Coin Austria Hallstatt White Gold - Beliefs and rituals - 20 Euros Silver Proof 2025

20 Euros AUSTRIA 2025

 Theme : Hallstatt White Gold - Beliefs and Rituals 

Quality : Proof
 Edition : 30 000 copies.
 Silver 925 ? - 22 42 g (2/3 Oz) - Ø 34 mm.
 Delivered in a case with certificate.

 After the issue on salt mines and the salt trade, the ?Hallstatt White Gold? collection reaches its climax in the form of Beliefs and Rituals. The final piece in this three-part series highlights the religious and spiritual world of the Hallstatt culture, a material culture that flourished in Central Europe between 800 and 500 BC.
 
 As well as being able to create a rich and prosperous culture based on the exploitation of salt, the people of the Hallstatt culture possessed other skills. Traces of these skills were discovered by Johann Georg Ramsauer in 1846, when he came across a cemetery near the Hallstatt salt mine. The precious funerary objects he unearthed bear witness not only to the prosperity and high social status of the people buried there, but also to the religious and spiritual world of the Hallstatt culture. Demonstrating great technical mastery in their manufacture, the funerary objects include elaborate bronze vessels containing food and drink intended to nourish the deceased on their journey to the afterlife. The ornamental representations of people with which they are often decorated include scenes of festivities and cremations. Water birds such as ducks and swans seem to play a special role. They were considered a symbol of the divine because, unlike humans of the time, they were able to move on land, in water and in the air.
 
 In the foreground of the obverse of the coin is a bowl decorated with a bull, one of the remarkable artefacts unearthed in the Hallstatt cemetery, symbolised in the background by a pair of skeletons. Inspired by the artistic representations found on Iron Age bronze vessels known as situlae, the reverse of the coin shows, in the foreground, the image of a ritual in which a prostrate person is blessed or anointed by another who is standing. In the background, beyond those supporting the ritual and a blazing fire, a water bird is depicted. Because of its great importance, salt also played a role in the rituals. Valuable objects were sacrificed, including ?white gold?.