A temple on the edge of the Empire: an ancient Roman shrine discovered in the Netherlands
If one thinks of Ancient Rome, one will hardly think of the Low Countries, yet the emerged lands of that country on the North Sea were still part of the Roman Empire, they saw in Caesar their lord and were part of the Lower German Province.
Here, on the edge of the empire, an important archaeological site was identified, first identified in 2021 by the Association of Volunteers in Archeology (AWN) and then excavated by the RAAP. During excavations in Herwen-Hemeling (municipality of Zevenaar), RAAP researchers discovered a Roman sanctuary that contains idols, reliefs and painted plaster. Over the centuries, several temples with votive stones or full altars dedicated to Hercules Magusanus (a fusion of the Greco-Roman Hercules and a mythical hero named Magusanus), Jupiter-Serapis and Mercury have sprung up on the site. The team also found a large stone pit with a ladder and evidence of sacrificial pits and fires burning around the temples. therefore it was a question of an occasional of some importance.
The temple stood near the so-called "Germanic Wall", the final part of the Roman fortifications which had the task of separating the Roman civilization from the Germanic tribes who inhabited olltre and which, despite the exploits of Germanicus and Tiberius, Rome had never found economically convenient to subjugate. The cults of the Roman and Mediterranean gods therefore also arrived in these cold swampy times, the real limit of the Empire. After all, in Holland there were cities such as Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum, the current Nijmegen, and Forum Hadriani (Voorburg). This border temple probably served the military and citizen community living at the wall.
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The article A temple on the edge of the Empire: an ancient Roman shrine discovered in the Netherlands comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/un-tempio-ai-confini-dellimpero-scoperto-un-antico-sacrario-romano-nei-paesi-bassi/ on Wed, 22 Jun 2022 20:52:46 +0000.