The exquisite earrings are identical to the earrings of noble women in mummy portraits in ancient Egypt.
Golden earring and portrait of the Fayum mummy. Photo: Wikipedia/Archeology World.
Archaeologists discovered an intact gold earring in a room of a public bath in Deultum, a Roman colony near the town of Debelt in the Burgas district on the Black Sea coast of southeastern Bulgaria. The earring has a very similar shape to the jewelry depicted in some Fayum mummy portraits in Egypt during the Roman period. The archaeological team determined the earring dated to the 2nd century.
Excavation work at the Deultum – Debelt archaeological reserve began on October 1, 2020 and the earring was found two days later. The earring was located in a joint between the tiles of a room in a ruined public bath in Deultum, below a dike, according to Krasimira Kostova, head of the reserve.
“The earring could have fallen among the bricks and been lost. When the bathhouse was destroyed by a major earthquake around 357 – 358, the item was still there. Discovered the earring looked like jewelry of the noble woman in the portrait of the Fayum mummy is evidence that the female residents of the Deultum colony learned fashion trends in the Roman empire and they were very fashionable,” Kostova said.
The gold earring at Deultum – Debelt only has a slight distortion at the top. It has a place where golden white glass beads are attached, below is a connection with three long strands with a white glass bead at the end. The surface of the three stones looks like pearls.
Fayum mummy portraits are portraits painted on wooden panels placed on the mummies of upper-class residents of Egypt during Roman rule from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century. discovered throughout Egypt but most famously in the Fayum basin, Hawara and the Roman city of Antinoopolis.
