An unexpected discovery by archaeologists has revealed an ancient cult object in the suddenly shallow waters of one of Europe’s longest rivers.
The discovery involves a portion of a limestone altar found near Dunaújváros in Hungary, uncovered during surveys of a riverbed located near Szalki Island.
Taking advantage of unusually low water levels in Europe this summer, archaeologists with the Intercisa Museum and Attila J. Tóth, a diver who specializes in underwater archaeology, had initially been searching for the possible remains of a medieval Pentelic Monastery in a portion of the Danube River.
The current drought conditions in Europe have revealed portions of the riverbed that are normally inaccessible. In recent days, the falling waters of the Danube and other waterways have also revealed several examples of archaeological features left over from the ancient Roman world.
Instead of the Pentelic Monastery they had hoped to find, Intercisa Museum archaeologists uncovered a fragmentary portion of a Roman altar dedicated to Jupiter, whose worship comprised the supreme public religion of ancient Rome.
Additional discoveries included fragments of tablets also made from limestone, adding to the surprises low water levels in the region have helped reveal this summer.
Approximately 1,800 years ago, the Roman settlement of Intercisa was located where Dunaújváros stands today. This ancient military complex formed a significant part of the military infrastructure that connected parts of ancient Europe, and at such sites, it was common for Roman military personnel to establish altars devoted to Jupiter.
In past discoveries, many of these altars display explicit links to the military sites where they were found, including names of personnel, units, or other information linking them to sites like Intercisa, offering a look at the religious devotion undertaken as part of daily life at Roman frontier military outposts.
Complicating archaeological work in the area had been the additional discovery of what was suspected of being an unexploded World War II munition, although the object was removed so that it could be disarmed.
According to some estimates, there are as many as millions of tons of unexploded ordnance leftover from World War II that are still buried across Europe. Around 10% of all the explosives dropped by Allied and Axis forces reportedly failed to detonate upon impact.
The discovery of these long-dormant explosives is a fairly common occurrence in Europe at construction sites, archaeological digs, and river dredging. The discovery of these objects sometimes also results in emergency evacuations and transit shutdowns.
Right now, the discoveries are revealing new insights into the known activities that were undertaken at Intercisa.
In the days ahead, archaeologists with the Intercisa Museum hope that additional discoveries can be made while the Danube’s waters remain so low, although they warn that anyone who discovers artifacts in such newly exposed areas of the riverbed must report archaeological discoveries and also be wary of the possible discovery of remnant World War II explosives.
The limestone altar is only one of many archaeological features from the ancient Roman world that drought conditions in Europe have revealed recently in the Danube. Previously, The Debrief also reported that portions of Constantine’s bridge have recently resurfaced from the famous river’s waters.
Archaeologists with the Intercisa Museum also report recent discoveries that include a fragment of a Roman tombstone that still features traces of paint, as well as a large and nearly intact statue that they have retrieved from the Danube’s shallow or empty riverbeds—all of which add to the archaeological heritage that has long been preserved beneath Europe’s waterways.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
A remarkable collection of ancient inscriptions within a cave in eastern Spain is providing archaeologists with deep new insights into the early religious practices it once housed.
Among the new findings, researchers say the inscriptions are shedding new light on the prominent role women played in a subterranean cult, which centered on a previously unknown ancient goddess.
The discoveries were made at Cova Dones in Millares, Valencia, a cave that presents evidence of human activity going back tens of thousands of years.
There, researchers recently documented at least 120 Latin inscriptions dating to the first and second centuries A.D.—a significant increase in the number of writings from this era known to exist at Cova Dones.
Previously, only around 15 of these inscriptions had been identified. The new findings elevate Cova Dones to what may be the Roman Empire’s largest known cave sanctuary containing Latin inscriptions.
Research at the cave was led by researchers from the University of Alicante and the University of Zaragoza, which revealed not only the inscriptions, but also a well-preserved ritual space located at a depth of close to 200 meters within the cave.
Among the discoveries researchers have made are a small collection of votive inscriptions, which are dedicated to what appears to be a goddess referred to simply as “Domina,” which means “The Lady.”
Three of those inscriptions also feature an unrecognized epithet—MALACI—which the researchers believe may describe some aspect of this mysterious goddess, possibly related in some way to the water that flows through the underground ritual space within the cave.
“Thanks to a set of five votive inscriptions, we know for certain that in Roman times a goddess, reverentially called Domina, ‘the Lady,’ was venerated in the cave,” says Silvia Alfayé, a professor of Ancient History at the University of Zaragoza.
Alfayé also says that the inscriptions further indicate the active role women played in the deity’s worship during this period.
Within the newly-identified ritual space at Cova Dones, several individual female names were identified among the newly discovered inscriptions. This, according to Alfayé and her colleagues, reinforces the notion that the sanctuary had been a regular destination for women, rather than merely serving as an occasional site of pilgrimage.
Specifically, the presence of the inscriptions all within a single chamber, which the research team has dubbed the “Roman Sanctuary,” places them alongside natural pools fed by underground water, which may have added to the allure of the subterranean ritual landscape the cave offered.
Strengthening that interpretation, the archaeologists also discovered spindle whorls, a variety of small tools used for spinning thread that were closely linked with women’s domestic and symbolic roles in the ancient Roman world, and beyond. Their presence near the inscriptions, the researchers believe, could imply links to ceremonies performed in the cave long ago, which may have incorporated textile-related offerings.
The recent findings at Cova Dones are only the latest offerings from the ancient site, which is already renowned for the ancient human presence it has preserved.
In 2023, The Debrief reported on discoveries within the cave that are now recognized as the largest known collection of surviving Paleolithic cave art in eastern Iberia. Such discoveries include more than 100 paintings and engravings dating back over 24,000 years.
The discovery of the Roman sanctuary occurred the following year, with the detection of Latin inscriptions and a coin featuring the Roman emperor Claudius, which archaeologists believe may have been left as a votive offering.
Then in 2025, archaeologists discovered more than 100 intentionally modified stalagmite formations, a unique category of archaeological evidence known as speleofacts. Altogether, such discoveries have helped cement Cova Dones as one of the most important sites in Europe to preserve evidence of prehistoric human modifications to an underground space.
Adding to the recent Roman inscription discoveries, Alfayé and her colleagues have also discovered artifacts that include bronze rings, a bracelet, ceramic vessels, faunal remains, and additional ritual objects—all of which provide additional clues that may help to reconstruct centuries of religious activity that once occurred deep within the cave.
Presently, many of the inscriptions await deciphering, and some large sections of the cave remain that have not yet been explored. With the promise of additional discoveries, archaeologists are confident that Cova Dones has only just begun to reveal its secrets.
In the coming years, new chapters in the story of this ancient subterranean landscape await discovery, exploration, and interpretation.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
A longstanding archaeological riddle involves the phenomenon of coin hoarding in the ancient Roman Empire—why were massive stashes of wealth often buried, and seemingly never retrieved?
Now scholars may finally be closer to knowing the answer, according to new findings published in the Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology. The research presents evidence drawn from several case studies that help to build the argument that many ancient Roman coin hoards were buried during periods of political upheaval, war, or other catastrophic periods of change, revealing that the recovery of these caches may not have always been practical, or even possible.
For many centuries, treasure hunters, archaeologists, and others have made remarkable discoveries of buried hoards of Roman coins across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Although the reasons why coin hoards were buried are sometimes fairly obvious, the real mystery for scholars throughout time has to do with why these troves—often representing significant amounts of wealth—remained unrecovered.
To answer this question, Babeş-Bolyai University researchers Adrian-Daniel Stan and Cristian Gǎzda leveraged one of the world’s largest databases on Roman coin hoards, and based on the data the pair reviewed, they suggest that these “forgotten fortunes” entombed within the earth can be viewed as the fingerprints left behind by some of the darkest periods in the Roman Empire.
Managed by the Ashmolean Museum and the University of Oxford, the Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire (CHRE) project is an extensive database comprised of more than 18,000 documented hoards.
With data on more than 7.5 million coins, the project’s database provided Gǎzda and Stan precisely the kind of information they needed to contrast discoveries of large troves of wealth buried throughout the ancient Roman world.
However, rather than focusing their study on why Romans hid their valuables in the first place, which has long remained the focus in past archaeological research, the team decided to try to better understand what prevented their reclamation.
Coin hoards were buried for a variety of reasons. Sometimes merchants would hide their wealth to conceal it from thieves or tax collectors. In other instances, treasure caches might have been buried for religious reasons, such as offerings or as part of rituals.
In at least some instances, circumstantial clues help to illustrate that the hoards had been buried in what were intended as temporary hiding places, sometimes contained within ceramic vessels, bags or pouches made from leather, or within other kinds of containers.
Such discoveries have often been located below the flooring in houses or hearths—locations where it was likely expected that they would have been retrieved by their owners. When these hoards remained buried, it likely means something went wrong.
Aligning with this “catastrophic” interpretation, Gǎzda and Stan relied on spatial and chronological analyses of the CHRE database, which revealed clusters of unrecovered hoard discoveries that frequently coincided with major upheavals that included wars, invasions, and natural disasters known in the historic record.
One example the research team focused on occurred in A.D. 9, where a trio of Roman legions was obliterated by Germanic tribes. This event, known as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, aligned with several coin hoards found around a battlefield area at Kalkriese, as well as the nearby Roman fort of Haltern; a pattern implying that soldiers and civilians had likely buried their valuables, and never had opportunities to recover them.
Similar patterns were observed in Britain, where concentrations of hoards matched with periods of tribal warfare, as well as the beginning of the Roman conquest in A.D. 43, and other instances. Further south, another concentration appears around Mount Vesuvius just after the devastating eruption that occurred in A.D. 79, which buried Pompeii beneath a blanket of volcanic ash.
Still other examples of hoard “clusters” emerge from the data in areas that include the Danube frontier during the Dacian Wars, and amid invasions that were prevalent during the crisis period the Roman Empire underwent during the third century.
Overall, the patterns reveal that these unrecovered hoards provide a unique archaeological record of upheaval and insecurity in the ancient world that helps to complement and verify written history and other archaeological research.
Significantly, Gǎzda and Stan observe that there are two distinctive phenomena that emerge from these failures to recover buried treasure. One involved the practical concern of protecting one’s wealth, and avoidance of taxation, while the other involved more tragic circumstances like death, displacement due to battle, invasion, natural disaster, or other dramatic periods of change.
Through this lens of understanding, the buried coin hoards become more than just intriguing discoveries of lost valuables from ancient times: they offer a unique record of some of history’s most unpredictable forces, and a deeper perspective on the ways humans coped with insecurity while trying to survive and cope with changes in the ancient world.
The team’s study, “Why Did They Not Recover the Hoards? Insecurity in the Roman Empire,” appeared in the Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
A “cursed” ancient Roman tablet, intended to invoke divine and demonic wrath upon one’s enemies, has been deciphered by researchers at Heidelberg University in Germany.
The magical lead tablet, originally discovered by Dutch archaeologists in the Netherlands, was crafted in the second century AD. Strangely, it is written in ancient Greek, although in an Egyptian style, rather than the Latin that would be expected for what was then a Roman province of Lower Germania.
Today, the excavation site within the city of Heerlen in the southeast of the Netherlands, near the German border, is home to the country’s largest ancient Roman ruins.
The object is not entirely unique, as it belongs to a category of curse tablets called katadesmoi in Greek and defixiones in Latin. The Greeks and Romans believed that cold, heavy iron was especially useful in binding supernatural entities, making it the go-to material for crafting such objects.
As this artifact’s material was both cold and heavy, it reminded ancient people of the bleak underworld. Additionally, lead is also easy to work with in practice, as it is both inexpensive and easy to inscribe.
These small tablets were typically inscribed with curses and then buried, with the intention of bringing misfortune upon rivals in matters of sport, law, or love.
At the time the tablet was created, Heerlen was a Roman military settlement known as Coriovallum. Dutch archaeologists unearthed the 9.3-by-4.8-centimeter katadesmos from a pit beneath the former town square.
Researchers at the University of Heidelberg’s Institute for Papyrology used reflectance transformation imaging, a technique that combines photographs taken under different lighting conditions to enhance subtle surface details. Their analysis revealed three distinct types of characters within the inscription.
The combination of Egyptian-style invocations of deities and demons written in ancient Greek is highly unusual for a region where Latin was the dominant written language. Also notable are three symbols known as “Characteres”—magical symbols believed to facilitate communication with supernatural entities—along with two male and two female names.
Dr. Rodney Ast, Academic Director of the Institute for Papyrology, suggests that these four individuals were either the targets of the curse or those on whose behalf it was created. However, Dr. Julia Lougovaya, a research associate at the institute, notes that the male names are Latin while the female names are Greek, a distinction that may hold additional significance.
“It cannot be ruled out that one of the two women was the author of the inscription and had brought the supposed ability to communicate with divine powers through such curses with her from Roman Egypt,” said Dr. Lougovaya.
Magic played an important role in Egyptian society, where rituals aimed at healing and protection formed a visible part of religious life, while malicious spells were typically practiced more discreetly.
“In the early centuries A.D., Near Eastern, Egyptian, Jewish, and sometimes even Christian traditions increasingly merged and spread throughout the entire Roman Empire of that time – a development that the discovery from Heerlen impressively underscores,” explained Prof. Joachim Quack, Director of the Institute for Egyptology at Heidelberg University.
A forthcoming scholarly publication will provide the full transcription of the inscription and details of the analysis. The tablet is also scheduled to go on display at a museum in Heerlen in the future.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
You wouldn't want to drink from this 2,000-year-old vintage though.
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