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Coin and the representation of individual authority

If the reladvely unranked Middle Iron Age gave way to individuals asserting domi-nance through the use of groups of loyal horsemen, then these new individuals would need to develop ways of validating and legidmising their new power and authority. Often this involves delving back into an imagined past: the Augustan revolution was legitimated as being a restoration of the Republic, though of course it was no such thing. This chapter investigates the ritual basis of authority, and introduces the discussion of the imagery on coin - one of the new media used to articulate authority.

The horse and the ritual basis of authority

Power and authority are rarely simply based upon might or the distribution of prestige goods. Freąuently they are dressed up in ritualistic practices which help to validate authority. As Octavian took over the Roman State, he was very careful to use ritual and religion to consolidate his regime, even to the extent of taking on a new name, ‘ Augustus’, with its religious overtones. We saw with the Sotiates of Aąuitania that members of a comitatus could be bound by a sacred oath to their master. Rule and ritual are intertwined, but can we reconstruct any of it in MIA/LIA Britain? In order to investigate the ritual basis of kingship we will start with some analogies, separated in time and space from Britain. Then we will return to the archaeological evidence, which strongly suggests that the analogous situations may not be far off the mark, though the precise situation we will never be able to know for surę.

If any one thing symbolised the power of potential rulers and the leaders of comitates, it was the horse. Not only did the horseman represent power, but also the horse itself may have be en ritually significant in its own right. Connections between horses and the ruling class are represented in the Irish vemacular literaturę, wherein the man/horse relationship was fundamental to the concept of kingship. Old and Middle Irish sagas have preserved a series of images of what the conferment of kingship meant in a form of society comparable with, though inevitably different to, Iron Age Britain. Simms (1987) has brought together the literary evidence dealing with the naturę of kingship, including many of the difficult bardic sources. In this study, one idea which constantly recurs is the concept of kingship as not just the power invested in an individual, but a union of the forces of man and the natural world, £requendy described in terms of a marriage between the potential king and the earth. This is often described as ‘sacral kingship’:

Coin and the representation of authority

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The fundamental theory is that right order in society can only flourish under the nile of the right king. The peaceful succession of property from father to son, the due fulfilment of contracts, security from outside attack, fertility in man and beast, increase in crops, element weather, absence of disease, are all secured if the land herself, or the local goddess of sovereignty, is ‘married’ to a true king.

(Simms 1987:21)

For us the most important dimension to this concept is that it was the horse which was often used to embody ‘naturę’ at these ‘marriages’. Though practices inevitably changed with time, nearly all the investitures described included either explicit acts or vestiges of acts linking king and animal. For example in the X2th century Life of Colm Colman, son of Luachan, a description is given of the consecration of the kings of Tara, which includes the use of a horsewhip on a man (Simms 1987:23). In the initiation of the kings of Connacht, we hear of the O Conchobhair king getting down on all fours in imitation of a horse, enabling an ecclesiastic to climb first onto his back before getting onto the king’s horse itself (Simms 1987:23). But both of these examples pale into insignificance when compared to Giraldus Cambrensis’ account of a ceremony performed in Tir Conaill:

There is in the northem and farther part of Ulster, namely in Kenelcunill [Tir Conaill], a certain people which is accustomed to consecrate its king with a rite altogether outlandish and abominable. When the whole people of that land has been gathered together in one place, a white marę is brought forward into the middle of the assembly. He who is to be inaugurated, not as a chief, but as a beast, not as a king, but as an outlaw, embraces the animal before all, professing himself to be a beast also. The marę is then killed immediately, cut up in pieces and boiled in water. A bath is prepared for the man afterwards in the same water. He sits in the bath suitounded by all his people, and all, he and they, eat of the meat of the marę which is brought to them. He quafis and drinks of the broth in which he is bathed, not in any cup, or using his hand, but [ust dipping his mouth into it round about him. When this unrighteous rite has been carried out, his kingship and dominion have been conferred. (Giraldus Cambrensis, quoted in Simms 1987:21-2)

The dating of many of these descriptions is problematic. This particular event, if real, may be derived from orał tradition dating to any dme before to the twelfth century, when this text was written down. Such notions of a ritualistic union between an animal (representing the land) and the ruler are not uncommon in a variety of Indo-European contexts. But this specific theme recurs in several other locales, which suggests it has very firm roots within Indo-European ‘culture’. A second ceremony, extraordinarily similar to the Tir Conaill, comes from Vedic sources. In the rich literaturę here a specific word is provided for the rite where horse and ruler are brought together, and this is the Asvamedha (Puhvel 197o; Oaks 1986). This rite specifically relates to conferring sovereignty over anncxed States. Yet in this case the