Carved Jewel Uncovered at Roman Fort in Northern England

Archaeology Magazine ^ | October 29, 2025 | editors / unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

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The other GGG topics added since the previous digest ping, alpha:

• The Ancient Greeks Built the World's First Telegraph System -- 1,600 Years Before Morse Code [11/02/2025]
• "Behold The GARLIATH!": Enormous "Living Fossil" Hauled From Mississippi Floodplains Stuns Scientists [11/05/2025]
• Christie's to Offer Rare Dinosaur Skeleton in December Auction [11/08/2025]
• DNA From 19th Century Toads Solve 115-Year-Old Mystery As 3 New Species Discovered [11/06/2025]
• England's forgotten first king deserves to be famous, says Æthelstan biographer as anniversaries approach [11/04/2025]
• Few Denisovan Genes Detected in Japan's Jomon Hunter-Gatherers [11/07/2025]
• 5,000-Year-Old Jordan Site Reveals How Ancient Societies Responded to Collapse [11/06/2025]
• James Watson, Nobel Prize-winning co-discoverer of DNA's double-helix structure, dead at 97 [11/08/2025]
• The Legend Of Ol' Rip The Horned Toad Who Reportedly Survived 31 Years Of Hibernation And Met President Coolidge [11/02/2025]
• Massive Lost Prehistoric Stone Megastructures Discovered in Europe's Adriatic Hinterland [11/06/2025]
• Medieval Armor Unearthed in Georgia [11/04/2025]
• Medieval building partially collapses in Rome [8:53] [11/04/2025]
• MOWAA Archeological Project Releases Findings [11/04/2025]
• Name of Maya Queen Identified [11/06/2025]
• Paleoindian ochre mines in the submerged caves of the Yucatán Peninsula, Quintana Roo, Mexico [between 11.4 and 10.7 ka] [11/02/2025]
• Perperikon ["the European Machu Picchu"] [11/08/2025]
• Projectiles Recovered at Scotland's Culloden Battlefield [11/04/2025]
• Researchers Examine Scythian Animal Artifacts [11/06/2025]
• Roman Wells Unearthed in Hungary [11/03/2025]
• Scientists Analyze Ancient Skeletons Recovered from Croatian Well [11/03/2025]
• The 7thC Englishmen who inspired Lord of the Rings [8:01] [11/02/2025]
• Shays' Rebellion records found in cardboard box in Hampshire Sheriff's Office [11/07/2025]
• Stone-Wall Hunting Traps Identified in Chile [11/06/2025]
• £10,000 Says YOU Can't Prove This ROMAN EXPERT Wrong... [15:01] [11/04/2025]
• 1,300-Year-Old Saber Unearthed in Hungary [11/03/2025]
• 2,000-Year-Old Durotriges Tribe Discovery in Dorset Unveils Possible Human Sacrifice Ritual [11/03/2025]
• When did the Lighthouse of Alexandria Fall? [9:00] [11/07/2025]

[SunkenCiv]

Intaglio depicting two cupids picking grapes from a tree with a goat-like creature beside them

Northumberland National Park

[SunkenCiv]

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. 😎

[Dr. Franklin]

Someone in China will now make replicas and sell them on EBay as authentic artifacts.

[Dr. Franklin]

Someone in China will now make replicas and sell them on EBay as authentic artifacts.

[ComputerGuy]

They look like flamingos.

[Vaquero]

I see leaves and branches. I see neither cupids nor goats.

[BradyLS]

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!

[SunkenCiv]

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

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Do you see the two cupids picking grapes?

[SunkenCiv]

• Hadrian's Wall sites to visit, according to Northumberland National Park.

[SunkenCiv]

The two intaglios are shown on the palm of a hand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FGIj0dANVY&t=10

[SunkenCiv]

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

[SunkenCiv]

And someone will buy them. 😊

[Scarlett156]

Yeah, I was like “Oh wow, cupids and a goat! Picking grapes!”

But now I am sad because I do not see them....

[Empire_of_Liberty]

It would help to see the positive image that this produces. Its like an optical illusion, trying to figure it out.

[texas booster]

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.

[SunkenCiv]

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.

[SunkenCiv]

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.

[SunkenCiv]

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.