During the third century, Christianity was growing but wasn’t yet widespread. In the northern Alpine regions of the Roman Empire, it was still risky to publicly practice. For the amulet’s owner, “his faith was apparently so important that he took it with him to his grave,” per the statement.
Researchers worked for years to recover the scroll’s contents, as the thin silver foil was too brittle to unfurl. Instead, researchers at the nearby Leibniz Center for Archaeology used high-resolution CT scanning.
“The challenge in the analysis was that the silver sheet was rolled, but after around 1,800 years, it was of course also creased and pressed,” says Ivan Calandra, head of the center’s imaging lab, in the statement. “Using CT [scanning], we were able to scan it at a very high resolution and create a 3D model.”


