The Berthouville Treasure

On 21 March 1830 a ploughman working a field near Berthouville in Normandy felt his share jar against a Roman roof tile. Lifting it, he found a mass of tarnished silver lying barely 20 cm below the surface. The farmer showed it to a local notable, word reached antiquaries, and the Cabinet des médailles of the Royal Library in Paris bought the lot for 15,000 francs after it had also been examined on behalf of the Louvre. That quick sale is why it was not melted down, the fate of most silver found in the nineteenth century.

The hoard turned out to be the treasury of a rural sanctuary. Later digs nearby uncovered a walled Gallo-Roman precinct with two temples and a theatre, and many of the vessels carry dedications to Mercury Canetonensis, Mercury of a place called Canetonum, in the territory of the Lexovii. Caesar had named Mercury as the chief god of the Gauls, and here he is shown in his Roman form but worshipped under a local name. The silver had been stowed in a built cache within the sanctuary.

About ninety objects survive, together some 25 kg of silver. Two statuettes show Mercury nude with his purse and caduceus; the larger stands about 60 cm high. A bust of a goddess, probably his mother Maia, comes from a similar group. The rest are vessels for libation and feasting: shallow phialai with medallions, handled paterae, ladles, cups and jugs, many pricked with the letters VSLM, the standard formula for a vow fulfilled.

The finest pieces were not made for a country shrine at all. A Roman citizen named Quintus Domitius Tutus gave a group of about nine luxury vessels, made in Italy in the first century AD, which had probably graced a wealthy dining room before he dedicated them. Among them are a pair of jugs with scenes from the Trojan War, including Achilles mourning Patroclus, and a pair of skyphoi with centaurs and cupids in such high relief that the figures almost leave the surface. Other pieces are plainer provincial work, scratched with the names of local donors, some Gaulish, some Latin.

Why the treasure was hidden is uncertain. It used to be blamed on invasion and panic in the later 2nd or 3rd century, but the careful packing has led some scholars to see an orderly storage or safekeeping rather than an emergency burial.

Between 2010 and 2014 the whole treasure was studied and conserved at the Getty Villa in Malibu, its first journey outside France. Removing old restorations and grime revealed gilding, inlays and fine engraving that had been invisible for generations. After a tour of American museums the silver returned to Paris, where it is now a centrepiece of the renovated BnF museum.