A unique
Roman inscription was found during archaeological excavations near Valkenburg in South
Holland. This is a text on one of the poles of an old
Roman road, along the current N206. According to the province, no such discovery has been made in the Netherlands before.
It is a
inscription on a wooden pole of the second cohort of
Roman citizens. That was a unit of the
Roman army that acted as a contractor and carried out all kinds of construction
work, Omroep
West writes.
The text is '
COH II CR', which is the abbreviation for
Cohors II Civium Romanorum. The
inscription probably
comes from the year 125 AD.
Systematically built
Curator Jasper de Bruin is enthusiastic about the find. "Until recently, it was not known whether the
Roman road was built by soldiers, civilians, locals or perhaps slaves," he says.
"Now it appears that almost 2000 years ago, the second cohort of
Roman citizens built the road at Valkenburg, which can be seen as the predecessor of the current Rhineland Route." According to De Bruin, this shows that the
Roman road was built very systematically.
The excavations are
part of the archaeological investigation of the
Roman Limes, the ancient northern
border of the
Roman Empire. This find will be further investigated in the coming period. The results will be published next year.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2294232-unieke-romeinse-tekst-gevonden-bij-valkenburg-zh.html