Agate bowl

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The agate bowl
Side view of the agate bowl

The agate bowl in the treasury of the Vienna Hofburg is one of the two inalienable heirlooms of the House of Habsburg - the other is the Ainkhürn .

After the death of Emperor Ferdinand I , it was agreed that these two pieces should belong to all lines and should neither be sold nor given away.

The bowl is made of one piece of agate , its diameter is 58 to 58.5 cm with a handle 76 cm in span. The bowl dates from the 4th century . In the 18th century it was reported that the bowl was captured during the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 and later came into the possession of Charles the Bold . With the Burgundian inheritance, it came into the possession of the Habsburgs. The sources for this are lost.

The alleged lettering

The agate bowl was considered a natural wonder because of its size. Its peculiarity is that in earlier times something was recognizable that looked like writing. The lettering read: B.XRISTO.RI.XXPP. This was related to Jesus Christ and the bowl was treated as a relic ; it was even considered the Holy Grail .

After the restoration in 1951 , this font is said to have been recognizable again for a short time. The art historian Rudolf Egger read "ARISTO" at the time and interpreted it as the name of the stone cutter.

But there was also the theory that the inscription is an optical illusion, as the shell is criss-crossed by water veins.

On October 29, 2009 an employee of the treasury discovered this lettering again in the course of ORF filming. With their help, everyone else in the room was also able to recognize the sequence of letters after a certain time, which is barely visible to the naked eye. This enabled the television team to film the inscription under a certain exposure and camera position.

The lettering "XRISTO" results from the grain of the agate itself (recognizable as slightly darker lines) and thus represents a game of nature .

literature

  • Rudolf Noll: To the agate bowl ("Hl.Gral") in the Viennese treasury . In: Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historical class 1981, 118, ZDB -ID 30498-0 , pp. 134-136.
  • Hermann Fillitz : On the question of the inscription on the large agate bowl of the Vienna Treasury . In: Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historical class 1986, 123, pp. 231–234.
  • Wolfgang Oberleitner: Again to the "inscription" of the large agate bowl in the Vienna treasury . In: Annual Books of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna 60, 1990, ISSN  0078-3579 , pp. 121–128.
  • Hermann Fillitz: Reply (to Wolfgang Oberleitner, 1990) . In: Annual Books of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna 61, 1991/1992, p. 128.

Web links

Commons : Agate Bowl  - collection of images, videos and audio files