Title

Ladles of Tiermes

Anónimo procedente de Castilla y León

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Material

Technique

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

Trullae are Roman vessels with handles, made of materials such as silver, bronze, ceramic and glass. In 1885, near the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Tiermes, a farmer plowing his land discovered two silver trullae that, together, weighed about one kilogram (García and Bellido, 1966).

For the first time, in 1886, the Royal Academy of History, through academician Pujol y Camps, prepared a report on these pieces. However, he made a mistake by locating the place of the find in a town with a similar name, in the province of Madrid. Two years later, Nicolás Rabal, professor of the National Institute of Secondary Education of Soria, corrected this mistake, locating the discovery in Tiermes. In addition, Rabal reported that the pieces had been acquired by weight by a merchant and that later an antique dealer in Segovia resold them, obtaining a profit of 6,000 reales. This fact motivated the farmers to keep the objects they found in their lands in order to sell them directly and obtain greater profits (García and Bellido, 1966).

Rabal, in addition to reconstructing the history of the find, made an analysis of the pieces, describing their decoration and symbology. However, neither he nor Pujol and Camps had direct access to the trullae, so the description was based on observations of third parties, resulting in inaccuracies (Garcia and Bellido, 1966).

Four years later, in 1892, these pieces were written about again, although on this occasion not two, but four were mentioned. These were two other trullae discovered in the same place shortly after the first ones.

In the bulletin of the Royal Academy of History of 1892, Fidel Fita reported that the first two pieces had been acquired by Nicolás Duque, an antiquarian from Segovia, and that he had the opportunity to examine them personally in the latter's museum (García y Bellido, 1966).

The other two pieces became part of the collection of Cánovas del Castillo and after his death came to the collection of Antonio Vives y Escudero, losing their whereabouts from here on.

Nicolás Duque sold his two trullae to Stanislas Baron, an antique dealer based in Paris. In 1905 they appear no longer in Baron's possession but in the Ernest Guilhou Collection and offered for sale in Paris at the Hotel Drouot, where they were acquired by Huntington, who gave them to the Hispanic Society of America (García y Bellido, 1966).

Description

The two trullae preserved at the Hispanic Society of America and dated between A.D. 100 and 125 are notable for their similar design, with truncated cone-shaped bowls and curved walls. These pieces, conceived as a set, can be stored one inside the other. Their handles have inverted reliefs, creating a mirror effect, and are decorated with motifs distributed in five registers: Bacchic satyr masks, a pedum, a simpulum, a resting goat, a liknon, a thyrsus and a cist. All these elements are linked to the Bacchic cult and fertility rituals. Sculpted swan or mallard heads are also seen on the ends of the handles (Codding 2017, 93).

On the back of the handles, both pieces bear engraved inscriptions in capital letters formed by fine dots. The first, "GN. CARVICI", is interpreted as a genitive identifying the original owner, Gnaeus Carvicius, whose nomen may be of Celtic origin. Parallel and inverted, a second smaller inscription preserves only eight legible letters: "MARI. LATA", possibly belonging to a later owner. On the base of each trulla there is also a capital "D" engraved with a punch (García and Bellido, 1966).

These pieces combine functionality and symbolism, reflecting Roman cultural and religious practices. Because of their decoration and characteristics, they could have been used in libation rituals or have been part of a funerary trousseau, like other trullae found in similar contexts in the Iberian peninsula (Codding 2017, 93).

Locations

• II B.C. - XIX^th c.

  archeological site

  Tiermes, Montejo de Tiermes (Spain)

• XIX^th c. - Early XX^th c.

  dealer/antiquarian

  Nicolás Duque Peláez, Segovia (Spain) *

• Early XX^th c. - 1905

  private collection

  Stanislas Baron, Paris (France) *

• 1905

  private collection

  Ernest Guilhou, Paris (France) *

• 1905

  private collection

  Archer Milton Huntington, New York (United States) *

• 1905 - present

  museum

  The Hispanic Society of America, New York (United States)