This hill in the northeast of Wales, near the town of Mold in Flintshire, from time immemorial was called Bryn yr Ellyllon, which means either Fairy Hill or Goblin Hill. There were legends among the locals that a traveler who found himself there at night could encounter all kinds of fabulous creatures. And you can be sure, he is unlikely to return alive.
For centuries, legends have been passed from mouth to mouth that supposedly untold treasures are hidden inside the Fairy Hill. They are guarded by guards dressed in armor of pure gold. At the beginning of the enlightened 19th century, educated people laughed at these legends. And as it turned out, in vain!
Fantastic find
On October 11, 1833, the landowner Mr. Langford sent his workers to Fairy Hill. According to one version, he needed limestone for the construction, and there was, as everyone knew, an old quarry. On the other, he wanted to clear the land for a new field. Be that as it may, the workers unexpectedly stumbled upon a grave covered with a grave stone. And it must be the same - at that moment the local priest Charles Butler Koch just approached the place of the find.
Koch was an avid lover of antiquities. At first glance, he realized that the small stone box, over which the workers were bending, might be an ossuary, that is, a capsule tomb. The priest immediately contacted the landowner, they sent the workers to dinner, and they themselves began to carefully retrieve the finds.
As soon as they pushed back the stone cover, it became clear that the grave had not been plundered. The sarcophagus contained human bones, which had suffered greatly from time, as well as a certain golden object that covered these bones. The item was very large.
Langford tried to pull it out along with the bones. Alas, as soon as he touched the gold find, as she did, and the bones began to disintegrate. Several rows of amber beads, which they put on the dead man, also crumbled when touched. So what was taken out of the stone sarcophagus were now fragments of bones, pieces of gold, separate beads. Only the bronze plates that once held the gold piece together are the best preserved. They weren't that fragile.
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Langford, seeing the find, immediately figured out how much it might cost. The priest thought differently. He asked the landowner to keep what he found and immediately wrote a letter to London, to the Antiquities Society. He described in detail the appearance of the find, its location in the sarcophagus and composition.
However, it took about three years before the British Museum responded to the message from Wales. By that time, part of the "gold treasure" had gone from hand to hand. Langford did not see fit to preserve the bones of the skeleton. Of the multitude of gold fragments, only three large, 12 smaller ones and a handful of gold crochets remained. And the beads, with the exception of one and only one, were taken away by the curious. For memory. They say that there were at least 200 of these beads …
Despite the state of the gold artifact from Mold, the museum bought it from Langford. After all, there were no such finds in England at that time. But it took more than a hundred years for scientists to find and assemble the missing parts, as well as begin the restoration of object 0902 - under this number it was included in the museum's catalog back in 1836.
Prince or princess?
The artifact was made from a whole sheet of gold and decorated with a relief of concentric rings around the entire circumference, completely covering the chest, back and shoulders almost to the elbow. The ornament on gold was applied extremely delicately, imitating beaded weaving and fabric folds. It consisted of protruding gold stripes and indentations, rows of large oval beads, pyramids, small round beads. For strength, the golden cape was planted on a coarse weave or leather and additionally fastened with bronze plates fixed with rivets. It took an ingot of gold about the size of a tennis ball to make the cape. Its weight was 560 grams, length in the lower part - 46.5 centimeters, width - 28 centimeters, near the neck - respectively 24 and 22 centimeters, height - 23.5 centimeters, thickness - 0.11 millimeters.
The drape was obviously worn over the head and could be part of a single ceremonial attire. At the same time, the artifact was not intended for permanent use and could not serve as a piece of clothing - on the sides, this golden "cocoon" would go down too low and would interfere with the movement of the hands.
Scientists of the 19th century associated the find with the names of the first Welsh kings who ruled the British Isles after the collapse of the Roman Empire. They believed that the cape was part of the royal mantle. Some saw it as an incorrectly attributed headdress (it was recommended to turn it over with a narrow part down and make it a hat).
Some experts even thought that the priest who described the find might have confused the human skeleton with the skeleton of a small horse, and that the golden cape was actually a horse bib. But this original idea had to be abandoned: after a complete restoration of the find, it became clear that a bib of this size could not even be worn on a pony. And for a tall man - too. The person who wore this cape was of a fragile constitution. Most likely a woman. Or a teenager. So who could this golden robe belong to? An ancient priestess? Young prince or princess?
And one more main question: when did the owner of the golden cape live? In the 5th century, after the departure of the Romans? Or in the 6th century BC, long before the Romans? Until 1953, when Terence Powell took up the study of the artifact, the 6th century BC was considered the lower time limit for a find. But, using new methods of dating and comparing the artifact with similarly made and ornamented objects, Powell came to the conclusion that the cape from Mold was much older. He dated the find to 1300 BC!
Search a woman
Modern experts have come to the conclusion that the artifact from Mold is even older. They pushed the dating back to 1900-1600 BC. This date correlates well with finds on the continent (in the French Ronger) and in neighboring Scotland (in Migdale and Melfort). The ornament on those artifacts is very similar to the ornament of the golden cape from Mold. Only now prehistoric finds with such an ornament are practically not found later than 2000 BC. The drape is an exception. She was a little late. Her modern products were made more massive, without so many small parts and such fragmentation of the form.
This technical perfection of the product, of course, baffles archaeologists. It is clear why its first researchers attributed the artifact to the early Middle Ages. They associated it with antique jewelry. And here - prehistoric Europe, the early Bronze Age!
But do not forget what monuments this early Bronze Age left in the British Isles. The most notable, of course, are the artifacts from Wessex. There were so many of them that it was even necessary to separate them into the so-called Wessex culture.
The inhabitants of South England, contemporaries of the burial in Molde, also left behind individual burials with very generous gifts to the deceased. More than a hundred of them have been found in Wiltshire. They erected stone structures of the same type as the builders of Stonehenge of the third wave, dating back to the 2nd millennium BC. By the way, they brought from the Baltic amber of the same type from which the bead found in the burial from Mold was made.
But the find from Mold has nothing to do with contemporary Wessex culture. And the ornamental motifs of the cape are in stark contrast to those of Wessex.
There are no analogues of the golden cape. But in Wales, there were very good craftsmen who made artifacts in the same tradition as in Mold. These items have been found in burials in the Eileen Valley, on the Flintshire Plateau, in the hills of the so-called Clevdien Ring and in the Berwyn Mountains. There are many stone circles, dolmens and cromlechs. And also burials. True, they date back to a later time. But even in the era of Mold, the Welsh priestesses (and here the Mother Progenitor was worshiped and the priestesses were women) performed magical rituals and sacrificed in these places.
It is likely that the woman buried in Molde was also a priestess. And very respected. Otherwise, she would not have been buried with so many amber beads and in a golden cape.
Mikhail ROMASHKO