Rome is an ancient city with a long history, which has always been the focus of attention of archaeologists, and there have been surprising discoveries in archaeological research in recent years. For example, experts once found a special copper foot, which at first people thought was some kind of work of art, but after studying it, they found that there was a custom behind it... What's going on here? The following Xiaobian will reveal it to you.
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In March 2019, Italian archaeologists surveyed and found the ruins of an ancient Roman temple in a town about 50 kilometers north of Rome. At that time, the discovery of temples in Rome was not a novelty, so experts also felt very ordinary, as usual, and cleaned and excavated them step by step. However, to everyone's surprise, the size of the temple site is rare, and preliminary investigation has determined that there are almost 3 football fields in size. After more than 3 months of cleaning, experts unearthed many stone statues, pottery utensils and some bronze weapons, but the most surprising thing for experts was that many ceramic figurines were found on the northwest side of the temple site.
Most of these figurines are made of red clay, most of which have been broken, only a small part can be pieced together, most of them are fragmented limbs, and they are also different in size, such as separate arms, separate legs and separate heads, as well as some fingers or ears, noses, etc. It is worth mentioning that among the many pottery limbs, experts also found a bronze cast foot, which is almost exactly the same size as the real human foot.
The bronze foot is about 22.3 centimeters long and contains the soles of the foot and a section of the neck of the foot, and wears a pair of flip-flops on the feet. Experts wonder what this bronze foot is for. Some experts say that the bronze foot is a work of art, while others believe that it is a sacrifice. The so-called "sacrifice" is something that is sacrificed to the gods. After in-depth research, the experts found that there was a custom of sacrifice in the ancient Roman period, and it was also closely related to the medical treatment of ancient Rome.
In the ancient Roman period, the level of medical care in society was relatively backward, and people usually had two solutions after getting sick, one was to seek treatment from a doctor, and the other was to pray to the gods. For the ancient Romans, they were sometimes extremely distrustful of doctors, so praying to the gods became their only way to get rid of diseases. At that time, the ancient Roman healer was called Escolapios, and he also had a scepter entangled with snakes, which is now the symbol of the World Health Organization.
As long as the sick man prays to Escorabios and touches the part of the disease with Escorabios's snake staff, the part with the disease will soon be healed. When the patient was cured, he would make a pottery statue of his treated part and sacrifice it to Escolabios in the temple. Ancient Roman experts said that the use of parts of the sacrifice is also very exquisite, if it is a person with ordinary family conditions, it will use red clay to burn pottery, if it is a wealthy person will burn bronze, if it is a member of the royal family, they will use silver or gold, or even jade, to make the part of the sacrifice.
It can be seen that the bronze foot unearthed by the experts from the temple is actually a sacrificial part. We can imagine that the man had a disease in his foot, such as a broken foot, a broken foot, or a pustules on his foot, and then he prayed to Escolabios prayerfully, and finally the foot disease was cured. So he spent a huge amount of money to have the craftsman cast a bronze foot based on the model of his healed foot, and finally he sacrificed the bronze foot to Escorabios. On the one hand, the bronze foot indicates the wealth and status of his master, and on the other hand, it proves that Escolabios can indeed manifest and relieve people of their sickness.
More than a thousand years have passed, and the temple has long since collapsed, but this bronze foot has been maintained to this day, which can be regarded as an unveiling of a little-known custom. To our people today, such a sacrifice sounds very superstitious, but it did solve many social medical problems at that time, so we should not criticize it, but should discover the historical value behind it.
Resources:
Pocket Museum: Ancient Rome by [English] Virginia Quimper Publisher: Shanghai Culture Publishing House
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's