Celtic Deer Amulet Pendant, Silver

Celtic Deer Amulet Pendant, Silver

Our Pendant is based on a massive belt mounting of the rich celtic burial at Hochscheid / Germany. It shows typical ornaments of the early Latène period and mythical deers, the animals of the god Cernunnos, master of the forest and the wild animals. Reduced to a wearable size of 32 mm diameter.

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The Celtic burial mounds of Hochscheid

The low mountain range in the Eifel and Hunsrück is home to a number of impressive archaeological monuments. The so-called Celtic "princely tombs" catch the eye, richly decorated burials from the older pre-Roman Iron Age. Between 475 and 350 BC, the Celtic upper class was buried under large mounds, neck and arm rings made of gold, fibulae, belt parts made of bronze and iron and two-wheeled chariots were regularly given to the high-ranking deceased on their final journey.

Four of the few grave mounds that were properly excavated are located near Hochscheid in the Hunsrück. Splendid weapons, brooches made of sheet gold and splendid belt fittings saw the sunlight again after 2500 years. A bronze belt ring, which served as a template for the replica, also belonged to them.

The goldsmiths who made the fine jewelry made use of a typical art style that kept experimenting with familiar shapes. Particularly common elements on numerous pieces of jewelery from the early La Tène period (the archaeological technical term) are bud or club-shaped thickenings, as can also be found on the present ring. For example, the golden chokers from Besseringen, Rheinheim and the well-known necklaces from Glauberg wear this strange ornament. The mythical ideas that can certainly be associated with it have, however, been lost over the millennia.

The interpretation of the stylized animals, probably deer, on the other hand, is plausible: The Celtic god Cernunnos is depicted with deer antlers even on the famous sacrificial cauldron by Gundestrup, which underlines the specialty of this animal in the Celtic cult. Esus-Cernunnos, whose head is also crowned by mistletoe leaves (see the representation of the Glauberg statue!), Seems to have been associated with life after death, the deer, as the Celtic myths from Ireland tell, lures the hunter into the impenetrable thicket of the woods.

Lit.: A. Haffner, Die keltischen Fürstengräber des Mittelrheingebietes, in: Hundert Meisterwerke keltischer Kunst, Katalog zur Ausstellung, Publ. Landesmus. Trier Nr. 7, 1992
P. Jakobsthal, Early Celtic Art (Oxford 1944)
A. Haffner, Die westliche Hunsrück-Eifel-Kultur, Röm. Germ. Forschungen 36 (Berlin 1976)