A Guide to a Big Stone Thing.
This rather battered lump of old sandstone was the tomb marker of a woman called Regina. It’s seen better days, but then it is around 1800 years old and someone, probably in some kind of religious tantrum, has hacked her face off but it can, with seemingly very little, tell us an awful lot about the complex interpersonal relationships within the Roman empire and a little about how the population interacted with it.
So, what can symbology tell us about this? If we start at the top and work down, we will begin to learn more about who this person is and what she did.
The figure of a woman sits in a niche with an architectural border. This style is quite common in Romano-Britain and indeed, this artifact comes from the Roman fort of Arbeia in what is now South Shields, just south of Hadrian’s Wall. Arbeia had a significant ‘vicus’ or civilian settlement attached to it. A vicus served to relieve soldiers of the fort of their money and to provide a home for their wives and family. Sometimes these settlements grew into towns that still bear remnants of the name ‘vicus’. York was known to the Vikings as Jorvik, the ‘vik’ borrowed from ‘vicus’. If you fly to London you may land at ‘Gatwick’. From there you can visit Ipswich or Norwich, all with the variations of ‘vicus’ in their name. But this woman was not a soldier’s wife, as we shall see later.
At the top is a Corinthian colonnade. This shows the first hints of the Eastern Empire in the artifact. Below that, circling her head is an oval shape, sometimes a decorative shell motif but here, plainer and probably signifying a ‘nimbus’, a cloud of light that shows that people are just and pure but have died and are in the afterlife. Christianity later borrows this for the ‘halo’ as seen on portraits of Jesus after the resurrection. She is now part of the supernatural world.
She wears an undergarment with a long skirt and short tunic over the top. This is fashion far from the influence of the Mediterranean and the lack of clasps and brooches holding her clothes together allows us to date the fashion to around 200AD. She wears two chunky bracelets and a chain around her neck which look suspiciously like Celtic ‘torcs’ and start to give a hint about her origins.
She is sitting in a high-backed wicker chair commonly associated with seating for women, although the exact pattern of the wicker is one only seen in the far east of the empire, in particular in Syria. Another clue.
In her left hand she holds a ‘distaff’ wound with wool and a spindle. To her left sits a wicker basket with balls of wool ready to be spun. Spinning wool is seen as a strong womanly virtue and a symbol of domestic prowess. That she has so much wool suggests that she had others to spin it for her. Slaves, of course. So, from her dress and finery and the sheer amount of wool, we can begin to see that she is the mistress of a significant household with several slaves from a family with some means.
To her right sits a coffer bound with iron and iron handles and sporting a strong looking lock. She holds it open slightly signifying that she has control over its contents. This, naturally, is a box holding the family valuables, money, jewelry and so on. She is very clearly in charge.
Then, below her, we have the first of the inscriptions which tell us who she was and, tellingly, where she came from.
D[is] M[anibus] REGINA LIBERTA ET CONIUGE BARATES PALMYRENUS NATIONE CATUALLAUNE AN[norum] XXX
‘To the spirits of the departed, Regina, freedwoman and wife, of the Catuvellauni tribe, aged 30, Barates of Palmyra [set this up]’
Barates has followed the Roman legions to Britain, trading as he goes (presumably in the wool she proudly shows) all the way from Palmyra in Syria. There is clearly enough trade to entice him away from home to the wind swept, bleak north of Britain. Along the way, he picked up a slave girl in Britain from the Catevallauni tribe, who were based in what is now south eastern England. He couldn’t have been long in the country and as his native languages would have been Greek and Palmyran, hers a form of early Welsh called ‘Brythonic’, it’s a wonder what they had to say to each other.
Clearly, however, at some point they fall in love. Barates freed Regina from her status (and presumably gave her the name, by the way), by the simple process of asserting her freedom before seven witnesses. Or, maybe, he bought her freedom from her previous master and then married her. Buying a slave out of their obligations in order to marry them is well known across the empire.
So, Regina is the wife of a rich merchant from Syria. A native Briton who found herself far from home as he did. Two very obvious strangers in a very strange land, what they thought of Hadrian’s Wall must have been interesting. As must have been their conversations. The inscriptions are in Latin, but that is just par for the course. Latin is the language of power and the language used on symbols of power, like tombstones. Presumably she learned either Greek or Palmyrene as a common language because Berates’ links with Palmyra are still very strong. So strong, that he probably either had the tombstone made and imported from Palmyra or hired a Syrian to carve it. Both at huge expense. In the word ‘ CATUALLAUNE’ there is a spelling mistake. Mistakes are not uncommon and some names are fluid across the empire but here the carver has clearly made an error that shows a fundamental lack of understanding of Latin, not just a slip of the chisel. He has carved ‘CATO’ before realising his mistake. Look closely and you can see the O which has been carved over. Latin was not a first or even second language for whoever carved it.
Then, below the Latin, is another inscription, this time written in the flowing script of Palmyrene Aramaic. It reads:
RGYN’ BT HRY BR ‘T’ HBL
‘Regina, the freedwoman of Barates, alas’.