🧐 Ancient Beat #88: Winged phalluses, ancient Jalula, and the Book of Deer

Hi folks! Welcome to issue #88 of Ancient Beat. Wishing a very happy Thanksgiving to anyone who celebrated it a couple of days ago!

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And here’s the latest ancient news. 👇

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🗞 Ancient News: Top 5

• Book of Deer: Archaeologists Solve Oldest Manuscript Mystery — The monastery where the Book of Deer was written has been discovered in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The exact location of the monastery, known as the Monastery of the Deer, was lost after it fell into disuse somewhere around 1000 CE. The Book of Deer is the oldest known surviving Scottish manuscript and it has the earliest surviving Gaelic writing.

  

  Image credit: BBC

• Roman Phallus Windchime Discovered in Serbia — A tintinnabulum (Roman wind chime) was discovered on the porch of a large house — or what remains of it — at the site of Viminacium in Serbia. It is made of bronze and features a phallus with wings, legs, and a tail, as well as four bells. The discovery shows that residents of Viminacium shared Roman beliefs; in this case, that the phallus would bring good fortune while combating the evil eye, etc. Here’s a photo. It’s really something else.

Image credit: Ilija Danković, Belgrade’s Institute of Archaeology

• Archaeologists Discover Traces of Ancient Jalula — Despite being mentioned in old texts, the location of the ancient city of Jalula (not to be confused with modern Jalula) was unknown until now. Landmarks have been identified and structures of the city have been confirmed in Iraq. Jalula was an important trading center until its location was lost to time. It held strategic importance that led to the Battle of Jalula between the Sassanian Empire and the Muslim Rashidun Caliphate in 637 CE.

• Coin Cache Unearthed at Mohenjo-Daro — A 10-pound cache of copper coins was unearthed at the site of Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan, inside the wall of a 1st-millennium stupa (Buddhist shrine). The find will shed light on economic and cultural aspects of the site thousands of years after it first flourished as a center of the Indus Civilization

• Casas del Turuñuelo, a Site of Repeated Animal Sacrifice in Iron Age Spain — Major animal sacrifice was rare in the Mediterranean in the Iron Age. But at the 5th-century BCE site of Casas del Turuñuelo in Spain, a new study analyzed 6,770 bones of 52 sacrificed animals that were buried in three phases, shedding light on Tartessian ritual behavior. It was mostly adult horses, with some cattle, pigs, and a dog. In the first two phases, the animals were unaltered, but in the third phase, there were signs that the animals (except the equids) were processed for food. This suggests that a meal accompanied the ritual during the third phase. There was also the presence of burnt plant and animal remains, indicating the possible inclusion of fire in the rituals.

That’s it for the free Top 5! If you’re a free subscriber, sign up for the paid plan for another 13 stories and 7 recommended pieces of content covering Neolithic shipwrecks, Mesoamerican migrations, Hittite saws, Roman military camps, Sumerian flumes, and the Tenerife Pyramids.

Thanks, folks!

-James
Twitter: @jamesofthedrum

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🗞 Ancient News: Deep Dive