1,700-year-old Roman sarcophagus is unearthed in Budapest

Summary

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — A remarkably well-preserved Roman sarcophagus has been unearthed in Hungary’s capital, offering a rare window into the life of the young woman inside and the world she inhabited around 1,700 years ago.Archaeologists with the Budapest History Museum discovered the limestone coffin during a large-scale excavation in Óbuda, a northern district of the city that once formed part of Aquincum, a bustling Roman settlement on the Danube frontier.Untouched by looters and sealed for centuries, the sarcophagus was found with its stone lid still fixed in place, secured by metal clamps and molten lead. When researchers carefully lifted the lid, they uncovered a complete skeleton surrounded by dozens of artifacts.“The peculiarity of the finding is that it was a hermetically sealed sarcophagus. It was not disturbed previously, so it was intact,” said Gabriella Fényes, the excavation’s lead archaeologist. The coffin lay among the ruins of abandoned houses in a quarter of Aquincum vacated in the 3rd century and later repurposed as a burial ground. Nearby, researchers uncovered a Roman aqueduct and eight simpler graves, but none approaching the richness or pristine condition of the sealed tomb. Keeping with Roman funerary customs, the sarcophagus held an array of objects: two completely intact glass vessels, bronze figures and 140 coins. A bone hair pin, a piece of amber jewelry and traces of gold-threaded fabric, along with the size of the skeleton, point to the grave belonging to a young woman. The objects, Fényes said, were “items given to the deceased by her relatives for her eternal journey.”“The deceased was buried very carefully by her relatives. They must have really loved who they buried here,” she said.During the Roman period, much of what is now Hungary formed the province of Pannonia, whose frontier ran along the right bank of the Danube River less than a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the site. A short distance away stood a legionary camp guarding the...