Intaglio depicting two cupids picking grapes from a tree with a goat-like creature beside themNorthumberland National Park
Posted on 11/09/2025 5:36:53 AM PST by SunkenCiv
BBC News reports that an intaglio that may have been set as a signet ring, Roman pottery, military items, jewelry, and a bronze lamp were unearthed at the site of Bremenium Fort, which is located in northern England. The fort is situated north of Hadrian's Wall on a Roman road that connected York to Corbridge and Melrose. The intaglio, carved from red stone, bears an image of two cupids picking grapes with a goat-like creature waiting beside them. Similarly carved intaglios have been found in Dalmatia and northern Italy. "It seems likely that the gem reflects the likely origin of the wearer who may have come from the Mediterranean," said archaeologist Richard Carlton of Newcastle University. To read about a knife handle found at Corbridge that depicts a gladiator, go to "Hero Worship."
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
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The other GGG topics added since the previous digest ping, alpha:
Intaglio depicting two cupids picking grapes from a tree with a goat-like creature beside themNorthumberland National Park
Weekly digest topic links are up top. Feel free to congratulate me on a possible small personal victory, although I'm not going to tell you what it is. 😎
Someone in China will now make replicas and sell them on EBay as authentic artifacts.
Someone in China will now make replicas and sell them on EBay as authentic artifacts.
They look like flamingos.
I see leaves and branches. I see neither cupids nor goats.
Something that might be a tree is at the upper end. Springing from a cleft in hills or rocks(?)…next to a waterfall(???). Really hard to tell!
It’s tiny, so the carving is tiny and stylized. I looked for a larger image, and remarkably, the search hit for images came up with three, one of them was this one in this topic, the other two were of the site.
https://search.brave.com/images?q=Northumberland+National+Park+bremenium+intaglio
Do you see the two cupids picking grapes?
Larger image, the cupids are standing up picking on the right, the goat is a stretched out image on the left.
https://archaeologymag.com/wp-content/uploads/bremenium-fort-excavation-4.jpg
And someone will buy them. 😊
Yeah, I was like “Oh wow, cupids and a goat! Picking grapes!”
But now I am sad because I do not see them....
It would help to see the positive image that this produces. Its like an optical illusion, trying to figure it out.
Congratulations on your small personal victory! Potentially.
I am also happy when I lose a pound.
On another note, those look like a bird of paradise, which used to a sign a royalty or great success. (Doing this from memory)
But what the ring is doing in Britain is another story.
The video narration indicates it's from Greek myth, but it must be deep off into it somewhere. Possibly it's related to the Dionysian mysteries, which are lousy with figs and other food, and was tangled up with Cupid, Eros, satyrs, and goats. Could be from a then-familiar reference that now survives in a single surviving fragment, something like that. Dionysus probably would have been a wealthy rapper if he'd A) not been fictional and B) had lived in this era. Or perhaps he was the Sam Kinison of Greek myth.
Thanks! But weight loss? At this point the Corps of Engineers wants to be notified when I travel more than 30 miles, something to do with altering the rotation of the Earth.
Good call. Wouldn’t hurt to turn and stretch the image to put a few pounds on their frames. The goat appears to be standing on its hind legs to eat figs from the same tree. The middle figure shows the foreground Cupid has a basket or pail to hold the figs.
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