Impressive testimony to ancient long-distance trade: around 1800 years ago, a knife with an ivory handle made its way from a trading town in present-day China to the Roman town of Ovilava in the Alps. This emerges from the deciphering of a previously mysterious inscription on the knife handle found in the city of Wels. It is a language that was common in the ancient site of Niya on the Silk Road in the Taklamakan Desert area. The engraving attributes the knife to a man named Tadara, who is probably also depicted on the handle. Experts speculate that he might even have carried it with him the 6,000 kilometers or so.
The Upper Austrian town of Wels can look back on significant ancient roots: It emerged from the Roman town of Ovilava, which was an important center in the region north of the Alps from the 2nd century AD. As the city of Wels reports on its website, the history of the discovery of the exciting relic from this era dates back to 1918. At that time, archaeologists uncovered a piece of an ancient east-west road and the remains of buildings to the south. In addition to other finds from the 2nd century AD, they also discovered the ivory handle on which a knife blade that has not been preserved once sat.
Inscription proves distant origin
The knife handle is decorated with the profile of a man's head on the end surface. The characters covering the artefact, on the other hand, caused a lot of guesswork. The archaeologists could not assign them at the time. It was assumed that they could be Oriental Egyptian. Other experts, however, guessed that the object had a Middle Persian origin in connection with the Mithraic cult. The mysterious find was then stored for over a hundred years in the archive of the Wels City Museum. But then he aroused the interest of the ancient historian Stefan Pfahl from the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Finally, to solve the linguistic puzzle, he turned to a renowned expert on ancient languages – Harry Falk from the Free University of Berlin.
In fact, the specialist recognized the scratched inscription
as Khar – a variant of the ancient Indian script Kharosthi. Falk was also able to decipher what the inscription means: it identifies the knife as a gift of honor for a man named Tadara. It is therefore obvious that the face carved into the handle represents the honoree.
As the experts explain, the identified writing and language now point to an astonishingly distant origin of the knife handle. This is because khar was used in the well-known ancient site of Niya, the remains of which lie in the People's Republic of China - in the Hotan Prefecture of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Niya was an important trading center on the southern branch of the Silk Road in the Taklamakan Desert area until its decline in late antiquity.
Traveled 6000 kilometers
According to a statement from the city of Wels, the Wels knife handle is now the westernmost ancient site of a piece imported from the Taklamakan Desert area. Because it replaces the previous record holder, a sword carrying handle from a Thracian chief's grave in Bulgaria. The distance that the knife has covered is considerable: the distance as the crow flies is 5540 kilometers and overland another 500 kilometers would have been added.
Under what circumstances the knife landed in Ovilava remains unclear. A trading story seems conceivable. But the owner may have brought the knife with him on a journey along the Silk Road. "The find once again testifies to the importance of ancient Wels as a commercial and provincial capital, which was even connected to today's China via the Silk Road. On a tour of the streets of Ovilava, you might have met people from all over the world and the most diverse cultures - a fascinating idea," says City Councilor Martin Oberndorfer. The well-travelled find can now be seen in the Minoriten City Museum in Wels.
Source: City of Catfish