Nearly 2,000-year-old vessel with two snake heads found at Roman villa in Spain

PC: Study- Of snakes and gods: early evidence for the cult of Sabazios in the Roman villa of Collet At the Roman villa of Collet, on a low cliff above Spain's Bay of Palamós, archaeologists have uncovered fragments of a large ceramic vessel that appears to reveal one of the empire's more secretive religious practices. Its handle, moulded into a two-headed serpent covered in tiny incised scales, was broken and buried close to a bread oven sometime during the Augustan period, roughly two thousand years ago. Researchers now argue the piece belonged to the cult of Sabazios, a Thracian and Phrygian god whose worship in the Roman world rarely left the home. Evidence for the cult on the Iberian Peninsula is thin, mostly clustered near the ancient city of Emporiae, making the Collet find a rare rural example. Laboratory testing of the vessel's clay points further still, suggesting it may have travelled from Roman Africa rather than being made locally, hinting at how far the cult's quiet influence could reach.What does the snake-headed vessel revealThe fragments were recovered from the Roman villa of Collet, which sits on a rocky outcrop roughly 20 metres above the Bay of Palamós, in the an...