Budapest Régiségei 14. (1945)

ÉRTESÍTŐ - Szilágyi János: A Fővárosi Múzeum rómaikori kutatásai és az Aquincumi Múzeum gyarapodása az 1943-1944. években 451-467

• As the projecting turrets belong to the late Roman age and we found no traces of receding gate turrets, we are of the opinion that the northern gate of the A quincum civil town (see fig. 1) was perhaps built earlier without side turrets. This is not unprecedented, Thamugadi e. g. (to-day Timgad, NorthAfrica) which already existed in 100 A. D. (Holtzinger, Timgad 2—-3., Die Baukunst III, 1. Heft, ed. by Bormann u. Graul) and was about this time fitted out to be a camp, also possessed such a gate without turrets. The Aquincum civil town was also surrounded about the same time, at the beginning of the II

nd century, by a protective wall (Cf. L. Nagy, op. cit. 191). It was interesting to observe that, as an exception, the aerial photography maybe also deceptive. The builders of Óbuda had taken out the stones from the town-wall and in a few m. distance of the wall, made a pile of them. The soil covered this line and so on the photographs this elevation seemed to be the town-wall. In our previous report, we already mentioned the bigger (85 by 120 cm) Roman channel with stone walls (Budapest Régiségei XIII, 354 and 356) which was discovered first in the pier-pit created at the Óbuda bridge-head of the Árpád bridge in course of construction. In 1943 we followed this channel with parallel ditches toward W. in Tavasz street, on the site of the demolished houses, on the territory which is going to be filled up in order to build the ascent to the new bridge. This channel, which perhaps was used chiefly to convey the water already used from the thermae maiores excavated in Flórián square into the Danube, runs, as is shown by our investigations, in a length of more than 300 m. parallel to the axle of the new bridge (north to it, in the distance of 16 m) in E.-W. direction, then, for the next 40 m, for reasons unknown, it changes its direction 5 times (towards the South) when it seems to take up again its straight E.-W. line (see fig. 2.). We are going to describe it in detail in the next volume of Budapest Régiségei. Having thus arrived to the territory of the military colony (canabae) we survey briefly (without considering the sequence of the excavations) the results of our excavations on the different places of the canabae. On the corner of Calvin street and Tavasz street, the fragment of a bronze coat of mail with figured ornament (Mars) was discovered as a stray find. In Óbuda, at Szél street No 3 we have found during the foundation-works of a house painted wall-fragments (fig. 1.) bricks (with the stamp LEG II AD) and terra sigillata fragments (on one of them we see the stamp MVXTVLUM) among the ruins of a Roman building. At Körte street No. 20 we have found lateRoman stone coffins compsed of earlier tomb-stones and parts of stone coffins. These coffins belonged to the late-Roman cemetery in the surroundings of Raktár and Vihar street already described by L. Nagy (last in : Budapest Története I. 1942, 469—470). The detailed description of these graves, their grave furniture and stone plates with inscriptions is given by Éva Bonis in the same volume (the funerary inscription of P. Aeli Respectianus for the organisation of the collegia and the fragment of a mural painting with painted inscription are of special interest). During the demolishing of the houses around Polgár square, we collected from the walls some fragmentary stone monuments with inscriptions for our collection, e. g. the fragmentary tomb stone shown in fig. 2. The few letters allow only to guess the name of the deceased (cognomen: Ateres[sus?]) following the expression [D]M ( = Dis Manibus). On a fragment of an altar stone we only see the inscription MINERVÁÉ, whereas the reconstruction of the inscription found on a fragmentary altar stone shown in fig seems to be more interesting. See pages in the same volume. Among the rubbish, several bricks with stamps were also discovered, chiefly with the following stamp : LEG II AD (LEGio II ADiutrix) but on one of them we could read : COHOR. On the territory of the military colony we 464