A 3.5 centimeter silver amulet from a grave in Frankfurt’s Roman town of Nida has proven to be a spectacular find. Inside the amulet from around 230 to 270 AD there was a rolled silver foil with a Christian text, as X-ray analyzes reveal. This “Frankfurt Silver Inscription” is one of the oldest purely Christian inscriptions north of the Alps and an important testimony to early Christianity.
The silver amulet was discovered in 2018 during excavations in the ruins of the Roman city of Nida, the forerunner settlement of today’s Frankfurt am Main. In a third-century burial ground in Frankfurt-Praunheim, archaeologists came across a grave with the bones of a man. Under his chin lay a small silver amulet, a so-called phylactery, which he probably once wore on a ribbon around his neck. Such a phylactery is a container worn on the body that contains magical contents or, in later times, Christian relics and is intended to protect the wearer.
(Video: City of Frankfurt)
Silver foil with characters
Already during the excavation it was clear that the ancient silver amulet contained a thin, rolled-up silver foil. Microscopic examinations and X-rays in 2019 then showed that an inscription was scratched on this film. But due to the long time it had been in the ground, the wafer-thin silver foil was too brittle and brittle to simply roll it up and read the inscription. It would fall apart and be irretrievably destroyed. The find was therefore handed over to a team led by Ivan Calandra from the Leibniz Center for Archeology in Mainz (LEIZA) in Mainz. In May 2024, they examined the silver foil with a state-of-the-art computer tomograph.
“The challenge in the analysis was that the silver sheet was rolled, but of course after around 1,800 years it was also crumpled and pressed. Using the CT, we were able to scan it in a very high resolution and create a 3D model,” reports Calandra. In the next step, he and his team used a computer-aided analysis method specially developed for this object, with which they were able to virtually assemble individual segments of the scan piece by piece. Only through this digital unrolling did the text hidden in the ancient silver amulet become readable.
A purely Christian text in a pagan setting
But what did the silver inscription say? To clarify this, Markus Scholz from Frankfurt’s Goethe University then got to work. The archaeologist and expert in Latin inscriptions actually managed to decipher the 18 lines of the “Frankfurt Silver Inscription” and fill in damaged or missing words. “I called in experts from the history of theology, among others, and we approached the text together bit by bit and ultimately deciphered it.” This reveals that the inscription is a Christian text written in Latin.
“This is unusual for this time. “Such inscriptions on amulets were usually written in Greek or Hebrew,” explains Scholz. In addition, the text is very sophisticated. The author must have been an elaborate writer.
The current translation is:
(In the name?) of Saint Titus.
Holy, holy, holy!
In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of God!
The Lord of the World
resists [Kräften?]
all attacks(?)/setbacks(?).
The god(?) grants well-being
Admission.
This rescue device(?) protects
the person who is
surrenders to the will
of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son,
since before Jesus Christ
bow all knees: the heavenly ones,
the earthly and
the underground, and every tongue
confess (to Jesus Christ).
These 18 lines represent the oldest Christian evidence north of the Alps. According to the dating, this silver inscription dates from between 230 and 270 AD and is therefore almost 200 years older than the oldest confirmed evidence of Christian life in the northern Alpine areas Roman Empire, as LEIZA reports. There are traditional references from historiography to the first Christian groups in Gaul and perhaps also in the province of Upper Germania in the late 2nd century. But there have been no finds with a Christian connection from this time. However, the silver inscription clearly shows that this dead man was already a devout Christian.
“A scientific sensation”
“The ‘Frankfurt Inscription’ is a scientific sensation. “They will have to turn back the history of Christianity in Frankfurt and far beyond by around 50 to 100 years,” says Frankfurt Mayor Mike Josef. However, it is unclear whether the dead man was able to confess and practice his faith during his lifetime in what was still a largely pagan environment. The purely Christian reference to the silver inscription is all the more unusual, as Scholz and his colleagues explain. Until the 5th century, precious metal amulets of this type usually contained texts that mixed different faiths. Elements from Judaism or pagan influences were particularly evident in these texts. But these references are missing in the silver amulet from Roman Frankfurt. The amulet is purely Christian.
The evaluation of the text is still in its early stages, but experts have already discovered some special features that were previously only known from much more recent texts. This is how Saint Titus, a student of the Apostle Paul, is named at the beginning of the inscription. The invocation “Holy, holy, holy!” from the Christian liturgy also only dates back to the 4th century. documented. At the end, “Bend your knees,” the text also contains an almost literal quote from Paul’s so-called Christ hymn from his letter to the Philippians. According to the researchers, the Frankfurt silver inscription is already one of the most important pieces of evidence of early Christianity in the world. Their discovery opens up new points of contact for archaeology, historical sciences and theology.
Source: City of Frankfurt, Leibniz Institute for Archeology in Mainz (LEIZA)