15 Sep 2017 Unique cachel, coins and ammunition

Archaeologists have experienced the harvest several times at Helfštýn Castle in the Přerov region. Four years ago, they discovered dozens of silver coins there. Later, a unique cachel with the biblical Eve and Adam and ammunition. Archaeologists searched the site with a metal detector.

Archaeologists discovered the silver treasure at the medieval Helfštýn Castle four years ago. Dozens of coins were found during rescue research before the repair of the western wall of the palace courtyard. Most of the small coins date back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

"These are small pennies of Vladislav Jagiellon, Louis Jagiellon, but we also have a few older small coins from the Hussite Wars. The youngest ones fall and are therefore associated with the Thirty Years' War," archaeologist Zdeněk Schenk revealed.

Later, using metal detectors, archaeologists also found a large number of worn lead projectiles, which were used as ammunition for firearms. They were very deformed, so they were used ammunition.

"Some of them are even cast, which proves that the projectiles were cast directly in the castle area. On the basis of their size, it is possible to roughly determine what weapons they belonged to. They were mainly muskets or pistols. The projectiles can probably be linked to the Thirty Years' War, when the castle was conquered several times without success," Schenk explained.

The most interesting is the aforementioned grey cachel from the 15th century, which stands out for its sophistication. It is unique in that it depicts the biblical characters Adam and Eve. And that was at the time when they were expelled from Eden. They are holding hands and you can see details such as the fingers and toes or Eve's hair. "It is the depiction of the motif that makes this Helfstein specimen unique," Schenk noted.

Another cachel found in the castle stones also refers to the Bible. On it, the author depicted a goat trying to graze the fruits and leaves of the tree of knowledge. In its crown is a squirrel holding a nut. It is also a fifteenth-century piece of craftsmanship.

Archaeologists have discovered a whole set of fragments of late Gothic relief decorated chamber tiles with armorial signs of the Lords of Kravař and Albrecht Kostka of Postupice in a Gothic room under the Renaissance palace.

According to Schenk, they managed to excavate the castle below the castle, i.e. parts of the Gothic rooms of the eastern palace from the time of the Lords of Kravaře. The Kravař family was an important Moravian noble family that owned Helfštýn for more than a hundred years. Its members rebuilt the castle into a Gothic fortress at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Sources: www.rozhlas.cz, www.idnes.cz, https://helfstyn.cz/, https://prerovmuzeum.cz/