Ancient History Blog

Gives New Meaning to the Term “Garden Salad”… (ca. 1000 AD)

By: The Scribe on October, 2007

Once upon a time, a local Swedish gardener was minding his own business, tending his vegetable patch on the island of Gotland, when all of a sudden… he realized it wasn’t a rutabaga he pulled out of the ground, but a hoard of Viking treasure! Indeed, he had found a treasure trove of silver coins from Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, all dating to around 970-1030 AD.

The garden trove yielded 69 coins, and the cache as a whole has been identified as a Viking “safety-deposit”, which was not unusual – Vikings and Anglo-Saxons would bury their stash of loot somewhere in the ground, with every intention of returning for the money in the future when it was needed.

In addition to coins from Eastern Europe and beyond, there were several extremely rare Viking coins in the cache, which were likely paid to the owner as protection or plunder money, also known as ‘danegeld’. Danegeld was paid to Viking groups by regional rulers, in order to bribe them out of attacking their cities or towns – which was an easy way for the Vikings to make some extra cash for little work! The rare coins were minted for a regional Swedish king named Olof Skotkonung, who was actually the first king to mint coins in Sweden. He had probably learned the trade from England.

Many other coins in the horde were copies of English coins made by Ethelred II, who was the British monarch between 978 and 1016. He was often referred to as “Ethelred the Unready”, since he lacked reliable counsel and greatly preferred the option of paying massive amounts of “tribute” cash to the Vikings, rather than face them in armed conflict.

As for the Asian coins found in the treasure trove, they would have come from the Vikings’ transactions while moving along their extensive trade route – often, Viking ships would travel all the way along the Russian rivers into the Middle East! And since Gotland in Swedenwas situated right in the middle of the Viking routes – between eastern and western Europe – it was a natural stopping point for Vikings to stash their cash before continuing onward in their travels and trade.

In total, the area of Gotland has actually yielded between 700-800 Viking treasure hoards, with the majority of the coins originating from the Middle East. Many of the coins in this and other caches also show evidence of ‘pecking’, which results from someone poking at the surface of a coin with a knife, in order to determine whether or not it the coin is real silver or a lead counterfeit.

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Tomorrow: Soggy Rice in Stone Age China

Beware the Eye of Horus (Not Sauron) (ca. 3100 – 31 BC)

By: The Scribe on October, 2007

The Eye of Horus is a symbol from ancient Egypt, typically associated with protection and royal power from the Egyptian deities Ra and Horus. The Egyptian word for the symbol was ‘wadjet’, which sprung from its early associations with one of Egypt’s earliest deities, Wadjet. Over time, Wadjet the goddess was assimilated into the personas of other Egyptian goddesses, including Hathor, Bast, and Mut.

As Wadjet’s symbol, the Eye was said to see everything – which may be where the first concept of a supernatural ‘all-seeing eye’ arose – however, as Wadjet’s importance in the Egyptian pantheon diminished, the Eye began to be frequently represented as a trait of the goddess Hathor.

In Egyptian mythology, Hathor was the wife of the god Ra, and became the mother of the god Horus. As the story goes, one of Horus’ eyes was damaged when he fought with his uncle Set, who had murdered the god Osiris and tried to seize the Egyptian throne. As a result, Horus’ eye, its injury, and eventual restoration caused the Eye of Horus symbol to become an important image in representing the concept of renewal and rebirth after death.

Horus himself was an Egyptian sky god, depicted most often as a falcon. The Eye of Horus is thus shaped much like a peregrine falcon’s eye and markings, including a ‘teardrop’ mark that is often found under the bird’s eye. Since the ancient Egyptians believed that the Eye of Horus was powerful enough to assist an individual in his rebirth after death, amulets and images of the Eye were often included in burial wrappings – in fact, an Eye of Horus was found under the twelfth layer of wrappings on the mummy of King Tutankhamun.

In ancient Egyptian mathematics during the Old Kingdom, the Eye of Horus could also represent a rounded off number one, but would later shift in meaning as the Egyptians developed a higher understanding of complex math.

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Tomorrow: A 1000-year-old Viking treasure trove