Commemorating Hadrian’s Wall: searching for signs of a 2nd-century celebration

In 2004, there was great excitement at the discovery of an enamelled bronze vessel (see CA 188) inscribed with the names of four forts on Hadrian’s Wall: MAIA (Bowness-on-Solway), COGGABATA (Drumburgh), VXELODVNVM (Stanwix), and CAMMOGLANNA (Castlesteads). Dating to the 2nd century AD, the colourfully decorated vessel is known as the Ilam Pan – after the Staffordshire parish in which it had been found by metal-detectorists – but it is in reality more the size of a soup ladle. Its text is not limited to the fort names, however: in 2021, Christof Flügel and David Breeze published two papers on the other part of the inscription, which reads rigore vali Aeli Draconis. Vali Aeli, or ‘the Aelian Wall’, is thought to refer to Hadrian’s frontier fortifications, as Aelius was one of the emperor’s family names. As for the rest, Flügel and Breeze argued that the word rigor is a technical surveying term, and that therefore Draco may have been one of the surveyors of the Wall. (If so, he was almost certainly a legionary – and therefore a Roman citizen – and so another possible interpretation of the text is that Aelius refers to him, as citizens had at least two, if not three, parts to their name.)

This led Julian Munby to ask the authors if there were any Roman accounts of ‘topping-out’ events – that is, building-completion ceremonies such as occurred in later centuries, at which celebratory toasting cups, like the Ilam Pan, may have been used. This question does not appear to have been asked before about Roman frontiers, and so the authors of this feature – four archaeologists from Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands, all countries intimately connected to Hadrian – have set out to explore how Roman frontiers might have been commemorated at the time of their construction.

Construction clues

It may seem surprising to begin with an answer in the negative, but we should start by admitting that it is highly unlikely that the Ilam Pan was used in any such religious ceremony. It belongs to a vessel type used for drinking, whereas a different kind of vessel, combined with a jug, was in use during ceremonies and sacrifices – hence why this latter ‘vessel set’ is often depicted on the sides of Roman altars. But even without the involvement of the Ilam artefact, could there have been a topping-out ceremony for a Roman frontier? Again, we are doubtful, as the construction of these frontiers were such long, drawn-out affairs. The building of Hadrian’s Wall, for example, started in or shortly before Hadrian’s visit in AD 122, and was probably not finished at the time of the emperor’s death in 138, partly because the plans were changed several times during its construction, but also possibly because of local opposition.