Lamps with “temple façade” decoration: witness to urban vitality in the northern and western Black Sea and the ties with Constantinople.

The architectural motif in the form of an arch-on-columns, the titular “temple facade”, decorating the discus of late antique lamps, has been the subject of debate and various interpretations of the meaning without reference to the rendering or the lamp type. An examination of known examples of lamps with this particular motif has identified four different lamp type variants and two main renderings of the decoration. Ovoid lamps bearing a representation of an arch-on-columns, the most numerous among the finds, come mostly from Constantinople and nearby cities, the Black Sea coast and the Danubian sites, the sole exceptions being Egypt (where they appear also in a late variant), Cyprus and Byblos. Reconstructing the distribution of these types and renderings has introduced some “order” into the existing hypotheses and highlighted issues connected with understanding the booming economy of the Pontic area as well as the recently rebuilt Danubian limes fortresses, during their apex, in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. It has also contributed to the discussion aimed at ending the widespread use of the term “Balkan lamps” for products that represent the output of Pontic and Danubian workshops influenced by the Imperial capital in Constantinople.

Some Irish evidence for the date of the Crux coins of Æthelred II

In Anglo-Saxon Coins G. Van der Meer has set out in a convenient and readily accessible form the sequence of six sexennial issues (and minor transitional types) which I had worked out during the preceding decade for the coinage of Æthelred II. For the Crux issue (Brooke 3; BMC iii.a; Hild. C – cf. North 770; Seaby 667) the period of issue which I had proposed is from the autumn of 991 to the autumn of 997. I wish now to examine the bearing that some new evidence has on the dating of this issue, but before doing so I need to clarify a controversial feature of the identification of types that is the basis of my chronology for the reign. The six substantive issues which I had distinguished after studying a large number of hoards preserved intact in Sweden are First Hand, Second Hand, Crux, Long Cross, Helmet and Last Small Cross, but others, notably Mr C. E. Blunt, Mr J. D. Brand and, more seriously, Dr Bertil Petersson, have sought to establish that Second Hand is no more than a late variant of a single Hand issue. Each of them has his particular argument to be answered, but first of all there is the relative scarcity of Hand coins generally that has to be explained, for Hildebrand has described a total of only 483 First and Second Hand coins combined, including only 192 of the latter, as against 790 Crux and 940 Long Cross pieces. To my mind there is a quite simple historical reason. Hand coins according to my chronology are ascribed to the 980s: their relative paucity in Viking hoards is surely to be accounted for by the fact that really massive Danish attacks upon England did not begin until the 990s, while it was not until 991 that Danegeld as such began to be paid.

The Hippolytus Sarcophagus from Trinquetaille

One of the finest Attic sarcophagi of its class, and certainly one of the most striking pieces to have reached the western provinces, is the well-known Hippolytus sarcophagus which was found in 1891 at Trinquetaille, across the river from Aries, and which is now one of the chief ornaments of the Musée Romain in that city (pl. 1). There is no need to describe it in detail, since it has been fully published, with good photogravure reproductions of all four sides, by Robert, and again in more summary form, by Espérandieu. It will be enough in the present context to note that it is a typical example of what Rodenwaldt, in his penetrating discussion of the evolution of the Attic kline-sarcophagus, has shown to be an advanced and presumably, therefore, relatively late variant within that series. The lid, with a single male figure reclining on an embroidered mattress upon a couch with animal-headed mounts, has altered very little from the prototype; but on the body all that remains of the Caryatid figures that once supported the couch at the four angles is the pair of vestigial pedestals at either end of the recessed moulding along the base of the rear face. The mouldings, too, a delicately carved acanthus scroll along the upper border, an elaborately lobed leaf-and-tongue motif along the re-entrant surface behind the line of the heads, and a panel of conventional bay-wreath ornament along the lower border, all of these, with their very shallow relief and fluid surfaces, represent an altogether more advanced stage of development than the boldly cut, purposeful architectural mouldings of earlier practice. In these later Attic sarcophagi the emphasis has shifted decisively from the architectural framework of the design to the figures themselves, which now form a virtually uninterrupted frieze round the four sides of the body.