The Gundestrup cauldron is a richly decorated silver vessel, thought to date from between 200 BC and 300 AD,
or more narrowly between 150 BC and 1 BC. This places it within the late La Tène period or early

Roman Iron Age The archaeology of Northern Europe studies the prehistory of Scandinavian Peninsula, Scandinavia and the adjacent North European Plain, roughly corresponding to the territories of modern Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Northern Germany, Poland, the Net ...

. The

cauldron A cauldron (or caldron) is a large cookware and bakeware, pot (kettle) for cooking or boiling over an open fire, with a lid and frequently with an arc-shaped hanger and/or integral handles or feet. There is a rich history of cauldron lore in r ...

is the largest known example of European Iron Age silver work (diameter: ; height: ). It was found dismantled, with the other pieces stacked inside the base, in 1891, in a

peat bog A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muske ...

near the hamlet of Gundestrup in the

Aars Aars or Års, () is a Denmark, Danish town with a population of 8,708 (1 January 2025)Himmerland,

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

().
It is now usually on display in the

National Museum of Denmark The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) in Copenhagen is Denmark, Denmark's largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main building is located a short distance from S ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

, with replicas at other museums; it was in the UK on a travelling exhibition called ''The Celts'' during 2015–2016. The cauldron is not complete, and now consists of a rounded cup-shaped bottom making up the lower part of the cauldron, usually called the base plate, above which are five interior plates and seven exterior ones; a missing eighth exterior plate would be needed to encircle the cauldron, and only two sections of a rounded rim at the top of the cauldron survive. The base plate is mostly smooth and undecorated inside and out, apart from a decorated round medallion in the centre of the interior. All the other plates are heavily decorated with repoussé work, hammered from beneath to push out the silver. Other techniques were used to add detail, and there is extensive

gilding Gilding is a decorative technique for applying a very thin coating of gold over solid surfaces such as metal (most common), wood, porcelain, or stone. A gilded object is also described as "gilt". Where metal is gilded, the metal below was tradi ...

and some use of inlaid pieces of glass for the eyes of figures. Other pieces of fittings were found. Altogether it weighs just under . While the vessel was found in Denmark, it was probably not made there or nearby; it includes elements of

Gaul Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Roman people, Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of . Ac ...

ish and

Thracian The Thracians (; ; ) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Southeast Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied the area that today is shared between north-eastern Greece, ...

origin in the workmanship,

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

, and imagery. The techniques and elements of the style of the panels relate closely to other Thracian silver, while much of the depiction, in particular of the human figures, relates to the

Celts The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...

, though attempts to relate the scenes closely to

Celtic mythology Celtic mythology is the body of myths belonging to the Celtic peoples.Cunliffe, Barry, (1997) ''The Ancient Celts''. Oxford, Oxford University Press , pp. 183 (religion), 202, 204–8. Like other Iron Age Europeans, Celtic peoples followed ...

remain controversial. Other aspects of the

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

derive from the

Near East The Near East () is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th ...

. Hospitality on a large scale was probably an obligation for Celtic elites, and although cauldrons were therefore an important item of prestige metalwork, they are usually much plainer and smaller than this. This is an exceptionally large and elaborate object with no close parallel, except a large fragment from a bronze cauldron also found in Denmark, at Rynkeby; however the exceptional wetland deposits in Scandinavia have produced a number of objects of types that were probably once common but where other examples have not survived. It has been much discussed by scholars, and represents a fascinatingly complex demonstration of the many cross-currents in European art, as well as an unusual degree of narrative for Celtic art, though we are unlikely ever to fully understand its original meanings.

Discovery

The Gundestrup cauldron was discovered by peat cutters in a small

called "Rævemose" (near the larger " Borremose" bog) on 28 May 1891. The Danish government paid a large reward to the finders, who subsequently quarreled bitterly amongst themselves over its division. Palaeobotanical investigations of the peat bog at the time of the discovery showed that the land had been dry when the cauldron was deposited, and the peat gradually grew over it. The manner of stacking suggested an attempt to make the cauldron inconspicuous and well-hidden. Another investigation of Rævemose was undertaken in 2002, concluding that the peat bog may have existed when the cauldron was buried. The cauldron was found in a dismantled state with five long rectangular plates, seven short plates, one round plate (normally called the "base plate"), and two fragments of tubing stacked inside the curved base. In addition, there is a piece of iron from a ring originally placed inside the silver tubes along the rim of the cauldron. It is assumed that an eighth short plate is missing because the circumference of the seven outer plates is smaller than the circumference of the five inner plates. A set of careful full-size replicas have been made. One is in the

National Museum of Ireland The National Museum of Ireland () is Ireland's leading museum institution, with a strong emphasis on national and some international archaeology, Irish history, Irish art, culture, and natural history. It has three branches in Dublin, the arch ...

, and several are in France, including the Musée gallo-romain de Fourvière at Lyon and the Musée d'archéologie nationale at

Saint-Germain-en-Laye Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a Communes of France, commune in the Yvelines Departments of France, department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the Kilometre Zero, centre of Paris. ...

Reconstruction

Since the cauldron was found in pieces, it had to be reconstructed. The traditional order of the plates was determined by Sophus Müller, the first of many to analyze the cauldron. His logic uses the positions of the trace

solder Solder (; North American English, NA: ) is a fusible alloy, fusible metal alloy used to create a permanent bond between metal workpieces. Solder is melted in order to wet the parts of the joint, where it adheres to and connects the pieces aft ...

located at the rim of the bowl. In two cases, a puncture mark penetrating the inner and outer plates also helps to establish the order. In its final form, the plates are arranged in an alternation of female-male depictions, assuming the missing eighth plate is of a female. Not all analysts agree with Müller's ordering, however. Timothy Taylor has pointed out that aside from the two cases of puncturing, the order cannot be determined from the solder alignments. His argument is that the plates are not directly adjacent to each other, but are separated by a 2 cm gap; thus, the plates in this order cannot be read with certainty as the true narrative, supposing one exists. However, LarsenLarsen, Erling Benner (2005) "Technical Investigations – Work in Progress: Preliminary Investigation in 1977" in , p. 16, fig. 12 indicates, not only did his study vindicate the order for the inner plates established, by Muller, Klindt-Jensen, and Olmsted, but the order of the outer plates is also established by the rivet holes, the solder alignments, and the scrape marks.

Metallurgy

The Gundestrup cauldron is composed almost entirely of silver, but there is also a substantial amount of gold for the gilding, tin for the solder and glass for the figures' eyes. According to experimental evidence, the materials for the vessel were not added at the same time, so the cauldron can be considered as the work of artisans over a span of several hundred years. The quality of the repairs to the cauldron, of which there are many, is inferior to the original craftsmanship. Silver was not a common material in Celtic art, and certainly not on this scale. Except sometimes for small pieces of jewellery, gold or bronze were more usual for prestige metalwork. At the time that the Gundestrup cauldron was created, silver was obtained through

cupellation Cupellation is a refining process in metallurgy in which ores or alloyed metals are treated under very high temperatures and subjected to controlled operations to separate noble metals, like gold and silver, from base metals, like lead, co ...

of lead / silver ores. From comparisons of the concentration of lead isotopes with the silver work by other cultures, it seems that the silver came from multiple ore deposits, mostly from

Celt The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...

ic northern

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and western

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

in the pre-

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

period. Lead isotope studies also indicate that the silver for manufacturing the plates was prepared by repeatedly melting ingots and/or scrap silver. Three to six distinct batches of recycled silver may have been used in making the vessel. Specifically, the circular "base plate" may have originated as a phalera, and it is commonly thought to have been positioned in the bottom of the bowl as a late addition, soldered in to repair a hole. By an alternative theory, this phalera was not initially part of the bowl, but instead formed part of the decorations of a wooden cover. The gold can be sorted into two groups based on purity and separated by the concentration of silver and copper. The less pure

, which is thicker, can be considered a later repair, as the thinner, purer inlay adheres better to the silver. The adherence of the overall gold is quite poor. The lack of mercury from the gold analysis suggests that a fire-gilding technique was not used on the Gundestrup cauldron. The gilding appears to have instead been made by mechanical means, which explains the function of closely spaced punch marks on the gilded areas. An examination of lead isotopes similar to the one used on the silver was employed for the tin. All of the samples of tin soldering are consistent in lead-isotope composition with ingots from

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

in western

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

. The tin used for soldering the plates and bowl together, as well as the glass eyes, is very uniform in its high purity. Finally, the glass inlays of the Gundestrup cauldron have been determined through the use of X-ray fluorescence radiation to be of a soda-lime type composition. The glass contained elements that can be attributed to calcareous sand and mineral soda, typical of the east coast of the Mediterranean region. The analyses also narrowed down the production time of the glass to between the second century BC and first century AD.

Flow of raw material

The workflow of the manufacturing process consisted of a few steps that required a great amount of skill. Batches of silver were melted in crucibles with the addition of copper for a subtler alloy. The melted silver was cast into flat ingots and hammered into intermediate plates. For the relief work, the sheet-silver was annealed to allow shapes to be beaten into high repoussé; these rough shapes were then filled with pitch from the back to make them firm enough for further detailing with punches and tracers. The pitch was melted out, areas of pattern were gilded, and the eyes of the larger figures were inlaid with glass. The plates were probably worked in a flat form and later bent into curves to solder them together. It is generally agreed that the Gundestrup cauldron was the work of multiple silversmiths. Using scanning electron microscopy, Benner Larson has identified 15 different punches used on the plates, falling into three distinct tool sets. No individual plate has marks from more than one of these groups, and this fits with previous attempts at stylistic attribution, which identify at least three different silversmiths. Multiple artisans would also explain the highly variable purity and thickness of the silver.

Origins

The silverworking techniques used in the cauldron are unknown from the Celtic world, but are consistent with the renowned

sheet-silver tradition. The scenes depicted are not distinctively Thracian, but certain elements of composition, decorative motifs, and illustrated items (such as the shoelaces on the antlered figure) identify it as Thracian work. Taylor and Bergquist have postulated that the Celtic tribe known as the

Scordisci The Scordisci (; ) were an Iron Age cultural group who emerged after the Celtic settlement of Southeast Europe, and who were centered in the territory of present-day Serbia, at the confluence of the Savus (Sava), Dravus (Drava), Margus (Morav ...

commissioned the cauldron from native Thracian silversmiths. According to classical historians, the

Cimbri The Cimbri (, ; ) were an ancient tribe in Europe. Ancient authors described them variously as a Celtic, Gaulish, Germanic, or even Cimmerian people. Several ancient sources indicate that they lived in Jutland, which in some classical texts was ...

, a Teutonic tribe, went south from the lower Elbe region and attacked the Scordisci in 118 BC. After withstanding several defeats at the hands of the Romans, the Cimbri retreated north, possibly taking with them this cauldron to settle in Himmerland, where the vessel was found. According to the art style of the Gundestrup cauldron is that utilized in

Armorica In ancient times, Armorica or Aremorica (Gaulish: ; ; ) was a region of Gaul between the Seine and the Loire that includes the Brittany Peninsula, and much of historical Normandy. Name The name ''Armorica'' is a Latinized form of the Gauli ...

n coinage dating to as exemplified in the billon coins of the Coriosolites. This art style is unique to northwest

and is largely confined to the region between the

Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plat ...

and the

Loire The Loire ( , , ; ; ; ; ) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône. It rises in the so ...

, a region in which, according to Caesar, the wealthy sea-faring Veneti played a dominant and hegemonic role. Agreeing with this area of production, determined by the art style, is the fact that the : "lead isotope compositions of the undestrupcauldron plates" ostly included"the same silver as used in northern France for the Coriosolite coins". Not only does the Gundestrup cauldron enlighten us about this coin-driven art style, where the larger-metalwork smiths were also the mint-masters producing the coins, but the cauldron also portrays cultural items, such as swords, armor, and shields, found and produced in this same cultural area, confirming the agreement between art style and metal analysis. If as and suggest, the Veneti also produced the silver phalerae, found on the Isle of Sark, as well as the Helden phalera, then there are a number of silver items of the type exemplified by the Gundestrup cauldron originating in northwest France, dating to just before the Roman conquest. Nielsen believes that the question of origin is the wrong one to ask and can produce misleading results. Because of the widespread migration of numerous ethnic groups like the Celts and Teutonic peoples and events like Roman expansion and subsequent Romanization, it is highly unlikely that only one ethnic group was responsible for the development of the Gundestrup cauldron. Instead, the make and art of the cauldron can be thought of as the product of a fusion of cultures, each inspiring and expanding upon one another. In the end, based on accelerator datings from beeswax found on the back of the plates, Nielsen concludes that the vessel was created within the Roman Iron Age. However, an addendum to Nielson's article indicates that results from the Leibniz Lab on the same beeswax dated some 400 years earlier than reported in his article. According to

Ronald Hutton Ronald Edmund Hutton (born 19 December 1953) is an Indian-born English historian specialising in early modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion, and modern paganism. A professor at the University of Bristol, Hutton has writte ...

, because the cauldron's source metals have been traced to the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

region, and depicts elephants, the cauldron should no longer be considered trictlyCeltic.

Iconography

Base plate

The decorated medallion on the circular base plate depicts a bull. Above the back of the bull is a female figure wielding a sword; three dogs are also portrayed, one over the bull's head and another under its hooves. Presumably all of these figures are in combat; the third dog, located beneath the bull and near its tail, seems to be dead, and is only faintly shown in

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ar ...

, and the bull may have been brought down. Below the bull is

scrolling In computer displays, filmmaking, television production, video games and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display, vertically or horizontally. "Scrolling," as such, does not change the layout ...

ivy that draws from classical Greco-Roman art. The horns of the bull are missing, but there is a hole right through the head where they were originally fitted; perhaps they were gold. The head of the bull rises entirely clear of the plate, and the medallion is considered the most accomplished part of the cauldron in technical and artistic terms.

Exterior plates

Each of the seven exterior plates centrally depicts a bust. Plates a, b, c, and d show bearded male figures, and the remaining three are female. :

Interior plates

File:Gundestrupkedlen- 00054 (cropped).jpg, Detail from interior plate A File:Gundestrup C.jpg, Interior plate C : File:Gundestrupkarret3.jpg, Interior plate E File:Boar-helmeted figure on the Gundestrup Cauldron.jpg, Boar-helmeted figure File:Detail 3 from Gundestrupkarret.jpg, Detail File:Figures with horns on the Gundestrup Cauldron.jpg, The

carnyx The ancient carnyx was a wind instrument used by the Celts during the Iron Age, between and . It was a type of trumpet made of bronze with an elongated S shape, held so that the long straight central portion was vertical and the short mouthpie ...

players File:Danimarca Germania-2337-Copenhagen-Museo nazionale danese-Calderone di Gundestrup.jpg File:Danimarca Germania-2338-Copenhagen-Museo nazionale danese-Calderone di Gundestrup.jpg File:Danimarca Germania-2339-Copenhagen-Museo nazionale danese-Calderone di Gundestrup.jpg File:Danimarca Germania-2340-Copenhagen-Museo nazionale danese-Calderone di Gundestrup.jpg

Interpretation and parallels

File:Torque à tampons Somme-Suippe Musée Saint-Remi 120208.jpg,

Bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

4th-century BC buffer-type Celtic

torc A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a large rigid or stiff neck ring in metal, made either as a single piece or from strands twisted together. The great majority are open at the front, although some have hook and ring closures and a few hav ...

from France File:CarnyxDeTintignac2.jpg, Carnyx head from the Tintignac group File:Museum of ScotlandDSCF6355.jpg, Torrs Pony-cap and Horns File:Celtic Helmet from Satu Mare, Romania.jpg, Celtic helmet from

Satu Mare Satu Mare (; ; ; or ) is a city with a population of 102,400 (2011). It is the capital of Satu Mare County, Romania, as well as the centre of the Satu Mare metropolitan area. It lies in the region of Maramureș, broadly part of Transylvania ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

with

raven A raven is any of several large-bodied passerine bird species in the genus '' Corvus''. These species do not form a single taxonomic group within the genus. There is no consistent distinction between crows and ravens; the two names are assigne ...

crest, around 4th century BC File:Letnitsa treasure.png, Thracian plaque with the

Thracian horseman The Thracian horseman (also "Thracian Rider" or "Thracian Heroes") is a recurring Motif (visual arts), motif depicted in reliefs of the Hellenistic period, Hellenistic and Roman Empire, Roman periods in the Balkans—mainly Thrace, Macedonia (reg ...

File:Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, schatten uit Limburg, sierschijf van Helden 1.JPG, Thracian disc (the ) found in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

File:Cylinder Seal, Achaemenid, modern impression 05.jpg,

Achaemenid The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the large ...

seal impression with

Master of Animals The Master of Animals, Lord of Animals, or Mistress of the Animals is a motif in ancient art showing a human between and grasping two confronted animals. The motif is very widespread in the art of Mesopotamia. The figure may be female or male ...

motif; the Persian king subduing two Mesopotamian

lamassu ''Lama'', ''Lamma'', or ''Lamassu'' (Cuneiform: , ; Sumerian language, Sumerian: lammař; later in Akkadian language, Akkadian: ''lamassu''; sometimes called a ''lamassuse'') is an Mesopotamia, Assyrian protective deity. Initially depicted as ...

File:Chalice-crater Louvre CA491.jpg,

Griffin The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (; Classical Latin: ''gryps'' or ''grypus''; Late and Medieval Latin: ''gryphes'', ''grypho'' etc.; Old French: ''griffon'') is a -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk ...

on an Ancient Greek vase Shiva Pashupati

For many years, some scholars have interpreted the cauldron's images in terms of the Celtic pantheon, and

as it is presented in much later literature in

Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yve ...

from the

British Isles The British Isles are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner Hebrides, Inner and Outer Hebr ...

. Others regard the latter interpretations with great suspicion. Much less controversially, there are clear parallels between details of the figures and Iron Age Celtic artifacts excavated by archaeology. Other details of the iconography clearly derive from the art of the

ancient Near East The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea ...

, and there are intriguing parallels with ancient India and later

Hindu Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...

deities and their stories. Scholars are mostly content to regard the former as motifs borrowed purely for their visual appeal, without carrying over anything much of their original meaning, but despite the distance some have attempted to relate the latter to wider traditions remaining from

Proto-Indo-European religion Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, speakers of the hypothesized Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested – since Proto-In ...

Celtic archaeology

Among the most specific details that are clearly Celtic are the group of carnyx players. The carnyx war horn was known from Roman descriptions of the Celts in battle and Trajan's Column, and a few pieces are known from archaeology, their number greatly increased by finds at Tintignac in France in 2004. :''"Their trumpets again are of a peculiar barbarian kind; they blow into them and produce a harsh sound which suits the tumult of war''". Another detail that is easily matched to archaeology is the torc worn by several figures, clearly of the "buffer" type, a fairly common Celtic artefact found in Western Europe, most often France, from the period the cauldron is thought to have been made. Other details with more tentative Celtic links are the long swords carried by some figures, and the horned and antlered helmets or head-dresses and the

boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a Suidae, suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The speci ...

crest worn on their helmet by some warriors. These can be related to Celtic artefacts such as a helmet with a raptor crest from

, the Waterloo Helmet, Torrs Pony-cap and Horns and various animal figures including boars, of uncertain function. The shield bosses, spurs and horse harness also relate to Celtic examples. Taranis Jupiter with wheel and thunderbolt Le Chatelet Gourzon Haute Marne

Taranis Jupiter with wheel and thunderbolt Le Chatelet Gourzon Haute Marne

The antlered figure in plate A has been commonly identified as

Cernunnos Cernunnos is a Celtic god whose name is only clearly attested once, on the 1st-century CE Pillar of the Boatmen from Paris, where it is associated with an image of an aged, antlered figure with torcs around his horns. Through the Pillar of the ...

, who is named (the only source for the name) on the 1st-century

Gallo-Roman Gallo-Roman culture was a consequence of the Romanization (cultural), Romanization of Gauls under the rule of the Roman Empire in Roman Gaul. It was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman culture, Roman culture, language ...

Pillar of the Boatmen The Pillar of the Boatmen () is a monumental Roman column erected in Lutetia (modern Paris) in honour of Jupiter (god), Jupiter by the guild of boatmen in the 1st century AD. It is the oldest monument in Paris and is one of the earliest pieces of r ...

, where he is shown as an antlered figure with torcs hanging from his antlers. Possibly the lost portion below his bust showed him seated cross-legged as the figure on the cauldron is. Otherwise there is evidence of a

horned god The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in Wicca and some related forms of Neopaganism. The term ''Horned God'' itself predates Wicca, and is an early 20th-century syncretism, syncretic term for a horned or antlered anthropomorp ...

from several cultures. The figure holding the broken wheel in plate C is more tentatively thought to be

Taranis Taranis (sometimes Taranus or Tanarus) is a Celtic thunder god attested in literary and epigraphic sources. The Roman poet Lucan's epic ''Pharsalia'' mentions Taranis, Esus, and Teutates as gods to whom the Gauls sacrificed humans. This rare ...

, the solar or thunder "wheel-god" named by

Lucian Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridi ...

and represented in a number of Iron Age images; there are also many wheels that seem to have been

amulet An amulet, also known as a good luck charm or phylactery, is an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word , which Pliny's ''Natural History'' describes as "an object that protects a perso ...

Near East and Asia

The many animals depicted on the cauldron include

elephant Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant ('' Loxodonta africana''), the African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''), and the Asian elephant ('' Elephas maximus ...

s, a

dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal in the cetacean clade Odontoceti (toothed whale). Dolphins belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontopori ...

leopard The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant cat species in the genus ''Panthera''. It has a pale yellowish to dark golden fur with dark spots grouped in rosettes. Its body is slender and muscular reaching a length of with a ...

-like felines, and various fantastic animals, as well as animals that are widespread across

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

, such as snakes, cattle, deer, boars and birds. Celtic art often includes animals, but not often in fantastic forms with wings and aspects of different animals combined. There are exceptions to this, some when motifs are clearly borrowed, as the boy riding a dolphin is borrowed from Greek art, and others that are more native, like the ram-headed horned snake who appears three times on the cauldron. The art of

Thrace Thrace (, ; ; ; ) is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe roughly corresponding to the province of Thrace in the Roman Empire. Bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Se ...

often shows animals, most often powerful and fierce ones, many of which are also very common in the ancient Near East, or the

Scythian art Scytho-Siberian art is the art associated with the cultures of the Scytho-Siberian world, primarily consisting of decorative objects such as jewellery, produced by the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian Steppe, with the western edges of the region vag ...

of the

Eurasian steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or The Steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Europea ...

, whose mobile owners provided a route for the very rapid transmission of motifs and objects between the civilizations of Asia and Europe. In particular, the two figures standing in profile flanking the large head on exterior plate F, each with a bird with outstretched wings just above their head, clearly resemble a common motif in ancient Assyrian and

Persian art Persian art or Iranian art () has one of the richest art heritages in world history and has been strong in many media including architecture, painting, weaving, pottery, calligraphy, metalworking and sculpture. At different times, influences ...

, down to the long garments they wear. The figure is usually the ruler, and the wings belong to a symbolic representation of a deity protecting him. Other plates show

griffin The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (; Classical Latin: ''gryps'' or ''grypus''; Late and Medieval Latin: ''gryphes'', ''grypho'' etc.; Old French: ''griffon'') is a -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk ...

s borrowed from Ancient Greek art of that of the Near East. On several of the exterior plates the large heads, probably of deities, in the centre of the exterior panels, have small arms and hands, either each grasping an animal or human in a version of the common

motif, or held up empty at the side of the head in a way suggesting inspiration from this motif.

Celtic mythology

Apart from Cernunnos and Taranis, discussed above, there is no consensus regarding the other figures, and many scholars reject attempts to tie them in to figures known from much later and geographically distant sources. Some Celticists have explained the elephants depicted on plate B as a reference to

Hannibal's crossing of the Alps Hannibal's crossing of the Alps in 218 BC was one of the major events of the Second Punic War, and one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare.Lancel, Serge, ''Hannibal'', p71/ref> Hannibal led his Ancie ...

. Because of the double-headed wolfish monster attacking the two small figures of fallen men on plate b, parallels can be drawn to the Welsh character Manawydan or the Irish Manannán, a god of the sea and the

Otherworld In historical Indo-European religion, the concept of an otherworld, also known as an otherside, is reconstructed in comparative mythology. Its name is a calque of ''orbis alius'' (Latin for "other world/side"), a term used by Lucan in his desc ...

. Another possibility is the Gaulish version of

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

, who was not only a warrior, but one associated with springs and healing besides.
Olmsted relates the scenes of the cauldron to those of the '' Táin Bó Cuailnge'', where the antlered figure is

Cú Chulainn Cú Chulainn ( ), is an Irish warrior hero and demigod in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, as well as in Scottish and Manx folklore. He is believed to be an incarnation of the Irish god Lugh, who is also his father. His mother is the ...

, the bull of the base plate is

Donn Cuailnge In the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology Donn Cúailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, was an extremely fertile stud bull over whom the Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley) was fought. Prologue A ninth century ''rémscéla'' or foretale rec ...

, and the female and two males of plate e are

Medb Medb (), later spelled Meadhbh (), Méabh(a) () and Méibh (), and often anglicised as Maeve ( ), is queen of Connacht in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. Her husband in the core stories of the cycle is Ailill mac Máta, although she had ...

Ailill Ailill (Ailell, Oilioll) is a male name in Old Irish. It is a prominent name in Irish mythology, as for Ailill mac Máta, King of Connacht and husband of Queen Medb, on whom Shakespeare based the Fairy Queen Mab. Ailill was a popular given name in ...

, and Fergus. Olmsted also toys with the idea that the female figure flanked by two birds on plate f could be Medb with her pets or Morrígan, the Irish war goddess who often changes into a carrion bird. Olmsted sees Cernunnos as Gaulish version of Irish Cu Chulainn. As Olmsted indicates, the scene on the upper right of plate A, a lion, a boy on a dolphin, and a bull, can be interpreted after the origin of the bulls of the Irish ''Táin'', who take on various matched animal forms, fighting each other in each form, as indicated in the two lions fighting on the lower right of plate A. Plate B could be interpreted after a Gaulish version of the beginning of the Irish ''Táin'', where Medb sets out to get the Donn bull after making a circuit around her army in her chariot to bring luck to the ''Táin''. Olmsted interprets the scene on plate C as a Gaulish version of the Irish ''Táin'' incidents where Cu Chulainn kicks in the Morrigan's ribs when she comes at him as an eel and then confronts Fergus with his broken chariot wheel. interprets the scene with warriors on the lower part of Plate E as a Gaulish version of the "Aided Fraich" episode of the ''Táin'' where Fraich and his men leap over the fallen tree, and then Fraech wrestles with his father Cu Chulainn and is drowned by him, while his magic horn blowers play "the music of sleeping" against Cu Chulainn. In the "Aided Fraich" episode, Fraich's body is then taken into the underworld by weeping ''banchuire'' to be healed by his aunt and wife Morrigan. This incident is depicted on outer plate f, which is adjacent and opposite to plate E. Both Olmsted and Taylor agree that the female of plate f might be

Rhiannon Rhiannon () is a protagonist (main character) of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, Mabinogi, in its First and Third Branches. She originates only in these prose tales, with just a couple of references in 14thC mediaeval Welsh poetry, and none ...

of the

Mabinogion The ''Mabinogion'' () is a collection of the earliest Welsh prose stories, compiled in Middle Welsh in the 12th–13th centuries from earlier oral traditions. There are two main source manuscripts, created –1410, as well as a few earlier frag ...

. Rhiannon is famous for her birds, whose songs could "awaken the dead and lull the living to sleep". In this role, Rhiannon could be considered the Goddess of the Otherworld. Taylor presents a more pancultural view of the cauldron's images; he concludes that the deities and scenes portrayed on the cauldron are not specific to one culture, but many. He compares Rhiannon, whom he thinks is the figure of plate f, with

Hariti Hārītī (Sanskrit), also known as , , is a female rākṣasī or yakṣinī (nature spirit) in Buddhism. She appears as a character in all Buddhist traditions and she is revered as a fierce Dharma Protector and a fertility goddess in Ma ...

, an ogress of

Bactria Bactria (; Bactrian language, Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization in Central Asia based in the area south of the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) and north of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an area ...

n mythology. In addition, he points to the similarity between the female figure of plate B and the

goddess

Lakshmi Lakshmi (; , , sometimes spelled Laxmi, ), also known as Shri (, , ), is one of the principal goddesses in Hinduism, revered as the goddess of wealth, fortune, prosperity, beauty, fertility, sovereignty, and abundance. She along with Parvat ...

, whose depictions are often accompanied by elephants. Wheel gods are also cross-cultural with deities like Gaulish

and Hindu

Vishnu Vishnu (; , , ), also known as Narayana and Hari, is one of the Hindu deities, principal deities of Hinduism. He is the supreme being within Vaishnavism, one of the major traditions within contemporary Hinduism, and the god of preservation ( ...

References

Sources

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