The town of NIDA was a the most significant Roman town, first century CE till its abandonment in the second half of the third century CE, it was a center of administration, economy and religion.

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The aforementioned grave has been a site of study, and recently a silver amulet with Latin inscriptions, dating back to 230 - 270 AD has been unearthed in the same grave.

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This discovery pushes back the timeline of the presence of Christianity in the North of the Alps region significantly, by almost fifty years.

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Inscription in Latin for the time the amulet has been dated is certainly unusual, however the content is purely Christian and has no hint of Judaism, Paganism and so on.

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This amulet is associated with a male body in the mentioned grave, and it’s not just a scrap of metal piece, the silver sheet was rolled, creased and compressed, making it an extremely delicate finding.

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The amulet is barely over three centimetres in length and has eighteen lines inscription, which could be deciphered all thanks to the cutting edge computer tomography technology.

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The translation shows the entire inscription was about Christianity, concluding that the wearer was a devout Christian. This discovery gives interesting insights on the spread of Christianity.

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The fact that this amulet dates to a time when being Christian came at the cost of personal risk has a lot of impact on research, for it provokes questions like presence of the said religion in Roman Germania, religious practices, the risks that came and so on

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