AN IMPORTANT GREEK INSCRIBED GOLD BYZANTINE CROSS, CIRCA 6TH-EARLY 7TH CENTURY A.D.

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AN IMPORTANT GREEK INSCRIBED GOLD BYZANTINE CROSS, CIRCA 6TH-EARLY 7TH CENTURY A.D. Of Latin form with slightly flaring arms of rectangular section, the cross worked from sheet gold and surmounted by an integral cylindrical suspension loop set transversely at the top of the upper arm. The obverse is engraved with a Greek inscription in capitals disposed along both axes, reading vertically down the shaft and horizontally across the arms, with a small cross potent incised at the head of the vertical inscription. The lettering is set directly into the hammered surface, the strokes firm and deeply cut, with characteristic lunate sigmas, alpha with broken bar, and an omega rendered in its uncial form. The reverse appears plain. The gold retains a warm, unburnished tone, with the slightly irregular surface and softly rounded edges consistent with hand-raised sheet work. The inscription comprises the opening of the Trisagion, ΑΓΙΟΣ Ο ΘΕΟΣ ΑΓΙΟΣ (ΙΣΧΥΡΟΣ) — "Holy God, Holy (Mighty)" — the acclamation that entered the Byzantine liturgy in the mid-fifth century and rapidly became one of the most widely diffused prayers of the Eastern Church. Its appearance on a personal cross gave the wearer continuous recourse to a formula understood as apotropaic as well as devotional, invoked against illness, demonic assault, and sudden death. The use of inscription rather than figural imagery places this object within the strain of early Byzantine devotional jewellery in which the written word, and specifically the liturgical word, carried the full weight of sanctification. The choice of gold here is integral to the meaning of the object rather than incidental to its value. In the early Byzantine world gold was the metal of imperial coinage, of liturgical vessels, and of relic enclosures, and a cross worn against the body in this material associated the wearer with the same economy of sacred matter that produced the solidus and the reliquary. Sheet-gold pectoral crosses of this type were almost certainly the product of urban workshops operating in or around Constantinople, Antioch, or the major centres of the eastern Mediterranean, where goldsmiths working for a court and ecclesiastical clientele produced personal devotional objects alongside larger commissions. The form, with its plain flaring arms, integral suspension loop, and engraved inscription in lieu of repoussé or filigree ornament, belongs to the period before the more elaborate enkolpia of the middle Byzantine centuries displaced the simpler engraved type. The palaeography of the inscription supports a date in the later sixth or early seventh century. The lunate sigma, the broken-bar alpha, and the uncial omega are all consistent with the epigraphic habits of that period, paralleled on lead seals, silver stamps, and inscribed liturgical silver of the reigns of Justinian, Justin II, and their immediate successors. The compression of the inscription into the available field, with letters turning the corners of the cross-arms and the abbreviation marked by a horizontal stroke, reflects the practice of goldsmiths accustomed to fitting devotional formulae onto small surfaces. This cross exemplifies the early Byzantine pectoral in its purest form: a personal object in which the sanctifying word, rather than image or ornament, carries the devotional charge, and in which gold serves not as decoration but as the proper substance for the liturgical text it bears. Surviving inscribed examples in solid gold from the sixth and early seventh centuries are markedly rarer than their bronze counterparts, and the legibility and completeness of the Trisagion here place this piece among the more articulate witnesses of the type. Height: 4.2cm

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