Our story starts in the spring of 1981. A man called Ted Seaton from Barnard Castle, who was a keen local metal detectorist, had taken a drive out to Arkengarthdale to search for artefacts. Ted ran an antique shop called The Mudlark in Galgate in Barnard Castle. Just over four years later, Ted was to become famous for his discovery of The Middleham Jewel, which made him and his family wealthy enough to be able to sell their antique shop and retire to Spain – but that is another story.
Lying on the surface of the ground on the moorland, Ted Seaton discovered what appeared to be a small, dark grey pebble with a strange engraving on it. He took it home and later showed it to Denis Coggins, the Antiquities Officer at The Bowes Museum, to ask him what he thought it was. Coggins examined it, made a few notes, drew it, photographed it and then gave it back. This is the photograph that he took:
Denis Coggins was so intrigued with the object Ted Seaton had brought him that he wrote a short article about it and sent it, together with the photograph, to the academic journal Antiquity, which at the time was edited by the Cambridge archaeologist Professor Glyn Daniel, who published it in the Notes and News section of the journal in July 1982.
a-celtic-amulet-from-co-durham-1In the article Coggins described the amulet as follows:
It is a polished trapezoidal dark grey pebble 21mm high, 24mm wide at the base and 13mm thick. All corners and edges are rounded. There is a biconical perforation near the apex. The base is flat and is engraved with a stylized human figure. The head of this figure is large, triangular in shape, and with all the features shown. Two horns curve upward and outward from the forehead. The torso is reduced to a single engraved line ending in a tripod or trident. The arms, extended and curving upwards, have pendant fringes, while similar fringes surround the face. At the lower left hand corner of the base is engraved an eight-pointed star. Though the engraving is rather crude it is assured and the figure is imposing and dignified. No exact parallel for the object has so far been forthcoming though parallels for most of the individual features can be found and the affinities of the figure seem to lie with Celtic religious art.
He noted that although nothing exactly matching the amulet had been seen before, it did appear to have some stylistic relationships to a few other Iron Age British artefacts. In terms of the triangular head, round eyes, long nose and small mouth he noted that there was a similarity with the heads on the Aylesford bucket, which was excavated in 1886 and contained cremated human bones.
Although he referred briefly to the “bull horns” and “phallic” features of the figure on the amulet, which he felt may be related to Anne Ross’s concept of the Brigantian Horned God (more on that later), Coggins thought that the most intriguing feature of the image was the fringe of incised lines on each side of the head. He felt that it was unlikely that these lines represented hair, and compared it with two native Iron Age British ‘radiate’ sculptures – one from Armagh in Northern Ireland (below, left) and one from Maryport in Cumbria (below, right).
He thought that the horns and the incised lines around the head and also on the arms may “represent a shaman’s costume of headdress and cape. There is more than a hint of similarity with the paleolithic painting of the Sorcerer from Les Trois Frères …”
Coggins also referenced Anne Ross’s quote in her book Pagan Celtic Britain from Marie-Louise Sjoestedt‘s description of the Chief Druid of the King of Ireland as wearing a bull’s hide and white speckled bird’s headdress with fluttering wings. He noted that “Votive feathers of gold, silver or bronze are known from several Romano-British shrines (Green, Miranda J., A Corpus of Religious Material from the Civilian Areas of Roman Britain, BAR 24, 1976) and it is at least possible that the regalia of officiating priests included feathers.”
The arms of the figure, Coggins believed, could be interpreted as being raised in the orans position of prayer and he compared it to the well-known figures in that position on the Gundestrup cauldron, many of which wear torcs around their necks.
Coggins suggested that the incised line that forms the torso of the figure on the amulet has at its upper end a short cross stroke and this could possibly be interpreted as a neck torc.
On the left of the figure on the amulet is an eight pointed star, and Coggins suggested that alternatively it may represent a wheel but without a rim as this may have been too difficult to have engraved. He notes that “Both wheels and stars are known from sculpture, where they are usually adjuncts to a deity, and from Roman antefixa.”
The Iron Age British religious art that Coggins felt was most relevant to the figure on the amulet was the bronze sceptre-binding discovered in the Romano-Celtic temple at Farley Heath in Surrey in March 1848.
The relevant figure was towards the bottom of the bronze strip, which is described as:
The most puzzling feature of the whole strip, consisting of three objects which may or may not be interrelated: first, a human face … wearing what appears to be a helmet with cheek pieces, although this latter feature is by no means certain. Under this is a circular rosette, possibly a primitive representation of the sun, or perhaps a circular shield: below it, though not actually attached to it, is a curious arrow-shaped object with three prongs at its base. As it stands it has no apparent meaning … Roman standards, and apparently trophies, were sometimes provided with a three-pronged fork-like base which enabled them to be firmly planted in the ground, as for instance in a stone relief from Procolitia on Hadrian’s Wall.
R. G. Goodchild, A Priest’s Sceptre from the Romano-Celtic Temple at Farley Heath, Surrey, The Antiquaries Journal, 1938 , Volume 18 Issue 4, page 395
Coggins wrote that despite its stylistic differences from the figure on the bronze sceptre-binding, the figure on the amulet may also “represent the regalia or attributes of a deity rather than an actual figure.”
The deity that Coggins thought the figure on the amulet may represent was one to which two altars had been dedicated within two Roman shrines extremely close to where he believed the find spot of the amulet had been on Scargill High Moor in County Durham. This deity was the Iron Age northern British god Vinotonus, which the soldiers who dedicated the altars had equated with the Roman god Silvanus.
Stonehenge Viewpoint
Ted Seaton, Denis Coggins and Professor Daniel all hoped that as a result of the publication of the article some more information might be forthcoming about the mysterious amulet. However, they got more than they bargained for as in Santa Barbara, California Donald L. Cyr, the editor of Stonehenge Viewpoint magazine, read the article in Antiquity and became very excited.
Stonehenge Viewpoint, concerned with “Archaeology, Astronomy, Geology, and Related Arts and Sciences” was an alternative, ‘New Age’ magazine started by Cyr in 1968 which had a mainly North American and British readership – including one Ross Nichols from London, then the Chosen Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, who contributed to the magazine’s letters page. As well as speculation about Stonehenge, the magazine covered topics such as Arthurian legends, astrology, dowsing, ogham, ley lines and sacred geometry such as Alexander Thom‘s theory of the megalithic yard. The majority of its articles though focused on Isaac N. Veil‘s ‘canopy theory’, which Cyr championed throughout his life. This is the now obscure theory that thousand of years ago the earth was surrounded by a ‘firmament’ or canopy of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere and after the last ice age this canopy began to collapse, which brought about the biblical flood. Cyr was especially interested in what he called the “hidden halo” hypothesis which was his belief that the refraction of light through this canopy of ice crystals around the planet, plus the different meteorological conditions in antiquity caused by the existence of this canopy, would have caused ‘halos’ in the sky to have been seen by ancient people and therefore influenced their mythology and religious beliefs. He believed that these halos took the form of various geometrical shapes and patterns such as circles, arcs and crosses and that evidence of these can be seen in markings on standing stones, in rock art and in features of a wide variety of ancient artefacts. When he saw the article in Antiquity on what he called the “Seaton” Amulet, Cyr could not contain his enthusiasm, proclaiming:
this Seaton Amulet is much more than a religious emblem. We think that Ted Seaton has found a “Rosetta Stone” of inestimable value.
Donald L. Cyr, ‘The Science of Archaeometeorology or the Curious Case of the Bowlegged Bunny’, Stonehenge Viewpoint, Issue Number 50, November-December 1982, page 7
What then followed, in an article under the bizarre heading of “The Science of Archaeometeorology Or The Curious Case Of Th Bowlegged Bunny”, was a drawing of the amulet taken from the photograph in the Antiquity article:
and a frankly baffling explanation of how the features of the figure on the amulet were somehow proof of the existence of “hidden halos” and in fact may even be evidence of a halo formed by a supernova occurring at some point in antiquity.
Cyr then sent letters and copies of Issue Number 50 of Stonehenge Viewpoint off to Denis Coggins and Professor Daniel. Amazingly, they both wrote back, and so did Ted Seaton:
FROM: St. John’s College, Cambridge, England
In my view the County Durham amulet would date between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. You should write to experts on this subject such as Professor Stuart Piggott and Professor E. M. Jope.
Yours sincerely,
Glyn Daniel
FROM: Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, England
Many thanks for your letter and the enclosed copy of Stonehenge Viewpoint. My article in Antiquity was intended to provoke discussion though I did not expect reaction from so far afield. I have passed a copy of the article to Mr. Seaton for his comments and no doubt he will be writing to you.
There was one unintentional mistake in my article: the find spot was apparently not Scargill High Moor as I was first informed but about four km. south of this at about Arndale Head on the south-west facing slope of the hill.
As you will probably guess I am a fairly conventional archaeologist and cannot really accept your theory of the origin and use of the amulet, though at the same time I would not like to reject it out of hand. What is important is that finds like this should be thoroughly studied from all possible angles and no explanation discarded without just cause.
Yours sincerely,
Stonehenge Viewpoint, Issue Number 51, January-February 1983, page 2
Denis Coggins
Ted Seaton gave some more details about the amulet, including a rough map of the find spot:
FROM: Barnard Castle, Co. Durham, England
Dennis Coggins informs me that you wish for some further information concerning the Amulet I found back in 1981. First of all I must state that I was field walking and not detecting when the Amulet was found, by eyes only.
I had, on previous examination of the area, found a huge enclosure some hundreds of yards across with a number of fresh water springs surfacing within, one of which arose in the midsts [sic] of a group of small circular mounds. On close inspection the foundations of the mounds were of large stones set on edge, like those of Bronze Age huts.
The location is of interest as it is one of the highest points in the area, some 520 metres above sea level. The encirclement and mounds are situated below some small shale scree slopes surmounted by a plateau. It was on the scree slopes that Amulet was found with some fragments of fossilised bone and a number of flint cores. Another ancient item brought to light on top of a mole hill below the hut mounds, if huts they were, was a small shard of Roman Samiam [sic] pottery.
I am not an archaeologist but it suggested that the area had been inhabited or used for ritual purposes over hundreds of years. One other item caught my attention was below and to the south of the mounds, but still within the enclosure, was a number of large flat stones just breaking through the turf. It would seem that they were in a rough shape of a large circle, maybe natural? However a thorough examination of the area has yet to take place, and as I am not an archaeologist my conclusions mean very little. Any further finds or developments I will inform you of, and would appreciate any information you could give me on the Amulet as it seems to be of interest to many people including those of the Bowes Museum.
I enclose a rough sketch of the area: also a sketch of the Amulet showing a couple of points not shown properly on the Bowes Museum photographs.
Yours sincerely,
E. W. (Ted) Seaton
Stonehenge Viewpoint, Issue Number 51, January-February 1983, page 2 & continued on page 23)
Ted’s drawing of the amulet points out that, unseen on the photograph taken by Denis Coggins, there are three lines coming from the right hand side of the figure’s head. Even more interestingly, it shows that opposite the image interpreted by Coggins as a wheel without a rim there is in fact a faint outline of what appears to be a waxing crescent moon, so strengthening the argument that it is not a wheel but a star or perhaps the sun.
Ted’s drawing of the shape of the amulet below reminds us that it is not flat as the Stonehenge Viewpoint drawing suggests, it is in fact 24mm wide at the base (wider than it is high) as Denis Coggins stated in his article in Antiquity. (Denis Coggins measurements were quite confusing as he described the amulet as “21mm high, 24mm wide at the base and 13mm thick” – by which, according to Ted Seaton’s sketches, he must have meant 21mm high, 13mm wide and 24mm in depth). Although the hole at the top of the amulet does suggest that it might have been worn, probably around the neck, it was wide enough at the base to be able to stand up and could have perhaps stood as a very small statue in a shrine.
Even more intriguing is Ted’s drawing of the findspot in a location that appears to possibly contain hut circles or round barrows and maybe even some kind of stone circle hidden beneath the long grass on the moor. Frustratingly though, Ted did not give us the name of the “Modern Road” or any specific landmarks to help pin down the spot.
Possible Find Spot?
The website of the Swaledale and Arkengarthdale Archaeology Group (SWAAG) website has a page entitled ‘Celtic’ Amulet Mystery which states that their president, Tim Laurie, noted the find in the group’s online database on 1st April 2013 (Lithic/Scatter category PDF, record no. 711). In the ‘Additional Notes’ section of his entry it appears that some of the readers of Stonehenge Viewpoint magazine travelled on a ‘pilgrimage’ to Scargill High Moor, where they believed that the amulet had been found:
This stone object which is variously known as the Scargill or Seaton Amulet was the subject of further very detailed discussion and speculative interpretation within ‘Stonehenge Viewpoint’ Issue 50 which is a periodical publication devoted to an alternative view on ‘Archaeology, Astronomy, Geology and related Arts and Sciences.’ In consequence of this Publication- which reaches a very wide and extensive readership – Scargill was subject to a ‘pilgrimage’ of those with an interest in the science of the occult and with very different views on mainstream archaeological theory. Dennis Coggins told me that this small invasion by persons of a hippy appearance, of an otherwise mainly deserted grouse moor, well in advance of open access, was not really appreciated by the Game Keepers.
(Sadly I haven’t been able to find any kind of write up about this visit in any of the issues of the magazine from 1983 onwards available on The Internet Archive).
Tim Laurie also noted that another very experienced local archaeologist, Percival Turnbull, who ran the Brigantia Archaeological Practice in Barnard Castle, disagreed with Denis Coggins about the amulet’s provenance:
I have discussed the provenance and affinities several times with the Late Percival Turnbull. Percival had worked as an archaeologist in the Middle East and, on stylistic grounds Percival was of the firm view that the amulet was of Middle Eastern provenance and neither ‘Celtic’ or British in origin. At this time, very many oil workers were returning home with archaeological objects collected from the Middle East.
In the second, updated, entry on the group’s online database on 21st June 2017 (Archaeological Random Find category PDF, record no. 1002), Tim Laurie adds that Ted Seaton took him to the find spot of the amulet, which we now know from Denis Coggins’ letter in Stonehenge Viewpoint was not in fact on Scargill High Moor “but about four km. south of this at about Arndale Head on the south-west facing slope of the hill.” Tim’s additional information makes it clearer where the findspot actually was:
To my knowledge, Ted Seaton’s local geography was rather suspect. He took me to a very different location which he stated to be the find site. This location was in scree at the base of a low cliff on the east side of the Stang road! We did find a number of unrelated small metal objects in the scree which may have been thrown there recently. This rubbish was similar to the bulk of metalwork found by metal detectorists.
So we now know that the find spot was about four kilometers south of Scargill High Moor, on The Stang road at about Arndale Head, at about an elevation of around 520 metres above sea level. It was above some springs and possible hut circles or round barrows at the base of a low cliff with scree at the bottom of it / some small shale scree slopes. The low cliff / small slope is surmounted by a plateau. The spot is on the east side of the road. Coupled with Ted’s rough map, we now have a good chance of finding the spot if we can find a location that matches these criteria. Thanks to Google Street View, I think I might have:
On the OS Explorer map below, the red spot on Dry Gill Edge, close to the bridleway opposite Shaw Farm is where I think the find spot for the amulet may possibly be located.
The site is to the south west of Arndale Head (circled above in red) and although not at an elevation of 520 metres above sea level it is directly to the west of that elevation on Peat Moor Hill. It matches much of Ted Seaton and Tim Laurie’s descriptions: it is on the east side of the Stang road, there is flat ground and then sloping ground which leads to the base of a shale covered slope (Dry Gill Edge) below a plateau (Little Windeg). The dark green patches of ground that can be seen on Google Street View appear to be the locations of springs, and the track leading to the old lead mines is to the south west, and can be clearly seen on the OS map and from Google Street View. It also makes sense that the find spot is near a public right of way. The land is now open to public access (although dogs are not permitted as the area is grouse moor) but back in 1981 it wasn’t; access was only allowed via public footpaths and bridleways and Ted Seaton, a keen metal detectorist and local antique shop owner, needed to keep good relations with nearby landowners and farmers1. The site does not have any recorded hut circles or round barrows on the OS map, although there is a cairn recorded to the north east. But if something interesting is there (and Ted Seaton certainly thought so) it is important that it is investigated.
The Swaledale and Arkengarthdale Archaeology Group (SWAAG) database (SWAAG ID Number: 848 pages 83-89) records a suspected Roman road beneath and sometimes alongside the existing route of the Stang road. In February 2015 some members of the group went to Stang Top to see if the route of the Roman road was more visible when snow was lying on the ground. Their photographs show what appears to be the agger of the Roman road to the east of the existing road, south-east of Shaw Farm and very close to the area where we think the find spot of the amulet is located. The potential existence of a Roman road right next to where the amulet was found raises interesting possibilities for how it may have found its way to that location, perhaps around the neck of a Roman auxiliary soldier?
The Paracelsus Connection?
After the publication of Denis Coggins’ article in the journal Antiquity in 1982 it appears that no archaeologists or historians came forward, at least publicly, to give an interpretation of where the mysterious amulet may have come from or what the figure engraved on it may represent. The only response was from the decidedly left-field Stonehenge Viewpoint magazine.
However, alongside Donald L. Cyr’s bizarre ‘halos’ theory, another interpretation from the magazine emerged in the winter of 1984. Cyr was open-minded enough to publish William C. H. Coppola’s article ‘Deciphering The Seaton Amulet’ which presented an alternative theory (before immediately criticising it for having nothing to do with halos).
Coppola had noticed that the shape of the amulet was very similar to an occult symbol on a tool of Hermetic magic:
In his book Ritual Magic, David Conway gives an illustration of the famous trident of Paracelsus shown here as Item G. Notice the character next to the word Obit. If this symbol had horns, or the symbol for Herne instead of the plain circle, it would look exactly like the line symmetry on the “Seaton Amulet.” This character on the trident was used for raw power, thus illuminating the horns, a fertility sign.
The trident was a symbol of “forked lightning”, the mercurial solar-electric force in nature. In the ancient days the planets Pluto, Uranus and Neptune were unknown. After the discovery of Neptune, the trident was associated with the planet, but up to that discovery, the trident symbolized the fire principle of this “forked lightning”. This power of the trident was believed to be sufficient to split boulders and cause earthquakes.
Stonehenge Viewpoint November-December 1984, page 30
The idea that the trident of Paracelsus is an immensely powerful occult symbol was popularised by the occultist Éliphas Lévi in his book Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual:
This trident, symbol of the triad, is formed of three pyramidal teeth superposed on a Greek or Latin tau. On one of its teeth is a jod, which on one side pierces a crescent, and on the other a transverse line, a figure which recalls hieroglyphically the zodiacal sign of the Crab … Between the claws of the Crab is the sun … By the side of the Crab is the word OBITO, or Begone, Retire …
Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, page xxii
The threefold repetition of names with varied intonations was united to triangular combinations in magical ceremonies. The magic rod was frequently surmounted with a small magnetised fork, which Paracelsus replaced by the trident represented below.
This trident is a pantacle expressing the synthesis of the triad in the monad, thus completing the sacred tetrad. He ascribed to this figure all the virtues which kabbalistic Hebrews attribute to the name of Jehovah, and the thaumaturgic properties of the Abracadabra used by the hierophants of Alexandria. Let us here recognise that it is a pantacle, and consequently a concrete and an absolute sign of an entire doctrine which has been that of an immense magnetic circle, not only for ancient philosophers, but also for adepts of the middle ages. The restoration in our own day of its original value by the comprehension of its mysteries, might not that also restore all its miraculous virtue and all its power against human diseases?
Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, page 212
However, before ordering yourself a Trident of Paracelsus amulet to utilise its “miraculous virtue and all its power against human diseases” it might be a good idea to do a little bit more research:
The image of the trident of Paracelsus originated from the Archidoxis Magica, a grimoire published in 1591, after Paracelsus’s death and generally thought not actually to have been written by him. An English translation – The Supreme Mysteries of Nature – was published in 1656 by Robert Turner. In Chapter 7 of the section on Celestial Medicines, the book contains talismanic cures concerning how to remedy ‘The loss of Strength and Virtue in the Members of Generation’ – in modern terminology how to treat erectile dysfunction. In cases of this caused by Witchcraft, or some other ‘Diabolical Art’, the book gives the following advice:
let the Patient take a piece of horse-shoe found in the highway, of which let there be made a Trident-Fork on the day of ♀ [Venus – Friday], and the hour of ♄ [Saturn – sunset] as you see in this Figure following:
The Fork aforesaid being made, let those Words with their Characters be engraven upon the Three teeth, as you see in the Figure … on Sunday before Sun-rising: which being done, let the Fork be fastened in the ground under a running Stream of Water, so deep, that the handle may not be seen, and that it cannot be found: by this means thou shalt be delivered in 9 dayes; and the person that hath wrought this mischief upon thee, shall get something himself in that place, from which he shall not so easily be delivered.
The Supreme Mysteries of Nature, Robert Turner, 1656, page 114-115
So the motto of the story seems to be never trust everything that a ceremonial magician writes in a book. It seems that William C. H. Coppola’s theory about our mysterious amulet has probably reached a dead end.
Psychic Metal Detecting?
While on the subject of not being always being able to believe everything we see, can we actually believe that this amulet found by Ted Seaton is not actually a fake, knocked up in the back room of his antique shop in Barnard Castle, as it looks like nothing else ever found in Britain before?
I strongly believe that the amulet is genuine. Ted Seaton was a well known character in the local community in Teesdale and had the distinct knack of being able to find historical artefacts. His wife Vera described him as:
a modern detective who believed in using scientific gadgets that could help in his search for artefacts that would tell him a story. He was a talented man who understood the ways people lived in the past, and he was able to read the land, as it were. He walked the countryside and tuned into it using his psychic abilities as well as taking in the visual evidence. He could see where there used to be streams, dwellings and bridle paths that were now buried under vegetation and invisible to the untrained eye. He was sensitive to good and bad vibrations in a given location. He found and donated many artefacts to local museums. He was also actively involved in archaeological digs when help was required.
The Saga of the Middleham Jewel, Vera Seaton, 2014, Foreword
Even before he found the Middleham Jewel, Ted would regularly appear in the local paper, the Teesdale Mercury. Below is a cutting from June 19th 1985, just before he was to make the life-changing discovery of the Middleham Jewel:
ROMAN HOARD IS FOUND BY LUCK
A collection of Roman relics unearthed in one spot by treasure expert Ted Seaton is being hailed as one of the most exciting finds of its kind in Britain.
He was out for a walk near Brignall when he spotted a large lump of rusty iron
Teesdale Mercury, Wednesday 19th June 1985, front page
Vinotonus, Silvanus and The Horned God
So after a journey via Californian hippies marauding across a North Yorkshire grouse moor, a pseudo ceremonial magician inadvertently wearing an amulet intended to remedy erectile dysfunction, a hidden Roman road and a psychic Barnard Castle metal detectorist, we are still non-the-wiser as to what the figure on the amulet actually is. All we know is that it was found somewhere off the Stang Top road on the modern border of County Durham and North Yorkshire, Professor Glyn Daniel in his letter to Stonehenge Viewpoint magazine dated it from 200BC to 200AD but wasn’t sure, Denis Coggins thought it might be a representation of the local god Vinotonus and Percival Turbull didn’t think it was from Britain at all but from the Middle East and dropped by an oil worker out for a ramble on the moors who just happened to have it in his pocket.
So where do we go from here? The Vinotonus suggestion is the most obvious one to investigate next, as around 4km away from where Ted Seaton picked the amulet up off the ground, two shrines situated very close together, each containing a Roman altar dedicated to the god, were excavated in 1945, 46 and 47.
I must admit that despite living around 25 miles away from where the shrines were found, it was only when I was listening to a fascinating lecture by Ronald Hutton on Paganism in Roman Britain recently that I first heard the name of the native British deity ‘Vinotonus’:
On what’s now called Scargill Moor, Yorkshire, a strapping, Roman, young army officer called Julius Secundus killed an enormous and fierce wild boar. It must almost have killed him because otherwise he wouldn’t have been so emotionally invested, and he commemorated his escape by putting up an altar to commemorate his achievement to the Roman god of hunting, Silvanus. Then our friend Julie suddenly remembered that Scargill Moor must belong to a local deity and he found out the name – Vinotonus – and put a thank you to Vinotonus on the other side of the altar …
Ronald Hutton
The top of Julius Secudus’s altar to Vinotonus-Silvanus was first discovered around 1936, but the outbreak of the Second World War meant that it was not until September 1945 that archaeologists Ian Richmond and Richard Wright were able to examine it.
The large altar, 21½ inches (54.5 cm) wide and 43 inches (1 metre 9 cm) high, was in the centre of a rectangular shrine built into the hillside near the confluence of the East Black Syke and the Eller Beck, around two miles due south of the Roman fortress of Lavatrae at Bowes (at the time in North Yorkshire but after the 1974 boundary change now in County Durham).
The altar (Roman Inscriptions of Britain (RIB) Number 732) read:
VINOTONO
SILVANO IVL
SECVNDVS 7
COH I THRAC
V S L L M
Vinotono | Silvano Iul(ius) | Secundus c(enturio) | coh(ortis) I Thrac(um) | v(otum) s(olvit) l(aetus) l(ibens) m(erito)
To Vinotonus Silvanus Julius Secundus, centurion of the First Cohort of Thracians, gladly, willingly and deservedly fulfilled his vow
The First Cohort of Thracians were stationed at Lavatrae in the early third century. They would have comprised some 480 men, a number of whom would have been cavalry. Julius Secundus, as a centurion in the Roman army, would have commanded at least 80 of those men.
There was nothing inscribed on the back of the altar and no mention of an enormous and fierce wild boar (sorry Ronald) but it is very probable that the altar was dedicated by Julius Secundus to thank Vinotonus-Silvanus for his success in an extremely dangerous boar hunting expedition2.
In September 1946 Richard Wright and Ian Richmond returned to the site to investigate a suspected second shrine about 25 yards (22 metres) to the south of the first. Before their efforts were eventually frustrated by the incessant Yorkshire rain, they managed to partially excavate what turned out to be a larger and circular shrine, 17 feet (5 metres) in diameter. In the centre of the back wall of the shrine, tilted backwards against it, was one of the largest Roman altars ever discovered in Britain: 29 inches (73 cm) wide, 67 inches (1.7 metres) high and 17 inches (43 cm) thick.
The photograph below from Denis Coggins’s (yes, the same one) 1989 book Teesdale In Old Photographs gives an idea of the considerable size of it:
This larger altar (Roman Inscriptions of Britain (RIB) Number 733) read:
DEO VIN
OTONO
L CAESIVS
FRONTINVSPR
AEF COH T-THRAC
DOMO PARMA
V S L L M
Deo Vin | otono | L(ucius) Caesius | Frontinus | pr | aef(ectus) coh(ortis) | Thrac(um) | domo Parma | v(otum) s(olvit) l(aetus) l(ibens) m(erito)
To the god Vinotonus, Lucius Caesius Frontinus, Prefect of the First Cohort of Thracians, from Parma, gladly, willingly and deservedly fulfilled his vow
Whereas Julius Secundus, the centurion who set up the altar in the first, rectangular, shrine was in charge of at least 80 men, the prefect who set up this altar in this larger, circular, shrine was the commander of the entire cohort of 480 men.
Alongside this altar were fragments of at least six other smaller, more portable altars which had been removed. Three of these fragments had inscriptions on them – RIB 735, RIB 736 and RIB 737. Clearly Vinotonus had been a significant god for the Roman auxiliary soldiers posted to the fortress at Bowes:
There were two shrines, the first and larger erected by the commandant of the First Cohort of Thracians, the second and smaller by a centurion of the same unit. Both lie close together on the bank of the brawling East Black Sike, which drains from the south of a very wide basin bordered on the skyline by the long ridge known as White Crag … The stream however is manifestly the feature with which the shrines are connected. Both are in the closest possible contact with it, at the point where it attains its maximum size and force. It can, in fact, hardly be doubted that Vinotonus took the name either of the stream or the locality in which the stream took its source. The effect of the new discoveries is to indicate that Vinotonus was par excellence the patron god of the two shrines, and that Silvanus is introduced only to explain him in Roman terms. The value of the equation with Silvanus is, however, great because it is the sole clue to the qualities with which the dedicators believed Vinotonus to be endowed. For example, in considering whether Vinotonus is a stream-god or a genius loci it may be said at once that a connexion with the locality is more likely, for Silvanus is always associated with a place rather than a stream … On Scargill Moor the locality will certainly support the view that he was both god of the wild and patron of hunters, and it may be presumed that these were the qualities in Vinotonus which the equation was intended to convey.
Richmond, Ian A., ‘Two Roman Shrines to Vinotonus on Scargill Moor, Near Bowes’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Volume 37, Part 145, 1948-1951, pages 107-116 (quotation from pages 110-112)
In 1986 another altar to Vinotonus was found (Roman Inscriptions of Britain (RIB) Number 3251) located on the bank of the East Black Sike midway between the two shrines:
DEO VINO
TONO SILVA
NO AVG T
[.]ṚBIVS PRI
[…]NVS P̣Ṛ
Deo Vino | tono Silva | no Aug(usto) T(itus) | [?O]ṛbius Pri | [?sci]nus p̣ṛ | [aef](ectus) [coh(ortis) I Thrac(um)] | [v(otum) s(olvit) l(aetus) l(ibens) m(erito)]
To the god Vinotonus Silvanus Augustus, Titus Orbius Priscinus, prefect [of the First Cohort of Thracians, gladly, willingly, and deservedly fulfilled his vow]
This was the second altar that has been found which is definitely dedicated to Vinotonus Silvanus, this time with the addition of ‘Augustus’, the first example of this association found in Britain3.
So could the enigmatic figure on the Stang Amulet be the Brigantian god Vinotonus? As Ian Richmond outlined in his quotation above, our only clue to the nature of Vinotonus is this connection with the Roman god Silvanus. Silvanus is the Roman god of agriculture, fields, herds and flocks. His name means “Lord of the Woods (silvae)” and he also has a “bosky side”4 as a forest god and patron of hunting. Silvanus is sometimes equated with the Greek horned god Pan5 – could it be in this horned aspect that we find a connection?
The figure on the Stang Amulet is horned and possibly phallic:
the concept of a horned god is a familiar one in prehistory, and cults involving horned gods are well attested in sculptures from Britain. The horns of the figure in the Scargill amulet are bull horns and it is interesting to note that Ross (1967) considers that the Brigantian horned god was usually bull-horned. He is, too, often shown as phallic and it is possible to interpret the curious tripod of the figure as legs and a phallus.
Denis Coggins, ‘A Celtic amulet from Co. Durham’, Antiquity, July 1982, pages 139-142, page 140
Anne Ross believed there exists a distinct native horned god of the Brigantian region of the north of England. This deity was bull-horned and frequently phallic, as opposed to the stag-horned and usually non-phallic god of the Gauls. Could the name ‘Vinotonus’ be an epithet for this native Brigantian horned god?
Ross argued that examples of the warrior / Mars aspect of this Brigantian bull-horned god can be seen more often in images from the western side of the territory such as these found near Maryport on the Cumbrian coast and Burgh by Sands to the north west of Carlisle:
According to Ross on the other side of the Pennines, in the eastern region of the territory of the Brigantes, representations of the bull-horned god were found more often in its less war-like hunter / Silvanus aspect. An example that Ross gives of this is a horned figure from the fort of Bremenium (High Rochester) in Northumberland, north of Hadrian’s wall:
Ross argued that representations of this bull-horned god could also be seen in some representations of heads that have been discovered in the Brigantian region. In this context she refers to a horned head found near the fort of Magna (Carvoran) in Northumberland on the Stanegate just south of Hadrian’s Wall:
Also a bronze horned figure found in the foundations of the city wall of Isurium Brigantum (Aldbrough) which is said to be a chariot terret ring:
Possibly we may now be able to add to these examples of the Brigantian horned god this clay face-mask found in 1972 at Cataractonium in the foundations of a temple:
The Stang amulet is similarly rudimentary as the stone engravings of horned figures and the stone horned head above, all suggestive of vigor, virility and power. But with its globular rather than lentoid eyes, elongated triangular head and celestial imagery of moon and star it appears quite different to the earthy native British iconography seen in all the examples above, even in the more sophisticated bronze chariot terret and clay ritual face mask. The figure on the Stang amulet appears to be flying, as if some sort of cross between a human figure and a bird. Despite being horned and possibly phallic, it looks nothing like any Brigantian horned figure so far discovered.
So could Percival Turnbull have been right – could the Stang amulet be middle eastern? Sadly, Turnbull is no longer around to ask as he died in 2016 – so again back to the drawing board. The only starting point I could think of is that to me the figure looks a bit like an owl flying in the night sky. The only image I know of that features a middle eastern deity with an owl is the Queen of the Night Relief, which I originally thought was the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna, also known as Ishtar, but have since discovered is now widely believed to be Ereshkigal, the Mesopotamian goddess of the underworld:
This is clearly a female deity, whereas the image on the Stang Amulet appears very masculine, even phallic. Apparently there are no other instances of owls represented in ancient Near Eastern art6 so it seems no masculine deity from there was connected with owls. Again, a dead end.
However, when browsing through information about Ishtar’s father, the Mesopotamian moon god Sin / Nanna, I read the following:
Despite Sin’s popularity documented in textual sources, depictions of him are not common in Mesopotamian art.[75] His most common attribute was the crescent.[3][76] In accordance with the appearance of the new moon in the latitude of Mesopotamia, it was consistently represented as recumbent.[77] It was frequently compared to bull horns[3]
Like other Mesopotamian gods Sin was depicted as a mature, bearded man[82] dressed in a flounced robe.[83] In some cases he holds a mace or a stick, with the latter occurring particularly often, though these attributes were not exclusively associated with him and cannot be used to identify depictions of him.[78] A further object associated with him in art was a tripod, possibly a candelabrum, sometimes with a lunar crescent on top and with an unidentified sandal-like object hanging from it.[84]
Wikipedia (my emphasis)
The reference to a tripod got my attention as a possible lead. I followed the link for footnote 84: “Collon, Dominique (1997), “Mondgott B. In der Bildkunst · Moon god B. In visual art”, Reallexikon der Assyriologie, retrieved 2023-07-28″, but it didn’t give any more information.
I felt like I was on to something though, and after a bit of Googling various key words I found the paper The Bull and its Two Masters: Moon and Storm Deities in Relation to the Bull in Ancient Near Eastern Art written by Tallay Ornan in 2001. On page 2 was this:
Finally, something that looked a little bit like the Stang Amulet!
This image was a stele, dated to the 8th century B.C.E, found at a place known as et-Tell, which is believed by some archaeologists to be the site of the biblical New Testament city of Bethsaida. The stele was found in 1997 during excavations of the city gate7 and is now held in The Israel Museum.
It is thought that the bull-headed figure probably symbolized either the the Canaanite storm god Hadad, responsible for rainfall and so the success of the crops and fertility who wore a bull-horned head-dress, or the Mesopotamian moon god Sin / Nanna, a pastoral deity associated with cattle. Alternatively, it may have represented a fusion of the two.
In the summer of 2019 a similar but older stele was found at the same site, on the opposite side of the city gate, and was dated to the 10th century B.C.E. This one is generally regarded as being the moon god8.
This is only the sixth stele so far found featuring the iconography of a central pole surmounted by upwardly curved horns and crossed by two downward semicircles or lines to represent arms and legs. Similar images were also found on rock carvings at Hispin in the Golan Heights and on a seal from Tel Abel Beth Maacah.
All of these apart from one, the Gaziantep stele in Turkey, have been found quite close together in a south Syrian context:
And as the second map below shows, Gaziantep is not far from Syria, being only 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of Aleppo:
So we managed to find an image that matches the iconography of the Stang Amulet in respect of the ‘tripod’ at the base of it and its bull horns. But it doesn’t match its celestial, bird-like quality, flying above the moon and the stars. The storm god Hadad was also known as Ba’al Hadad, or simply Ba’al. The Wikipedia page on Ba’al notes that a widely used epithet for the god was “rider of the clouds” which gets us closer, but I still couldn’t find any bird iconography for Hadad / Ba’al. Then, in a strange synchronicity, Dr. Justin Sledge, he of the previous amusing ‘Trident of Paracelsus’ amulet story, posted a video on Ba’al on December 11th and came to the rescue in the nick of time.
Ba’al Hadad was also known as Ba’al Shamin, Ba’al of the Heavens – “Baalshamin was one of the two supreme gods and the sky god of pre-Islamic Palmyra in ancient Syria. There his attributes were the eagle and the lightning bolt …”. One of the most famous images of Baalshamin is the door lintel from his temple at Palmyra, now destroyed by Islamic State.
What I had taken to be an image of a cross between an anthropomorphic figure and a owl was in fact a a cross between an anthropomorphic figure and an eagle. The Stang Amulet is Baalshamin. Percival Turnbull was right.
So how did the image of a 3000 year old storm and sky god from Syria end up on a desolate high moor on the County Durham / North Yorkshire border? Tim Laurie, the president of the Swaledale and Arkengarthdale Archaeology Group (SWAAG), as mentioned previously, had a number of conversations with Turnbull about the provenance of the amulet, and apparently Turnbull was of the opinion it was probably dropped by one of the many oil workers returning home to the north east with archaeological objects collected from the Middle East. This sounds a bit strange to me though. Yes, a lot of (mainly men) from the north east of England did work in the oil industry from the mid 1970’s onwards. But the vast majority of them did not go anywhere near Syria as part of their work. They worked on the rigs in the North Sea and, being extremely well paid, would have gone on holiday to places like Florida or the Caribbean. Syria would almost certainly not have been on the list of holiday destinations – it was mainly hippies who went to the Near East in the late 1970s.
Another reason why I think Percival Turnbull was wrong about how the the Stang Amulet got here is that I don’t believe it was engraved in Syria. Its image of the waxing crescent moon, not visible on Denis Coggins photograph but illustrated by Ted Seaton in his sketch, is wrong. The crescent moon is not recumbent as it would have been seen from the latitude of the Near East – it is on its side, as would be seen from the latitude of northern Europe. So who made it and then dropped it as they crossed a moor in central Britain, just south of Hadrian’s wall?
What is now the north of England was one of the most heavily garrisoned areas of Britain after the Brigantian Queen Cartimandua’s loss of power over her Roman client kingdom in 69AD. Auxiliary soldiers from across the empire were garrisoned at forts throughout its very northern edge. Perhaps the most exotic of these were the Cohors Prima Hamiorum Sagittariorum, a cohort of Syrian archers from Hama, a city 132 miles (213 kilometres) north of Damascus. We know that the unit was stationed for some time at the fortress of Magnis in the early second century.
Here is a final thought – one which is conjecture but which I will leave you with. Could it be that nearly 2000 years ago a cold and homesick Syrian archer with a sharp eye and a steady hand engraved a small stone with an image of his mighty and powerful god Baalshamin as an amulet to protect him as he marched across the bleak moors of the recently conquered territory of Brigantia, and one day, on one of the highest and most desolate of those moors, he left it as an offering to honour the might and power of a Brigantian god whose strange lands he now walked upon, a god he knew as Vinotonus?
Notes:
1Ted went on to find the Middleham Jewel on a bridle path near Middleham Castle – Middleham Jewel – Wikipedia
2 As Richard Wright comments in the article – “From Bollihope Common, Stanhope, Weardale, we have the well-known altar to Silvanus Invictus put up by Gaius Tetius Veturius Micianus, prefect of the Sebosian cavalry-regiment, to record the killing of a ‘wild boar of remarkable form which many of his predecessors had been unable to catch.'” (page 385)
3 RIB 3251. Altar dedicated to Vinotonus Silvanus Augustus. Intriguingly, Kenneth Fairless in his 1989 Durham University Doctoral thesis has suggested that the site where this altar was discovered, between the prefect’s circular shrine and the centurion’s rectangular one, may possibly be the site of another, third, shrine – or that there may be another shrine further downstream on the east bank of the East Black Sike (Volume 2, pages 505-6).
4 Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study In Roman Folk Religion, 1992 (page 10). This is an excellent but very difficult to find book so I have made it available here. I was puzzled why I could not find any other academic books or papers by Peter F. Dorcey. I discovered that he had died of AIDS related illnesses in 1994. There is a tribute to and photograph of him on The AIDS Memorial page on Instagram.
5 Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study In Roman Folk Religion, 1992 (page 40).
6 Pauline Albenda, 2005. “The ‘Queen of the Night’ plaque: a revisit.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Volume 125, pages 171-190, page 185 (really poor scan, almost illegible but appears to be the only copy freely available).
7 The website of American bible teacher Galyn Wiemers visit to the site has some extraordinary images of what is presumably a reproduction of stele in situ by the city gate.
8 There is an excellent article on this on the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz website; clicking on the link on the Reddit article will avoid the paywall.
Further Reading:
Aldhouse-Green, Miranda, Symbol and Image in Celtic Religious Art, 1989
Belief in the North East – Aspects of religion in the Roman period
Dorcey, Peter F., The Cult of Silvanus: A Study In Roman Folk Religion, 1992
Fairless, Kenneth J., Aspects of the archaeology of the Brigantes: Volume 2, Durham University thesis, 1989
Goodchild, R. G., A Priest’s Sceptre from the Romano-Celtic Temple at Farley Heath, Surrey, The Antiquaries Journal, 1938 , Volume 18 Issue 4, pages 391-396
Gray, John, Near Eastern Mythology. London, Hamlyn,1969
Richmond, Ian A., ‘Two Roman Shrines to Vinotonus on Scargill Moor, Near Bowes’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Volume 37, Part 145, 1948-1951, pages 107-116
Ross, Anne, ‘The Horned God of the Brigantes’, Archaeologia Aeliana Series 4, Volume 39, 1961, pages 63-85
Ross, Anne, Pagan Celtic Britain, 1967
Toynbee, J. M.C., Art In Britain Under The Romans, 1964
van der Weij, Anna, Deabus et Dis Communibus [Thesis on the religious identity of auxiliary soldiers on the northern frontier of Roman Britain], Utrecht University, 2017
Wright, Richard Pearson, ‘A Roman Shrine to Silvanus on Scargill Moor’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Volume 36, Part 143, 1939-1947, pages 383-386
Wright, Richard Pearson, ‘The Cult of Silvanus in Roman Britain, And His Equation With Vinotonus’, The Durham University Journal, Volume 40, No.2 (New Series Volume 9, No.2), March 1948, pages 56-58