The object
A small silver foil amulet, rolled up inside a capsule that was worn on a cord. It was found in 2018 in a Roman-period grave at Frankfurt-Heddernheim, the site of the Roman town of Nida.
How it was read
The foil could not be unrolled without destroying it, so it was read by computed tomography and then by micro-X-ray fluorescence. The reading was published in 2024.
The text
The published reading is an eighteen-line inscription written entirely in Latin, which is rare for amulets of this date. It names Jesus Christ as the Son of God, contains no pagan or Jewish elements, and closes with an echo of Philippians 2:10–11 (“every knee should bow … every tongue confess”). It includes the threefold acclamation and the formula:
“Holy, holy, holy” … “in the name of Jesus”
Date
The grave is dated to roughly AD 230-270 on the basis of the associated finds. (The dossier’s archaeological register cites the museum’s date of approximately 230-260.)
What it establishes
Christian devotion far from the Mediterranean heartland in the third century. It is among the earliest Christian objects found north of the Alps.
Open questions
The reading is a scholarly reconstruction from imaging, and the editors present some words as uncertain. The amulet speaks only through its formula and has no link to the Gospel texts, but what the formula says is plain: Jesus Christ confessed as Son of God, north of the Alps, in the third century.
Where it is now
The find was studied and presented in 2024 by the Archaeological Museum Frankfurt, the archive’s source record for the object.
