Archaeologists working at a Roman villa in north-eastern Spain have uncovered a snake-headed vessel that they believe was used in the private rituals of an obscure Roman cult, offering rare evidence of how eastern religious beliefs spread into the western edges of the empire.
The broken pottery pieces were found at the Roman villa of Collet, a site overlooking the Bay of Palamós on Spain’s Catalan coast. The fragments include part of a wide rim and a handle shaped like a two-headed serpent, with small carved marks meant to look like scales.
Researchers estimate the original vessel measured about 230 millimeters (9.06 inches) across. A study published in the journal Antiquity noted that the piece dates to the Augustan period, between 27 B.C. and 14 A.D.
How a Snake-Headed Vessel Tied Collet to a Secretive Roman Cult
The research team, led by Marc Bouzas Sabater of the Department of History at the University of Girona, linked the vessel to the cult of Sabazios, a god worshipped by the Thracians and Phrygians in the Balkans.
The cult was rarely practiced in the Roman world and was mostly carried out quietly inside private homes rather than public temples.
Bouzas Sabater and his colleagues noted that similar snake-decorated pottery, sometimes called “serpent-ware,” has previously turned up at the nearby ancient Greek city of Empúries (Ἐμπόριον, Emporion) and at the site of Tolegassos, both in the same region.
The researchers connected the Collet find to a set of bronze plaques discovered decades ago in a tomb near Empúries. Those plaques, dated to roughly the same period, show an image of Sabazios himself.
Bronze plaques and a traveling priest point to ancient Greek city of Empúries
Based on that discovery, the team suggested that a traveling priest may have introduced the cult to Empúries, possibly from one of the empire’s eastern provinces, and that its influence later reached rural villas such as Collet.
Laboratory tests added another twist to the find. Using a microscope and X-ray diffraction equipment, researchers examined the mineral makeup of the clay.
They found traces of quartz, mica, and a white coating that did not match pottery produced locally near Collet or at other nearby Roman sites. Bouzas Sabater’s team concluded that the vessel likely was not made in Europe at all, and may have originated in North Africa, even though evidence linking the Sabazios cult to that region remains slim.
Only a handful of objects tied to Sabazios have ever been found on the Iberian Peninsula, making the Collet fragments especially notable.
Researchers said the discovery shows the cult reached beyond major cities and into everyday rural life, hinting at a wider religious network that stretched across the Roman world than previously understood.
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