Zalai Múzeum 11. Kereszténység Pannóniában az első évezredben (Zalaegerszeg, 2002)

Topál, Judit: Early Christian Graves in the Western Cemetery of the Military Town in Aquincum, Pannonia

Early Christian Graves in the Western Cemetery of the Military Town in Aquincum, Pannónia 69 corner of Raktár and Körte streets, in the north-western zone of the canabae NAGY L. 1931 may have been the focus of a sub-Roman graveyard bordered by Hunor and Vihar streets NAGY M. p. 360, Fundliste 1. with further literature. An other chapel with five foils outside the southwestern corner of the late Roman fortress may have served the same purpose PARRAGI 1976. Both of them are situated relatively close to the abovementioned Western cemetery along the Bécsi road, where seven separable graveyards may have been distinguished so far. One of them (fig. 3. IV) came to light at the laying of the district heating pipe, partly in the shaft sunk in front of the house Bécsi út Nr. 203, under the road and at the opposite side (fig. 4). At a depth of five metres and on about sixty square metres eight west-east aligned inhumation burials were uncovered by the earth moving machinery. Six of them were made of secondarily used stone slabs fastened up a large amount of white mortar, two coffins consisted of roof-tiles and bricks. Two graves of the former type (nr. 4 and 6) in the south-western corner of the shaft no.l. were almost entirely left in the walls of the ditch because of statics. As a matter of facts we could explore three more or less undisturbed burials here, the capstones of the other coffins and, sometimes, the grater part of the graves, were smashed by bulldozing. In spite of this miserable circumstances in all the three cases (graves No. 3, 7 and 8) we could observe that the inner surface of the stone coffins were thickly plastered with mortar containing a large amount of lime, a feature very similar to plaster-packing in early Christian graves of Italia, Raetia and Germania. In these cases the reliefs of the re-used steles,, e.g. figures of the deceased, funeral feast, calo with horse, etc. were even more carefully chipped than in case of a"pagan" grave. Moreover at the double burial in the grave no. 3, the second corpse was surrounded all around by very fine, pure semi-liquid or pulpified clay, presumably to separate the later burial from the former individuum who may have died not long before. One of the three glass vessels, an extra large bulbous flask (Fig. 5) was put carefully on the top of this layer of clay, the glass flagon and beaker (Fig. 67.) at the feet of the adult woman. Similarly our grave no. 7 contained a glass flagon and beaker as well, obviously a very frequent combination of grave-goods in sub-Roman-Early Christian burials symbolizing the refrigerivm, what is more, by the opininon of several, mostly Hungarian experts, the Eucharistia BONIS 565BARKÓCZI 126 - BÍRÓ 173 - PÓCZY fig. 10 SÁGI 244 - THOMAS 279, but first of all on the wall-painting of the rave-chamber no. II in Sopianae, FÜLEP pl. XX. Our grave no. 8 (in greater part in the wall of the shaft) consisted of undressed limestone slabs laid face downwards, the inner surface was thickly plastered with white mortar. There was only one grave-good found: on the annular finger of the left hand a ring of thin bronze cable with a centre-piece representing the Christogram (fig. 8). On the basis of the above-mentioned and in these context, the owner of the ring, an elderly woman can be rightly called Christian. An even more convincing find came to light during the pressing through the heating tube under the road. The headlight of the machine cast upon a painted stone (fig. 9-10) which was immediately raised. It proved to be a portion of the western wall of a grave-chamber (grave no. 9), the other three? walls were probably smashed and taken away by the machine (night shift). The limestone slab bore a poorly preserved fresco, representing the Chirho with alpha and ómega between two dove-like singing-birds and olive-branches. Above this zone the lattice pattern symbolizes the fence of the Garden of the Paradise, the same motif as could be seen on the doorpost of the "house-church" in the canabae legionis (Kiscelli street) PÓCZY fig. 68 and on the southern wall (also at the entrance) of the grave-chamber no. 2 at Sopianae FÜLEP pl. XXI/

1-2. We have no information either of the skeleton(s) or of grave-good(s), the bottom of the chamber was - reputedly - made of bricks. From the earth, near the stone the middle portion of a bone hump-backed comb and a broze belt-buckle were collected. In the shaft No. 2 sunken at the opposite side of the Bécsi road we explored five more graves, all of them consisted of roof-tiles and bricks with the common late Roman grave-goods, i.e. snake-head bronze cable bracelet, silvered bronze belt-buckle with independent pinched-in hinge, glass beaker, flask and double-unguentarium, etc. They were also west-east aligned and contained inhumation burials except one (no. 13) where only two tiny splinters of calcined human bones were found under the roof-tile laid upwards. On this tegula four pottery vessels were deposited covered with an other roof-tile laid downwards forming this way a sort of low /egw/ae-chamber. The pots contained red, dull ochre and white paint mixed with earth. If this object was a grave, it might have been the grave of a painter artisan who had helped to decorate the graves of his fellow-worshippers to God. According the preliminary spectometric analysis of this paint-remnants carried out by David Smith (Museum of Natural History, Paris) the results are the following: two of the pots contained red paint obtained from hematite, goethite and lead, the third one contained white paint deriving from lead carbide with traces of gypsum, while in the fourth sample only calcite could be detected. These paints were probably not used in making the frescoes, since they could not be placed on fresh plaster owing to their lead content. I have to mention one more object which came to light in the graveyard VI, north from this one, in a simple earth-grave (no. 122) which was overlain by an other late Roman inhumation burial (no. 113, with a layer of white gypsum or lime !?) TOPÁL 1993, pp. 49-51, PI. 70-2, 160-1. It was the grave of a mature male aligned