Exceptional weapons, strange gods and gold jewels: the incredible Romanian treasures arrive in Madrid

One Alejandro, a native of Abonutico, a town located in the current Turkish coast that flows into theBlack Sea, was a false prophet of the second century D.C.that at a time of uncertainty he decided.He called Glykon, said he was born from the egg of an oce.In the Romanian city of Constance, in the Museum of History, the only sculpture of this unique god of Roman pantheon is preserved.

It is a work carved in a single marble block of impressive beauty, which hypnotizes just looking at it.And now it is exhibited in Madrid, in the National Archaeological Museum, within the framework of a temporary exhibition that is a real wonder: archaeological treasures of Romania.The Dacian and Roman roots - until February 27 -.For Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu, commissioner of the exhibition with the director of the Man Andrés CarreterFrom a millennium of history, from the seventh century to.C.Al VII d.C., from a country whose cultural wealth overwhelms beyond the legend of Dracula.

The exhibition assembly focuses on the time that Dacia was a Roman province, from the war triumph of Emperor Trajan in 106 D.C.Against the local monarch Decébalo, represented in his famous column of Rome, up to 271, when the pressure of the peoples of the other shore of the Danube during the reign of Aureliano became unsustainable for the legions.They were just under two centuries of Romanization that left an overwhelming influence on the region, from language to territorial administration and religious beliefs.

The archaeological findings of this period are very revealing: a written document on the creation of the municipality of Troesmis, a waxed wooden tablet in which a labor contract of a gold minine is collected, with its detailed salary and the punishments it would sufferof breaking it;propaganda currencies that not only reflected the divinity of the princeps, but also the fearsome Datch weapons that broke many Roman bones and became part of his armies;an amber statuette of Eros, the god of love, who sets a carriage thrown by a bird;or a funeral gravestone of a gladiator who died in the sand fighting against a bison.

But perhaps, from this exhibition that brings together pieces of forty Romanian museums-that is, the best of its historical heritage can now be seen in Spain-are the rooms dedicated to the pre-Roman period, to the refined and advanced Society Geto-Dacia."They were peoples of farmers and winners, very mobile, and their warrior evolution was determined by contact with the nomads of the eastern steppes, the Scythians, in the VII-VI centuries.C.", explains Ernest Oberländer.

Y además, protagonizaron un importante avance bélico: los arqueólogos han situado en la zona de los montes Cárpatos y la cuenca delBajo Danubio, a finales de la Primera Edad del Hierro, la aparición de un nuevo estilo de lucha a caballo usando arco y flechas y una espada corte de origen persa, la akinakes."At that time the use of equids as a symbol of social status was transformed," says the commissioner.The elite ornament its mounts with rich pieces of gold and silver, as reveals the set of harness accessories of the so -called Stâncesti Treasure.

Between the 5th century.C.And the change of was the Geto-Dacia society reached its climax.The trousseau of the princely tombs show that they were exceptional artisans of iron - a cauldron modeling in a unique way in Europe - and large cultivators of the golden jewels, such as the spectacular cotofenesti helmet, decorated with magical eyes that protected from theMaleficios and frightened the enemy and with scenes of a sacrifice of lamb and fantastic animals - rifes and sphinxes - who probably wore a child or a woman for his small dimensions."The Greek sources mention the existence of Amazonas in this area," reveals the director of the National Museum of History of Romania on the female population."But we have no concrete information that they were warriors.The aristocrats surely played some type of military paper, beyond the religious, for some discoveries made ".

Geto-Dacios were a town that drew important commercial, cultural and political contacts with the Greco-Roman world, the Celts or the traces.Those links that began in prehistory and extended until the late time, with the appearance of the "barbarians", is one of the conductive axes of a sample that precisely celebrates the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Romania and Spain.This explains the number of winks that the selected pieces and the exhibition discourse make to Hispania or the Iberian Peninsula from the Roman conquest, as a funeral gravestone of a soldier of the Cohors II Hispanorum found in the area of the iron doors of the iron ofDanube.

No less interesting is the last part of the sample, dedicated to the emergence of barbaric peoples in Dacia, such as Goths, Vandals and Alans, who crossed Europe reaching the Iberian Peninsula, and that reinforces that connection between the two countries.A period (II-VIII D centuries.C.) that witnessed a religious and social earthquake, but that, according to the pieces that are exhibited, also reaped delicious pieces, such as those that make up the treasure of Pietroasele, formed by spectacular gold fibulars in the form of eagles and a ritual vesselof the same material with the goddess mother earth in the center and other Germanic divinities around it.

Archaeological Treasures of Romania is a sensational exposure not only because of the quantitative level of the gathered pieces, many of which come out for the first time from their country.The tour is perfectly engaged and draws chronologically, with extensive information and themes - Belicosity, spiritual world, daily life, social division - a distant story but with many similarities to ours.It will undoubtedly be the best culture plans to perform in the coming months.

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