Ring of Paußnitz

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The Ring of Paußnitz belongs to a treasure find that was made in 1898 by the landowner Emil Schreiber in Paußnitz near Strehla in the then Prussian province of Saxony . It is now in the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle (Saale) .

Find

The treasure was found clearing a tree . The ring and 500 coins, so-called bracteates from the 12th century, were in a ceramic vessel . The silver ring has a width of 5 mm and an outer diameter of 22 mm. It is divided into twelve fields with symbols. Its weight is 5.2 g. The silver content is 92.5 percent, but the origin could not be determined. The museum bought the ring for 15  marks .

Rediscovery and decryption

The ring is a "speaking" ring with a saying. For a long time the symbols in the fields were thought to be meaningless and the ring was kept in the depot until it was discovered there in 2001 by Arnold Muhl, who asked numerous experts for help with interpretation. In 2003, Friedrich Röhrer-Ertl, with the help of others, succeeded in reading a probable text from the sometimes distorted, rotated or doubled symbols. In addition to a cross and a nine-leaf palm branch , there were letters that had not been used in the production of the ring around 1200 for 300 years. These read, starting after the cross: NAINE MI XPS . Röhrer-Ertl interpreted the text as "(Ver) neine mich Jesus". XPS (Chi rho sigma) is a Greek sequence of letters that was used for Christ in the Middle Ages. The missing “ch” from “me” would thus be found in the subsequent X (Chi). Between the XPS is the field with the palm branch, which is known as a Christian symbol and whose nine branches could perhaps refer to the Trinity .

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