hist-tour

The Vulchitrun treasure is the earliest valuable set for ritual drinking on the Balkan Peninsula. It dates back to the end of the Bronze Age, 15th – 13th Cent. BC. This treasure and the Troyan war described in the Iliad by Homer are approximately from one and the same period of time.

The Vulchitrun treasure is the biggest gold treasure from the ancient world. It has been made about 32 centuries before from pure native gold, weighs 12,5 kilograms and has been used both for ritual and everyday necessities.

The biggest vessel was used for mixing of the wine, it weighs 4,5 kilograms and contains more than 10 liters.

This vessel consists of three leaf-shaped small basins connected with narrow pipes that turn them into interconnected vessels. Probably each of them was filled in with a certain liquid, which mixed with the others and through the main pipe the big vessel was filled with that liquid.
There is no doubt what the main liquid was – that was the heavy and hard Thracian wine. We can only guess if the other two were water and some improvements with certain aroma. They ladled out from the big vessel and filled three little cups each with a handle. There are two other features connected with the treasure. One of it is the material – the gold is the most conductive material. It takes away heat at the moment of pouring and the liquid becomes icy cold. The priests and even the common household women amazed their guests with the miraculous effect of the yellow metal. The guests or the participants in these ceremonies were amazed with something else also. The cup-bearers always knew when the glasses were empty and filled them up – the oddly located handles moved the centre of weight and the vessels without liquid lay on the tables and it became clear for them that they should fill them up.

The fials and the rhytons were some other vessels connected with drinking of wine or specific religious demonstrations. The Thracian fials are from silver, only as an exception they were made from gold or bronze. They have the shape of cups with different diameter and height without handles but always with a hollow down in the middle which resembles a hub. This way one can easy place one of his fingers in it. On the walls of the fials there are descriptions, mainly floral and geometrical ornaments and sometimes heads of people or animals or as exception figural scenes.

The earliest rhytons are simple animal horns and that’s where their name comes from. The ancient people /but also nowadays some people do it in certain regions/ made cups from it by cutting the tops of the horns. Gradually they started making similar vessels first from clay and later from metal. The Thracian rhytons are from gold or silver, they have high artistic and scientific value mostly because they have the shape of animal bodies or heads and their walls are covered with attractive descriptions.
The wine flew out from a small opening in the mouth of the depicted animal, between his legs or somewhere else at the bottom of the horn. The exact way of drinking is shown on several scenes. The drinker holds in the high lifted right hand a rhyton and from its opening the liquid flows into the fial. After that the opening was closed with a finger or a peg and one could drink from the mouth of the fial. That was perhaps not the only way of drinking. There is a vessel with a shape of a rhyton which doesn’t have an opening. It is made of gold with the shape of the flying horse. People drank from it from the large mouth in the upper end.

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