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History's Hinge - 'Ain Jalut

[Sovereign]

The Great Dish from the Mildenhall treasure
Roman Britain, 4th century AD
Found in Mildenhall, Suffolk

The most famous object in the Mildenhall treasure is the large, highly decorated circular platter usually known as the 'Great Dish', or as the 'Neptune' or 'Oceanus Dish'.

The fine decoration is worked in low relief and engraved line on the front surface of the silver. The subject matter alludes to the worship and mythology of Bacchus on land and in the sea. The staring face in the centre represents Oceanus, with dolphins in his hair and a beard formed of seaweed fronds. The inner circle, bordered by scallop shells, consists of sea-nymphs riding mythical marine creatures, a sea-horse, a triton, a sea-stag and a ketos, a dragon-like sea-monster. The wide outer frieze features Bacchus himself, holding a bunch of grapes and a thyrsus and resting a foot on his panther. He presides over a celebration of music, dancing and drinking in his honour. The participants include the hero Hercules, overcome by the consumption of wine, the goat-legged god Pan, and various satyrs and maenads (female devotees of Bacchus).

Bacchic imagery had a long history in Greek and Roman art, and this example, on a magnificent silver vessel, is one of the finest to survive from the late-Roman period.

Diameter: 60.5 cm
Weight: 8256 g

Who found the Treasure, and when?

On a bitter January afternoon in 1943, during the dark days of World War II, ploughman Gordon Butcher unearthed a big metal dish at West Row. He fetched his boss, Sydney Ford, an agricultural engineer who collected local antiquities. They returned to the field. As snow began to fall, they dug out more dishes, bowls and spoons. To their amazement they uncovered 34 items in all.

Black with age, they looked like pewter or lead. In the fading light Ford stuffed the finds into a sack and took them home. A few were bent. Ford had one of his workmen straighten them out, then he put them on the mantelpiece.

After the war, a chance visitor realised that Ford?s ?pewter? was really Roman silver. The coroner was told and an inquest held.

The hoard was declared Treasure Trove on July 1st 1946 and became Crown property.

[Solomon]

Great Dish: detail

Mildenhall Treasure
The Mildenhall Treasure is a major hoard of thirty-three Roman silver objects found in the Mildenhall area of the English county of Suffolk. The hoard was discovered in January 1942 by a Suffolk ploughman, Gordon Butcher, who removed it from the ground with help from Sydney Ford. They did not recognise the objects for what they were, and it was some years before the hoard came to the attention of the authorities. In 1946 the discovery was made public and the treasure was acquired by the British Museum in London.

The treasure is believed to have been buried in the 4th century.[1] It includes some of the finest surviving examples of Roman silversmithing, including the mid-4th century Great Dish which measures 605 mm in diameter and weighs 8256 g. The dish glorifies Bacchus and is decorated with a wide band showing a Bacchic revel, at the heart of which is a drinking contest between Bacchus and Hercules, who is shown dead drunk and having to be supported. An inner band of nereids surrounds a foliated head of the sea god, Oceanus. The dish was discovered with similarly decorated banquetting items: a large flat nielloed dish with geometric decoration, silver platters featuring Pan and maenads, a covered bowl with a frieze of centaurs and wild animals, as well as flanged bowls, ladles and spoons. Although the vast majority of the decoration is classical, three spoons bear the Chi-Rho symbol of Christ, and the Alpha & Omega, a bibical reference to Christ as 'the beginning and end'. The treasure is thought to be of Mediterranean origin.[2]

Roald Dahl wrote an article about the find which was published firstly in the Saturday Evening Post, and later as "The Mildenhall Treasure" in his short story collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.[3]

References
   1. ^ The Mildenhall Treasure. Mildenhall Museum. Retrieved on 4 May 2006.
   2. ^ The Great Dish from the Mildenhall treasure. The British Museum. Retrieved on 4 May 2006.
   3. ^ Dahl, Roald (1995). The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, 5th edition, London: Penguin Group, 215. ISBN 0-14-037348-9.

[Solomon]

Flanged silver bowl from the Mildenhall treasure

Bowls of this shape were popular in late-Roman table services. The decoration on the flat rims shows a variety of animals in hunting and pastoral scenes, themes which fall into the general category of Bacchic imagery. The inclusion of griffins, a mythical species, alongside real animals, is a common feature. The central medallion on this bowl shows a huntsman confronting a bear.

Diameter: 30 cm

Solomon

[Solomon]

Detail of the flanged silver bowl

Isn't this magnificent?

Solomon

[Diving Doc]

Solomon,

That is truly spectacular !
Is there not some history or myth associated with the motif?
I mean a legend of some kind that ties all of the illustration together.
The man's face reminds me very much of the "Green Man".
This is really something, the workmanship I mean.


Doc

[Solomon]

Two silver platters from the Mildenhall treasure
Belonging to Eutherios

The pair of small dishes or platters with Bacchic scenes are closely related in style and subject to the Great Dish itself. Both show maenads, female followers of Bacchus, dancing and playing musical instruments, in one case accompanied by the god Pan and in the other by a young satyr.

The Greek name Eutherios is scratched lightly on the underside of each dish within the footring. It is written in the genitive (possessive) case, which suggests that he was once the owner of the plate.

Diameter: 18.8 cm
Diameter: 18.5 cm

There are two main themes, Doc. As you can see here, one of these is Bacchus.

Bacchus is the name of the Greek god of wine and fertility, Dionysus, known also as Eleutherios (a.k.a "the Liberator"). Bacchus was also known to Romans.


Mosaic of Bacchus from Lugdunum

Dionysus:
Dionysus (Latin) or Dionysos (Greek) (from Ancient Greek: Διώνυσος or Διόνυσος; both Greek and Roman mythology and associated with the Italic Liber), the Thracian god of wine, represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficial influences. He is viewed as the promoter of civilization, a lawgiver, and lover of peace ? as well as the patron deity of agriculture and the theatre. He was also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one's normal self, by madness, ecstasy, or wine.[1] The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the flute and to bring an end to care and worry.[2] There is also an aspect of Dionysus on his relationship to the "cult of the souls", and the scholar Xavier Riu writes that Dionysus presided over communication between the living and the dead.[3]

Within Greek mythology Dionysus is made to be the son of Zeus and Semele; other versions of the story contend that he is the son of Zeus and Persephone. He is described as being womanly or "man-womanish".[4]

The name Dionysus is of uncertain significance; it may well be non-Greek in origin, but it has been associated since antiquity with Zeus (genitive Dios) and with Nysa, which is either the nymph who nursed him, or the mountain where he was attended by several nymphs who fed him and made him immortal as directed by Hermes; or both.[5]

Worship
The above contradictions suggest to some that we are dealing not with the historical memory of a cult that is foreign, but with a god in whom foreignness is inherent. And indeed, Dionysus's name is found on Mycenean Linear B tablets as "DI-WO-NI-SO-JO",[6] and Kerenyi traces him to Minoan Crete, where his Minoan name is unknown but his characteristic presence is recognizable. Clearly, Dionysus had been with the Greeks and their predecessors a long time, and yet always retained the feel of something alien.

The bull, the serpent, the ivy and wine are the signs of the characteristic Dionysian atmosphere, infused with the unquenchable life of the god. Their numinous presence signifies that the god is near. (Kerenyi 1976). Dionysus is strongly associated with the satyrs, centaurs and sileni. He is often shown riding a leopard, wearing a leopard skin, or being pulled by a chariot drawn by panthers and has been called the god of cats and savagery. He always carries a thyrsus. Besides the grapevine and its wild barren alter-ego, the toxic ivy plant, both sacred to him, the fig was also his. The pine cone that tipped his thyrsus linked him to Cybele, and the pomegranate linked him to Demeter.

The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus. Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries, which were comparable to and linked with the Orphic Mysteries, and may have influenced Gnosticism and early Christianity (see below). His female followers are called maenads (Bacchantes).

The Dionysiac rites are thought to have survived into modern and past times in the rites of Anastenaria, still practiced to the present day by Greeks descendant from Thracian populations displaced during the course of the Balkan wars. Though some scholars dispute this interpretation, most are of the opinion that the fire walking accompanied by ecstatic dancing, drumming, and forays into the woods or mountains by participants "possessed by the saint", as well as the preliminary animal sacrifice and distribution of meat to the village population, are at their origin not the Christian rites they are constructed as by the villagers who perform them, but the rites of Dionysus.[7]

Bacchanalia
Introduced into Rome (c. 200 BCE) from the Greek culture of lower Italy or by way of Greek-influenced Etruria, the bacchanalia were held in secret and attended by women only, on three days in the year in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill, on March 16 and 17. Subsequently, admission to the rites were extended to men and celebrations took place five times a month. The notoriety of these festivals, where many kinds of crimes and political conspiracies were supposed to be planned, led in 186 BCE to a decree of the Senate ? the so-called Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Calabria (1640), now at Vienna ? by which the Bacchanalia were prohibited throughout all Italy except in certain special cases which must be approved specifically by the Senate. In spite of the severe punishment inflicted on those found in violation of this decree, the Bacchanalia were not stamped out, at any rate in the south of Italy, for a very long time. (See: Further Reading below for an ancient description of the banned Bacchanalia)

Dionysus is equated with both Bacchus and Liber (also Liber Pater). Liber ("the free one") was a god of fertility and growth, married to Libera. His festival was the Liberalia, celebrated on March 17, but in some myths the festival was also held on March 5.

Appellations
Dionysus sometimes has the epithet Bromios, meaning "the thunderer" or "he of the loud shout". Another epithet is Dendrites; as Dionysus Dendrites ("he of the trees"), he is a powerful fertility god. Evius is another of his epithets, used prominently in The Bacchae. Dithyrambos ("he of the double door") is sometimes used to refer to him or solemn songs sung to him at festivals. The name refers to his premature birth. Iacchus, possibly an epithet of Dionysus, is associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries; in Eleusis, he is known as a son of Zeus and Demeter. The name "Iacchus" may come from the iakchos, a hymn sung in honor of Dionysus. Eleutherios ("the liberator") was an epithet for both Dionysus and Eros. As Oeneus, he is the god of the wine-press. With the epithet Liknites ("he of the winnowing fan") he is a fertility god connected with the mystery religions. Other, perhaps more colorful forms of the god as that of fertility include the Samian Dionysus Enorches ("with balls" or perhaps "in the testicles" in reference to Zeus' sewing the babe Dionysus into his thigh, i.e., his testicles) and the Dionysus Khoiropsalas, for which "####-plucker" has been suggested, of Sicyon.[8] A winnowing fan was similar to a shovel and was used to separate the chaff from the good, cut grain. In addition, Dionysus is known as Lyaeus ("he who releases") as a god of relaxation and freedom from worry. In the Greek pantheon, Dionysus (along with Zeus) absorbs the role of Sabazios, a Phrygian deity, whose name means "shatterer" and to whom shattered pottery was sacrificed (probably to prevent other pottery from being broken during firing). In the Roman pantheon, Sabazius became an alternate name for Bacchus.

Footnotes
1^ Sutton, p.2, mentions Dionysus as The Liberator in relation to the City Dionysia festivals.
2^ Fox, p.221, "The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the flute and to bring surcease to care"; Fox then cites Euripides as a direct source for this statement. Euripedes, Bacchae, Choral II, lines 379-381: "[370] Holiness, queen of the gods, Holiness, who bear your golden wings along the earth, do you hear these words from Pentheus? Do you hear his unholy [375] insolence against Bromius, the child of Semele, the first deity of the gods at the banquets where guests wear beautiful garlands? He holds this office, to join in dances, [380] to laugh with the flute, and to bring an end to cares, whenever the delight of the grape comes at the feasts of the gods, and in ivy-bearing banquets [385] the goblet sheds sleep over men." [1]
3^ Riu, Xavier, Dionysism and Comedy, Chapter 4, Happiness and the Dead, p.105, "Dionysus presides over communications with the Dead".
4^ Otto, Walter F. (1995). Dionysus Myth and Cult. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253208912. 
5^ Fox, p.217, "The word Dionysos is divisible into two parts, the first originally Διος (cf. Ζευς), while the second is of an unknown signification, although perhaps connected with the name of the Mount Nysa which figures in the story of Lykourgos ... when Dionysos had been reborn from the thigh of Zeus, Hermes entrusted him to the nymphs of Mount Nysa, who fed him on the food of the gods, and made him immortal".
6^ Adams, John Paul. Professor of Classics, California State University, Northridge, 2005, Dionysos website. http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/dionysos.html
7^ The Anastenaria: The Ancient Ecstatic Fire-Walking Ritual of Greece[2]
8^ Jameson 1993, 53. Cf. n16 for suggestions of Devereux on "Enorkhes".

[Solomon]

There are strong connections between Dionysus/Bacchus and early Christianity, as mentioned above:

The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus. Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries, which were comparable to and linked with the Orphic Mysteries, and may have influenced Gnosticism and early Christianity...

Parallels with Christianity
It is possible that Dionysian mythology would later find its way into Christianity. There are many parallels between Dionysus and Jesus; both were said to have been born from a virgin mother, a mortal woman, but fathered by the king of heaven, to have returned from the dead, to have transformed water into wine, and to have been liberator of mankind. The modern scholar Barry Powell also argues that Christian notions of eating and drinking "the flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus. Certainly the Dionysus myth contains a great deal of cannibalism, in its links to Ino (however, one must note that Dionysian cannibalism has no correlation with self-sacrifice as a means of propitiation). Dionysus was also distinct among Greek gods, as a deity commonly felt within individual followers. In a less benign example of influence on Christianity, Dionysus' followers, as well as another god, Pan, are said to have had the most influence on the modern view of Satan as animal-like and horned.[15] It is also possible these similarities between Christianity and Dionysiac religion are all only representations of the same common religious archetypes. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the story of Jesus turning water into wine is only found in the Gospel of John, which differs on many points from the other Synoptic Gospels. That very passage, it has been suggested, was incorporated into the Gospel from an earlier source focusing on Jesus' miracles.[16]

According to Martin A. Larson in The Story of Christian Origins (1977), Osiris was the first savior, and all soteriology in the region borrowed this religion, directly and indirectly, including Mithraism and Christianity, from an Osirian-Dionysian influence. As with their common dying and resurrected saviors, they all share common sacraments, ostensibly grounded in their reliance on seasonal cereal agriculture, having adopted the rituals with the food itself; Larson notes that Herodotus uses the names Osiris and Dionysus interchangeably and Plutarch identifies them as the same, while the name was anciently thought to originate from the place Nysa, in Egypt (now Ethiopia).

The subject of Dionysus is complex and baffling. The problem is further complicated by the fact that he appears in at least four characters: first, as the respectable patron of the theatre and the arts; second, as the effeminate, yet fierce and phallic mystery-god of the bloodthirsty Maenads; third, as the mystic deity in the temples of Demeter; and fourth, as the divine savior who died for mankind and whose body and blood were symbolically eaten and drunk in the eucharist of the Orphic-Pythagorean celibates. Beyond this, almost all barbarian nations had their own versions of Dionysus under many names. And yet there is a simpler explanation: Dionysus, Bromius, Sabazius, Attis, Adonis, Zalmoxis, Corybas, Serapis, and Orpheus himself are replicas of their grand prototype Osiris; and the variations which appear among them resulted from the transplantation of the god from one country to another, and reflect simply the specific needs of his multifarious worshipers (37-38).

References
15^ Powell, Barry B., Classical Myth Second ed. With new translations of ancient texts by Herbert M. Howe. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1998.
16^ The HarperCollins Study Bible. New Revised Standard Version. With the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books. London, UK: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1993.


Dionysus/Bacchus
Who was Dionysus?
Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and ecstatic experience, as well as vegetation, death and rebirth. As a nature god, he slept through the winter and awoke with the spring. Thus he was identified with the springtime, and his emblems were the vine (Just like Jesus - John 15:1, 5) and the phallus. His cult became popular in the 7-6th centuries BCE. Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele (a mortal woman) but he was not considered a hero, but a god. While he was yet unborn, Hera killed Semele and his fetus was lodged on Zeus' thigh until birth. (Note: Semele is thought to have been Zemelo, a Phrygian earth goddess.) Both the Romans and Greeks tended to assimilate local gods into their pantheon, so Zeus became Jupiter for the Romans. With Dionysus, he became identified with Bacchus, who is thought to have been a Lydian historical figure, originally. (Note: 'Bacchus' is thought to be of Semitic origin, possibly meaning 'wailing'.) He was also identified with the Roman god Liber, but it is as Dionysus he is best known. He was a dying and rising god who brought new life to his followers.

Solomon

[Sovereign]

Flanged silver bowl and cover from the Mildenhall treasure
Roman Britain, 3rd-4th century AD
Found in Mildenhall, Suffolk

This bowl is the earliest vessel in the Mildenhall treasure, made in Gaul in the third century AD.

It has a dropped horizontal rim and niello decoration. It was not designed to have a lid. The deep domed cover was made later, some time in the fourth century, either for another bowl, or perhaps specifically to fit this one. It has a border of Bacchic ornament in relief. The small statuette of a triton which forms a knob may not have been part of the lid's original design.



Diameter: 23 cm
Height: 19.1 cm

[Sovereign]

 Square silver dish

Roman Britain, 4th century AD
From Mileham, Norfolk

This dish was found in 1839. Though it is tempting to assume that it was part of a hoard of silver, there is no record of it being found with any other objects.

Large square or rectangular silver platters became popular in the fourth century AD. Similar designs were made in pewter, which served as a cheaper substitute for silver tableware.

Height: 37.5 cm
Width: 37.5 cm

P&EE  1840.11-11.1
Room 49, Roman Britain (gallery closed for refurbishment until 2007), case 18

[Administration]

Silver repouss? basin from the Mildenhall Treasure, 350-375 A.D. (London: Brit. Mus.) Italian or Gallic workshop, but more broadly, typically European provincial.

[Solomon]

Fluted silver bowl from the Mildenhall treasure
Roman Britain, 4th century AD
Found in Mildenhall, Suffolk

Large bowls of this type were evidently intended to hold water for washing hands at table.

The chased leaf patterns on the flat panels closely resemble the pattern on three of the spoons also in the Mildenhall treasure. The centre of the bowl has geometric decoration in the form of an interwoven six-pointed star. This motif, like other geometric and floral designs, was often used decoratively in the Roman period, but it had no connection with Judaism. The formal adoption of the Star of David as a Jewish symbol took place only after the medieval period.

Diameter: 40.8 cm


Detail of surface interior

[Solomon]

 Silver spoons from the Mildenhall treasure

Roman Britain, 4th century AD
Found in Mildenhall, Suffolk

The eight spoons in the Mildenhall treasure represent examples from at least three, perhaps four, sets. It seems fair to assume that the owner of such an outstanding piece of silver plate as the Great Dish would have had a large number of spoons, most of which were not hidden in this particular cache.

Three spoons have foliate decoration which matches that on the large fluted bowl. Another three bear the only overt Christian symbols in the hoard, the Greek letters chi and rho, the first letters of Christ's name, flanked by alpha and omega (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, another symbol of Christ - 'I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last' (Revelation 1:). The remaining two spoons have personal names (Papittedo and Pascentia) with the word vivas ('may you live'), a good-luck formula frequently used in late-Roman times, often by Christians.

Length: 16.3 cm (min.)
Length: 20.6 cm (max.)


Two inscribed spoons
The bowl of these spoons are inscribed ?PASCENTIA VIVAS? which translates as ?May you live, Pascentia.?.  ?Vivas? was a good luck saying often used in late Roman times.




The deep bowls of these five ladles resemble miniature Roman dishes or saucepans.  The handles are silver-gilt and cast in the shape of dolphins with incised and dotted detail; the eyes were originally inlaid with glass or niello.  One handle is missing.

[Sovereign]

Silver dish with niello decoration from the Mildenhall treasure   

With a diameter of 55.6 cm and weight of 5,023 grammes, this platter is not much smaller than the Great Dish, but its decoration belongs to a more restrained tradition, carried out simply in engraved lines filled with niello, silver sulphide which provides a black contrast to the silver.

Diameter: 55.6 cm
Weight: 5023 g


Niello is a method of decorating metal objects using engraving techniques. An alloy of silver, copper, lead, and sulfur is rubbed into an engraved pattern on silver or gold and then fired. Darkened areas remain in the crevices after the object is polished.

This technique was commonly used in Europe until the Renaissance, but it was rarely utilized afterwards. It was known in Kiev in the tenth to the thirteenth centuries and revived in Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Niello remained in use throughout the imperial period, although silversmiths most often employed it in Moscow or in provincial centres.

An example:

Platter with Diana and Her Nymphs
Moscow, 1798
Semen Petrov Kuzov
Silver gilt, niello