20 Euro Beliefs and Rituals Coin P
Following the issue of *Salt Mining* and *Salt Trading*, *The White Gold of Hallstatt* reaches its spiritual climax in the form of *Beliefs and Rituals*. The last coin in the three-part series sheds light on the religious and spiritual world of the Hallstatt culture, the material culture that flourished in Central Europe during the period 800 to 500 BC. In addition to the ability to create a rich and thriving culture based on the mining of salt, the people of the Hallstatt culture boasted other skills. The traces of those skills were discovered by mine operator Johann Georg Ramsauer in 1846, when he came across a burial ground near the Hallstatt salt mine. The valuable burial objects he uncovered are not only evidence of the prosperity and high social status of those buried there, but also of the religious and spiritual world of the Hallstatt culture. Displaying a high degree of technical expertise in their manufacture, the burial objects include elaborate bronze vessels containing food and drink that were intended to nourish the deceased on their journey to the afterlife. The ornate depictions of people with which they are often decorated include scenes of festivities as well as cremations. Waterfowl such as ducks and swans seem to play a special role. They were regarded as a symbol of the divine as, unlike humans at the time, they were able to move on land, in water and the air. A bowl decorated with a bull is shown in the foreground of the coin’s obverse, one of the remarkable artefacts unearthed at the burial grounds of Hallstatt, which are symbolised in the background by a pair of skeletons. Inspired by artistic depictions found on bronze vessels from the Iron Age, known as *situlae*, the coin’s reverse features an image of a ritual in the foreground, in which a prostrate person is being blessed or anointed by another who is standing. In the background, beyond those supporting the ritual and a blazing fire, a water bird is depicted. Due to its great importance, salt also played a part in rituals. Valuable things were sacrificed, among them ‘white gold’.