A Graveyard Find Alters a Narrative of Christianity

A man who died in what is now Germany about 1,800 years ago went to his grave wearing a religious amulet around his neck that may change what we know about the spread of Christianity, reports Live Science. Details:

• Archaeologists found the 1.4-inch-long amulet on a skeleton in a cemetery near modern-day Frankfurt, reports CNN. At the time the man died between 230 AD and 270 AD, the region was part of the Roman Empire.
• Researchers found a thin silver scroll inside the amulet that had a Latin inscription with multiple references to Jesus and the Bible—making it the oldest Christian artifact ever discovered north of the Alps, per Smithsonian. It predates any such previous discovery by at least 50 years.

• Such amulets, designed to give the wearer religious protection, "were widely used ... in the eastern Mediterranean world," archaeologist Tina Rassalle, who was not involved in the study, tells Live Science. But "they are much rarer in the western Roman world. The discovery of this amulet in Germany suggests that Christian ideas had already begun to penetrate areas far from Christianity's early centers of growth."
• The scroll itself is only about an inch-and-a-half long, and it took researchers six years to decipher its 18 lines of text, per the Greek Reporter. A big reason is that the scroll was too delicate to be physically unrolled, requiring scientists to create a 3D model and "unroll" it virtually.
• "The significance of the discovery can hardly be overestimated," says German church historian Ulrich Volp, per CBS News. The middle-aged man who died likely would have faced persecution for wearing the amulet in public—unless Christianity had become more accepted by that time than has been previously realized.

(More discoveries stories.)