I've always had a fascination with arms and armour and Roman soldiers. Today I dipped into the museum as it was bitingly cold outside and I had a freeish Saturday morning. I am really not sure if I have ever seen the Roman Exeter exhibits before, but for an hour I stared at strap ends, belt buckles, helmet hooks and a rusted dagger frame lost by legionaries visiting the bath house adjacent to the cathedral green. So early. The dagger reconstruction clearly portrayed the military men who occupied this city back then.
I remember the bathhouse when it was briefly excavated - I was small and it was probably in the 70s. I wish I could remember it more clearly.
There were legionary burial finds with pottery and bits of glassware, little statuettes found in cremations in holloway street. Mosaics and fragments of tile and hypocaust - Roman central heating. Fragments of a beautiful blue glass vessel - a modern reconstruction showed it with a charioteer ramping across it. (I love glass, particularly blue and green) Knife handles with snarling animals. Glass and amber beads, bowls of my favourite red samian ware, and jet bracelets, shale bracelets, gold finger rings.
Broken combs and an elaborate twisty handled mirror, tweezers and needles, a wooden shovel. It's a beautiful museum and I am embarrassed that I visit so rarely.
No comments:
Post a Comment