GALLOWAY, SCOTLAND—The Guardian reports that the restoration of an unusual artifact from the Galloway Hoard, which was discovered in western Scotland in 2014, has been completed. The artifact, a Roman rock crystal jar intricately decorated with gold thread some 600 years later, had been wrapped in a leather pouch lined with silk imported from Asia and buried around A.D. 900 with some 100 other objects, including a bird-shaped gold pin and a silver-gilt vessel. A Latin inscription on the jar’s gold base reads “Bishop Hyguald had me made,” indicating that some of the treasures in the hoard may have come from a church in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, which included the region where the hoard was found. Martin Goldberg of National Museums Scotland said the rock crystal vessel may have held an imported oil. “There were certain types of exotic oil that were used in anointing kings and ecclesiastical ceremonies,” he explained. The items may have been buried by a monk who feared a Viking raid, or by a Viking who buried the plunder so that it could be accessed in the afterlife, as described in Norse sagas. To read about one of the largest Viking hoards unearthed in Scotland, go to "Viking Treasure Trove."
