The Frienstedt Cemetery

Some 1,700 years ago a man from the Near East settled in a Germanic village in present-day Thuringia – and rose into its elite. His grave and the finds from Frienstedt tell a surprisingly cosmopolitan story about the Germanic peoples.

Frienstedt, today a western district of Erfurt, was in the Roman Imperial period a Germanic settlement in the fertile Thuringian Basin. For some 25 years the Thuringian State Office for Heritage and Archaeology has been excavating the site – and struck a whole series of small sensations.

The Comb of Frienstedt

The place is famous for an antler comb bearing a runic inscription from the 3rd century AD. It counts as the oldest evidence of West Germanic language – a tiny everyday object that opens a whole chapter of language history.

The Battle at the Harzhorn

In 235 AD the emperor Maximinus Thrax led a punitive campaign deep into Germania. On the march back, Germanic forces ambushed the Romans at the Harzhorn in southern Lower Saxony. Three-bladed arrowheads on the battlefield suggest that Parthian archers from the Roman province of Osrhoene (today the Turkey–Syria borderland) fought there – a standard auxiliary unit of the legions.

The Man from the Near East

In grave „Bf. 40" the researchers found a man whose DNA analysis showed Near Eastern origin. He lay at a cult place, right among the local elite – neighbouring graves held bronze vessels, silver arrowheads, a gold finger-ring; one person had a gold coin placed in the mouth. Was he one of the archers from the Harzhorn? A captive, a defector, a trader? We do not know – but he was a fully integrated part of this elite.

A Motley Elite

The astonishing thing: the Frienstedt upper class was no classic extended family. Apart from two half-sisters and a second cousin, no kinship could be established. At least one person probably came from Norway, and a costume points to the Baltic. They imported Roman goods in bulk and adopted a Roman lifestyle – a clay doll pierced with holes even stands in the tradition of Roman love-magic.

A cemetery in Thuringia

Near Frienstedt in Thuringia one of the largest cemeteries of the Roman imperial period and Migration Period in central Germany was excavated. It gives a rare, deep insight into the life of the Germanic population of this region.

Thousands of finds

Over centuries people buried their dead here with grave goods: brooches, weapons, implements, jewellery. In addition there was a large settlement. Frienstedt is thus an archive of Germanic everyday life between Rome and free Germania.

The comb with the inscription

A special find is a comb with a runic inscription. It reads as kaba – probably the Germanic word for "comb" itself. It is one of the oldest written testimonies of a West Germanic language and a small linguistic gem.

A window into the language

Such early runic inscriptions are precious: they show that people already knew writing and used it in everyday life. For us at GLANZ & GRAVUR the inscribed comb of Frienstedt is an especially fitting testimony – craft and writing in one piece.