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Roman Panther pawing barbarian head found in Essex
A rare Roman vehicle fitting depicting a female feline with her paw on a disembodied human head has been discovered in England and officially declared Treasure. Dating to between 43 and 200 A.D., it is the only known Roman vehicle fitting found in Britain that combines a feline with a human head. This unique motif and style make the modest piece so historically significant that even though it’s a single object made of base metal, it qualifies as Treasure under the amended Treasure Act of 1996.
The copper alloy figure was discovered by a metal detectorist in Harlow, Essex, in 2024. Flat and hollow on the back side, the three-dimensionally modeled front depicts a large female feline squatting on her haunches with her forelimbs resting on a male human head. Her tail is tucked under her rear and the curls over the base. The animal is incised with lines that are stylized renditions of musculature. Two small circles may indicate a leopard fur pattern. (The Latin word for panther (pantera) was the word for leopard too.)
The head is fully covered with a cap of hair represented by parallel lines from pate to forehead. A moustache and beard also drawn in parallel lines frame a slotted mouth. The parallel lines of the beard are drawn over the base, too, design overlapping structure as it does with the panther’s tail. The eyes are lentoid in shape and closed, topped by line-drawn eyebrows. A straight line down the forehead meets curved lines above the eyebrows that suggest a furrowed brow.
It is approximately 4.5 inches long, 4 inches high and 1.7 inches wide. The unmodelled hollow back of the cat is filled with lead. Its flatness is evidence that it was a fitting mounted to a flat surface. The comparatively small size of the piece suggests it wasn’t mounted directly to a carriage or wagon but rather to the strap that connected a draft animal to a yoke.
The hair and beard mark the figure as a barbarian according to Greco-Roman iconography. The closed eyes indicate he is a dead barbarian. Dead or captive barbarians are rife in Roman art, symbols of the Empire’s conquests, but they’re typically found on battle scenes, in sculptures, reliefs, mosaics, frescoes and coins, and they are not paired with exotic beasts. The closest comparable fitting in England is a female panther with her front paw resting on a medallion bearing the face of Jupiter Ammon, long-haired and bearded, so not a barbarian at all, now in the Colchester Museum.
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