Archaeologists Say This Tiny Amulet Is the Oldest Evidence of Christianity Found North of the Alps
Discovered in central Germany, the 1,800-year-old silver artifact held a tiny scroll, which researchers have now deciphered using high-resolution scans
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In 2018, researchers found a tiny silver amulet in an ancient Roman grave near Frankfurt, Germany. The 1.4-inch-long artifact contained a roll of foil—a tiny scroll, which researchers didn’t dare remove for fear of breaking it apart.
Now, thanks to advanced scanning technology, experts have been able to read the scroll’s inscription without unrolling it. According to an announcement from the city of Frankfurt, it’s the oldest Christian artifact ever found north of the Alps.
The silver amulet was buried with a man in his 30s or 40s who died between 230 and 270 C.E., per the Greek Reporter’s Abdul Moeed. His grave is located in the ancient Roman town of Nida, a rich archaeological site in present-day Frankfurt’s suburbs.
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The amulet was found tucked under the interred skeleton’s chin: He’d likely worn it on a cord around his neck. According to a statement from the Frankfurt’s Goethe University, the inscription reads:
[In the name?] of St. Titus.
Holy, holy, holy!
In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of God!
The lord of the world
resists to the best of his [ability?]
all seizures[?]/setbacks[?].
The god[?] grants well-being
Admission.
This rescue device[?] protects
the person who
surrenders to the will
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
since before Jesus Christ
bend all knees: the heavenly ones,
the earthly and
the subterranean, and every tongue
confess [to Jesus Christ].
During the third century, Christianity was growing but wasn’t yet widespread. In the northern Alpine regions of the Roman Empire, it was still risky to publicly practice. For the amulet’s owner, “his faith was apparently so important that he took it with him to his grave,” per the statement.
Researchers worked for years to recover the scroll’s contents, as the thin silver foil was too brittle to unfurl. Instead, researchers at the nearby Leibniz Center for Archaeology used high-resolution CT scanning.
“The challenge in the analysis was that the silver sheet was rolled, but after around 1,800 years, it was of course also creased and pressed,” says Ivan Calandra, head of the center’s imaging lab, in the statement. “Using CT [scanning], we were able to scan it at a very high resolution and create a 3D model.”
The scanned text was then slowly, painstakingly deciphered by Markus Scholz, an archaeologist at Goethe University, with the help of theologians and other experts. The inscription is in Latin, which is unusual for the era, as similar amulet scrolls were usually written in Greek or Hebrew, Scholz says in the statement. The message is also “very sophisticated,” he adds, indicating that its author was a skilled scribe.
Artifacts such as this amulet are classified as phylacteries, items meant to “protect or heal their owners from a range of misfortunes, such as illnesses, bodily aches, infertility or even demonic forces,” Tine Rassalle, an independent biblical archaeologist who wasn’t involved in the research, tells Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove. “In an era without advanced medical knowledge, such items were vital sources of comfort and security for you and your loved ones.”
According to the statement, the inscription references no faiths other than Christianity, making it especially rare. Until the fifth century, similar inscriptions usually contained references to multiple faiths, such as Judaism or pagan belief systems. This example exclusively invokes Jesus Christ and the Christian god, making it an important artifact of early Christian history. It also contains the earliest use of the phrase “Holy, holy, holy!”
As Rassalle tells Live Science, “This takes our understanding of Western Christianization and Christian monotheism to a whole new level!”
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