Garrett Olmsted

Alongside studies of the art style of the Chiemsee and Gundestrup cauldrons and analyses of the weapons and other items portrayed on them, my research over the past 50 years has dealt with the Irish myths which Gaulish and Classical sources suggest have entered early medieval manuscript transmission from more ancient oral beginnings. Of necessity, the comparative analysis of myth must utilize heavily the methods of textual criticism. In the case of Gaulish inscriptions or Archaic Irish poetry, determining an accurate translation is often a ponderous process. Notably in the works with textual criticism, I have placed English translations before the quoted texts in an attempt to make them easier to survey. Although these previous studies are readily accessible to philologists and linguists, it is likely that they remain less inviting to archaeologists and others with an interest in pre-Roman Celtic myth and religion.
Here in the present work, I take the opposite view and begin solely with the Gaulish material, much of which is pictorial. Portrayed scenes on decorated Armorican cauldrons and episodes of Celtic myths indicated in brief accounts of Celtic myth recorded by Classical authors are the items presented in this study. The interpretation of what is portrayed and what is recounted are based upon aligning this more ancient material with the corresponding accounts preserved in medieval Irish sources. Although the Irish texts are used to interpret the portrayed episodes, there is no need to compare varying versions of Irish texts.
What is portrayed on each cauldron is presented as a variant of the textual repertoire. For this reason, the ability to critique the Old Irish sources is of less significance to an analysis of the material presented. I trust that those who found my earlier publications daunting will find this work more appealing. The interested reader will find an analysis of the relevant Irish texts in detail in my previous works, now all available on academia.edu. These previous works are indicated in the Bibliography at the end of this present work, and the relevant topics, including a cursory analysis of the Irish sources, are discussed in the Appendix.

There are three seventh-century poetic references to the Táin bó Cuailnge (for which I have provided previous analyses and glossaries in the sources below). These poetic descriptions of events in the Táin occur in Verba Scathaige (Olmsted 1979: 227-240), Conailla Medb Míchuru (paper presented to the 9th Celtic Congress 1991; Olmsted 1988: 3-72), and in Mórrígan Rosc (Olmsted 1982: 165-172). Putting these three sources together provides the earliest narrative description of the Táin. These seventhcentury poetic glimpses of the Táin overlap with a reconstruction of the ninth-century prose tale developed from a philological analysis of the extant manuscript versions of recension I (Olmsted 1979: 186-211, 241-251; O'Rahilly 1967: xxv-xxxvi; Thurneysen 1921: 99-113). Before proceeding with a discussion of the view of the Táin provided by these sources, I shall first give a text, translation, and a brief description of each poem.

Just as the sign of the cross represents the most important symbolic detail behind Christianity, the sign of the twin dragons, seen as decorations on La Tène sword scabbards and often portrayed as ram-headed serpents, represents one of the most important symbolic details behind pagan Celtic belief. Fortunately, the art style, the distribution, and the dating of scabbards decorated with the twin dragons were the subjects of a thorough study by Nathalie Ginoux in 2007. Ginoux determined that these stylized dragons were prevalent decorations throughout the entire region and time phase in which La Tène culture is found.
Although Ginoux recognized that the twin dragons as well as the palmette, another widespread symbol among the La Tène Celts, related to the spiritual realm, up till now the significance of what they implied has remained a mystery. Further iconographic detail about these early Celtic symbols is provided by Armorican coins and decorated cauldrons (from Gundestrup and the Chiemsee) created just before Caesar’s victory over the Veneti (56 BC). What I attempt here is to elucidate the significance of these motifs through an analysis of the early Irish narrative sources, ultimately deriving from the same Atlantic Iron Age culture as the silver and gold Armorican cauldrons, which enable a reconstruction of the mythology behind this symbolism.
Being in direct contact with Celtic-speaking peoples from the sixth-century BC on, it is also likely that Greek and Roman creators of anthologies of, or even those just noting down passing-references to, attention-grabbing mythic tales, such as Ovid (Metamorphoses) and Plutarch (Moralia), recorded elements of Celtic belief as integral aspects of what they chose to write down. Where early Irish tales describe similar characters and themes, Classical sources then can give verification to the likely presence of these themes in the contemporary early Celtic repertoire as well. Of course, the iconographic portrayal of these themes on preconquest repoussé-decorated cauldrons and on Romano-Gaulish stone monuments serves much the same purpose of sifting out the material relating to the Atlantic Iron Age from the early medieval Irish manuscript sources.
Alongside a belief in a heavenly paradise on an Island where the Sun Sets, as in the seventh century Irish Immram Brain, which is manifest even to this day in the Hebrides and in Brittany, the Celts of Gaul also believed in a cycle of rebirth, returning the soul substance to a new more mundane life. Julius Caesar in de Bello Gallico (BG: VI, 14) indicates that “the cardinal doctrine which they (druides) seek to teach is souls do not die, but after death pass from one to another” (non interire animas, sed ab aliis post mortem transire ad alios) (Edwards 1917: 338-9). In this crediting the Gauls with a belief in metempsychosis (Watson 2020: 1), Caesar followed Poseidonius (Diodorus Siculus: BH: V.38.6) and was followed by Ammianus Marcellinus (RGL: XXXI, XV.ix.4). Thus, at the time of Caesar’s conquest of the Veneti and the creation of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons, reincarnation was a major doctrine of Gaulish religious belief, and this belief is likely reflected in some aspect of the symbolic iconography.

Je donne ici, à la suite de mes propres traductions en français, des transcriptions dans la langue originale qui racontent les événements mythiques derrière le cycle annuel des fêtes celtiques dédiées aux dieux. Les poèmes originaux étaient pour la plupart composés en vieil irlandais, mais j'en ai donné deux composés en gaélique écossais, et plusieurs ont été composés en moyen irlandais. Il existe également plusieurs autres poèmes composés dans des langues non celtiques, qui décrivent des divinités similaires dans leurs actions et leurs mythes aux divinités celtiques, mais qui ont été composés à une époque et dans un lieu où des divinités apparentées similaires étaient encore vénérées. Ainsi, j'inclus ici mes propres traductions en vers de poèmes composés à l'origine en latin, grec, sanscrit, akkadien, sumérien et quelques-uns du gaulois et du celtibère.
Les poèmes eux-mêmes donnent de brèves descriptions de la nature de la ou des divinités en question et de brefs aperçus des mythes autour desquels ils ont été composés. Ils proposent ainsi une introduction à la religion celtique en utilisant les paroles de poètes qui adoraient encore les sujets de leurs compositions comme des dieux, ou du moins considéraient encore les sujets de leurs compositions comme des esprits surhumains qui hantaient encore le lieu dans lequel le poète décrivait les événements, comme ayant lieu. Le lecteur est ainsi initié à la religion celtique à partir de sources originales, plutôt qu’à partir de l’interprétation académique d’un érudit. Pour des raisons similaires, j'ai placé une seule planche à la fin de chaque chapitre qui illustre certains aspects du ou des poèmes du chapitre précédent, mais dans laquelle l'image a également été créée par un artiste qui adorait les dieux ou les déesses représentés. Que le poème et l'image aient été créés par des artistes adorant les mêmes divinités, je laisse au lecteur le soin de décider.

Hier gebe ich, nach meinen eigenen Übersetzungen ins Standardenglisch, Transkriptionen in der Originalsprache, die die mythischen Ereignisse hinter dem jährlichen Zyklus der keltischen Feste, die den Göttern gewidmet sind, erzählen. Für diese deutsche Ausgabe, meine standardmäßigen englischen Versübersetzungen wurden dann von Google Translate ins Deutsche übersetzt. Anschließend habe ich die deutsche Übersetzung Korrektur gelesen. Obwohl meine Lesekenntnisse in Deutsch ausreichend sind, reicht mein gesprochenes Deutsch sicherlich nicht aus, um deutsche Gedichte zu verfassen. Ich habe versucht, lange oder offensichtlich unpoetische Zeilen zu eliminieren, indem ich die englischen Zeilen neu zusammengestellt habe.
Die ursprünglichen Gedichte wurden größtenteils auf Altirisch verfasst, aber ich habe eines auf Schottisch-Gälisch verfasst, und mehrere wurden auf Mittelirisch verfasst. Es gibt auch mehrere andere Gedichte, die in nicht-keltischen Sprachen verfasst wurden und Gottheiten beschreiben, die den keltischen Gottheiten in ihrer Handlung und ihrem Mythos ähneln, aber zu einer Zeit und an einem Ort verfasst wurden, an dem ähnliche verwandte Gottheiten noch verehrt wurden. Daher füge ich hier meine eigenen Versübersetzungen von Gedichten hinzu, die ursprünglich in Latein, Griechisch, Sanskrit, Akkadisch, Sumerisch und einigen aus dem Gallischen und Keltiberischen verfasst wurden. Aber denn muss ich meine Englische Übersetzung auf Deutsch transformieren. Meine deutsche Übersetzung ist dann inhaltlich korrekt, aber ob sie poetisch bleibt oder nicht, bleibt Glückssache. Wenn Sie Verse wünschen, müssen Sie die englische Version dieses Artikels konsultieren, die auch auf academia.edu zu finden ist, oder, noch besser, die Gedichte in der Originalsprache lesen. Ich gebe hier auch das Original im Anschluss an die Übersetzung.
Die Gedichte selbst geben kurze Beschreibungen der Natur der betreffenden Gottheit oder Gottheiten und kurze Umrisse der Mythen, um die sie herum verfasst wurden. Sie stellen somit eine Einführung in die keltische Religion dar und verwenden dabei die Worte von Dichtern, die die Themen ihrer Kompositionen immer noch als Götter verehrten oder die Themen ihrer Kompositionen zumindest noch immer für übermenschliche Geister hielten, die immer noch den Ort heimsuchten, an dem der Dichter die Ereignisse beschrieb als stattfindend. Der Leser wird dadurch anhand von Originalquellen in die keltische Religion eingeführt und nicht anhand der akademischen Interpretation eines Gelehrten. Aus ähnlichen Gründen habe ich am Ende jedes Kapitels eine einzelne Tafel angebracht, die einige Aspekte des Gedichts oder der Gedichte im vorhergehenden Kapitel illustriert, auf der das Bild jedoch auch von einem Künstler geschaffen wurde, der die dargestellten Götter oder Göttinnen verehrte. Dass sowohl das Gedicht als auch das Bild von Künstlern geschaffen wurden, die dieselben Gottheiten verehren, überlasse ich dem Leser.

Here I give, following my own translations into standard English, transcriptions in the original language which narrate the mythic events behind the yearly cycle of Celtic festivals dedicated to the gods. The original poems were mostly composed in Old Irish, but I have given one composed in Scottish Gaelic, and several were composed in Middle Irish. There are also several other poems that were composed in non-Celtic languages, which describe deities similar in action and myth to the Celtic deities, but which were composed at a time when and in a place where similar cognate deities were still worshiped. Thus, I include here my own verse translations of poems originally composed in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Akkadian, Sumerian, and a few from Gaulish and Celtiberian.
The poems themselves give brief descriptions of the nature of the deity or deities in question and brief outlines of the myths they were composed around. They thus provide an introduction to Celtic religion using the words of poets who still worshiped the subjects of their compositions as gods, or at least still thought of the subjects of their compositions as superhuman spirits who still haunted the place in which the poet described the events as taking place. The reader is thereby introduced to Celtic religion from original sources, rather than from some scholar’s academic interpretation. For similar reasons, I have placed a single plate at the end of each chapter which illustrates some aspect of the poem or poems in the preceding chapter, but in which the image also was created by an artist who worshipped the gods or goddesses portrayed. That both the poem and the image were created by artists worshipping the same deities I leave to the reader to decide.
Without some means of sifting the kernel of truth about Celtic myth from the chaff of unverified guesses, little could be stated about the true nature of pre-Christian Celtic religion, at least very little which is accurate. Even worse than inaccurate, what passes for scholarship is often totally misleading. The Celts definitely did not worship trees and totem animals any more than did the Greeks or Romans. Indeed, Celtic mystery cults had the same subtility as those found in contemporary Greece, Rome, and India, with the same object in mind: to pass to a better existence at death than the gloomy dreariness of the grave or again the repetition of the whole round of plagues, famine, and war through the cycle of rebirth.

Besides the Chiemsee cauldron’s similarities in art style, form, weight and measurement system, repousse decoration, iconography, and narrative portrayals to those on the Gundestrup cauldron, the Chiemsee cauldron also portrays a number of items closely associated with the material culture of northwest France during the first century BC. In particular, in addition to western-style shields, torcs, and armor, the Knollenknaufschwert portrayed on outer plate 6 of the Chiemsee cauldron is so-detailed as to make it unambiguous that the Chiemsee cauldron, if real, can have been produced only in that part of Europe familiar with such Knollenknaufschwerter.

Inner plate 3 of the Chiemsee cauldron depicts two horsemen, each holding a severed head in the left hand while waving a sword held in the right hand. The scene depicts an event which crops up later in the Irish tale Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (Ní Shéaghdha 1967). When Finn sends warriors up the tree to bring down Diarmaid, thinking each descending comrade in turn is Diarmaid, the warriors waiting below behead each one when he reaches the ground. Each rider on inner plate 3 holds a sword, even though behind each rider there is the clear portrayal of a sword still in its scabbard attached to the rear horn of the saddle.

Chiemsee inner plate 3 now can be seen to depict actual contemporary Gaulish examples of sword mounts. Furthermore, just such a Knollenknaufschwert also is portrayed on Chiemsee outer plate 6. Verifying its genuine nature, the Chiemsee cauldron predicts that such saddle-fastened Knollenknaufschwert mounts should have existed in Gaul. Until August of 2023 (but for an indication of one of three possibilities in the Appendix to Krämer 1962), neither I nor anyone else ever suspected that the mountings on these swords were used to fasten them to the rear horns of saddles. Thus, the depiction on the Chiemsee cauldron portrays an actually-utilized mounting system.
The function of the rapier-like Knollenknaufschwerter was to penetrate armor like that depicted on Chiemsee outer plates 2 and 6. In tests even 20-layer-thick laminated-linen armor, which protected the wearer from arrows, sling bolts, and sword slashes, could be penetrated by a strong thrust from a narrow-pointed rapier-like weapon. Thus, the Chiemsee cauldron teaches us about the use intended for the sword shape and unusual mountings of the Knollenknaufschwerter, the subject of much debate since first being adequately studied by Krämer in 1962.

What I have attempted here is to reconstruct not only plot outlines but even short versions of the myths current in Armorican Gaul, Ireland, and Wales (the region defined by the Atlantic Iron Age culture) at the time of Caesar’s Conquest. The primary basis of these reconstructions is: (1) the discovery (which I made fifty years ago) that the narrative portrayals on the inner plates of the silver Gundestrup cauldron align with the major episodes of the eighth century Irish Táin bó Cuailgne and Táin bó Fraích, (2) the discovery (which I made 4 years ago) that the narrative portrayals on the outer plates of the gold Chiemsee cauldron align with major episodes of the ninth century Fled Bricrend; and (3) the discovery that the Chiemsee inner plates align with important episodes of the eighth to eleventh century poetic versions of Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (TDG), the major romantic epic which was transcribed in the early modern Irish of the sixteenth century. Since the imagery and art-style of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons align with Armorican coins datable to 75-55 BC, the portrayals on these cauldrons demonstrate that versions of these myths were current in Armorica during the decades just prior to Caesar’s Conquest.
The objective of this monograph is to present, alongside the source material from which the myths were derived, the 16 pages of reconstructed Gaulish-myth to be found in sections B0-B10. It is clear that the pre-Christian Celts of the Atlantic-Iron-Age culture possessed a religion and supporting body of myth and ritual as rich as that found in contemporary Greece or India. They also looked forward after death either toward reincarnation through the locus of the moon or, if worthy, toward attaining on the Island where the Sun sets, a physical body identical to the one they had at youthful maturity, but one as uncorruptible as the gold torcs the warriors wore to show their adherence to the concept of vīros “truth and loyalty”.
At the stage they were first written down, Ireland, the Atlantic Celtic culture that best preserved the myths, had recently adopted the new religion of Christianity. The earlier gods were euhemerized into the key players of pseudo-history. Before the euhemerized myths first entered manuscript tradition, they were recorded earlier in iconographic portrayal in Armorica, the Atlantic Celtic culture that first adopted narrative portrayal. Like myth recorded in language, the language of iconography has its own systematic units of portrayal. Aside from the coinage, the earliest recording of Celtic myth is the narrative portrayal in repousse metalwork, such as that depicted on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons.
The association of the Gundestrup cauldron with Irish myth is limited to the Táin and the Remscéla “Fore Tales”. The Gundestrup cauldron commemorates the vernal equinox festival, making clear the original role of the Gaulish myth giving rise to the Táin. My discovery that the Chiemsee cauldron was genuine in April of 2019 was the key to filling in the missing half of Gaulish mythology: the Medieval Irish tales that developed from the Gaulish myths associated with the autumnal equinox.
Just as the Rosetta Stone provided a means to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, so too the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons provide the pictural narration of earlier versions of myth-based epics and tales. Beginning in the sixth century AD, these narrations began to be transferred to manuscript preservation from oral preservation through repeated recitation by a professional class of priests, poets, and lawyers: the veletes “seers” composed of druidēs, bardi, vātīs, and britovii. Like the later Irish filid, Caesar in de Bello Gallico (vi.14.3) records that the druidēs spent twenty years attending recitation classes where they learned many lines in verse.
While the Gundestrup cauldron was recognized as ancient upon its discovery in 1891, the gold Chiemsee cauldron was misjudged to be a recent production when it was first scrutinized by a Munich museum-curator unfamiliar with the art style and the mythology preserved on its close silver cousin, the Gundestrup cauldron. The golden Chiemsee cauldron portrays motifs depicted in the same Armorican-coin art-style to be found on the Gundestrup cauldron. However, the Chiemsee cauldron art style duplicates that found on Armorican coins minted a couple of decades later than the Armorican coins duplicating the art style of the Gundestrup cauldron. Thus, the museum curator was wrong in asserting that the Chiemsee cauldron is a fake inspired by the Gundestrup cauldron. The Chiemsee cauldron does not copy the style of the Gundestrup cauldron, but rather it copies the art-style found in the same Armorican culture a few decades earlier. Also, the Chiemsee cauldron depicts motifs for the most part different from those depicted on the Gundestrup cauldron, again motifs found on Armorican coins but not found on the Gundestrup cauldron.

Throughout the time since it surfaced from the lake, the gold Chiemsee cauldron simply has been too grand for its own good. It is like the pearl in Steinbeck’s famous novel. Multiple lawsuits have kept it locked-up in safes, almost continuously, since its discovery. Unfortunately, the similar silver Gundestrup cauldron, which also survives as a witness to the art and the iconography of the Veneti, has been given the wrong origin by many observers from Germany and the British Isles, who see its place of manufacture as within a Celto-Thracian tradition on the lower Danube. The gold Chiemsee cauldron which survives from the Veneti has fared even worse than the Gundestrup cauldron. It has been seen as a recent production of the Nazis. The proponents of Nazi origin have concocted more-and-more-embellished stories that the cauldron was constructed as the centerpiece of a Heinrich-Himmler-SS cult, thereby tainting its reputation, keeping it out of scholarly perspective. Yet this theory of Nazi production involves far more incredible scenarios (many of them straight out of Indiana Jones) than those demanded by the initial supposition that the piece is genuinely ancient in origin, which should have been followed by a thorough examination to determine if this assumption was valid.
Some who have condemned the cauldron as fake would suffer embarrassment if the cauldron should prove to be genuine, since it would be the greatest single treasure from the ancient world ever found. Until the discovery of the Chiemsee cauldron, the Gundestrup cauldron was the unique witness to pre-Roman Celtic religious iconographic narration. Because of the Gundestrup cauldron’s uniqueness it is has been difficult to place it in its proper cultural perspective. Because of its uniqueness there has been a great deal of debate about its nature. With the finding of the Chiemsee cauldron, we have a doubling of the information about these pieces. Both cauldrons fit within the cultural milieu of an origin in Armorica just before Caesar’s conquest, the Gundestrup cauldron being constructed 10 to 20 years before the Chiemsee cauldron. Only with the recognition that the Chiemsee Cauldron is a genuine witness alongside the Gundestrup cauldron to the art and religion of the Veneti can we begin to incorporate the vast amount of information these two time-capsules convey to us about this hitherto lost culture.

The only research done on the gold Chiemsee cauldron during the six weeks in 2002 it was under study at the Archäologische Staatssammlung München, before Ludwig Wamser publicly declared it to be a forgery, was a cursory analysis of its metal content. It was dismissed without further investigation on the basis of the results of that report, which was not capable of determining trace minerals. The fuller analysis of the metal content I present here is not to prove the ancient nature of the cauldron, but rather to demonstrate that the metallurgical data collected so far in no way can be used to disprove the ancient production of the cauldron (particularly as relates to the levels of zinc in the solder). This contention is based upon the very-thorough LA-ICP-MS data, including trace minerals, collected by Detlef Günther in 2007 under the auspices of Peter Northover for the Swiss government as an aspect of the Fraud Trial of Marcel Wunderli. I present a copy of Northover’s report of that study to a wider audience for the first time in the Appendix.
Nonetheless, the trace mineral analysis, especially as concerns the Chiemsee cauldron’s low level of lead (ave. 80% Au, 20% Ag, 1.3 ppm Pb) definitely fits Cornish gold/silver nuggets from Tresillian (ave. 80% Au, 20% Ag, and 1.3 ppm Pb) better than it does more-readily-available modern sources of gold and silver. If as Northover contended the 8.8 kg of gold in the cauldron came from electrolytic gold, the 2.2 kg of silver would have had to come from electrolytic silver which contains 250 ppm lead, giving 50 ppm lead for the cauldron’s proposed electrolytic sources. Given the 11 kg weight of the cauldron, it would be more difficult today to obtain that weight of Cornish nuggets than it would have been 2000 years ago.
In contrast to the almost non-existent investigation of the Chiemsee cauldron (other than its metal content) conducted in 2002, I have spent three-and-one-half years engaging in research full-time on all aspects of the Chiemsee cauldron (see Olmsted 2021, as relates to the metal analysis consult pp. 139-158). Such a time period is minimally adequate to investigate a piece containing iconography, artistic style, narrative portrayal, culturally-significant items, in addition to its metallurgical content. I may note that it was 50 years ago that I began to research and write about the silver Gundestrup cauldron, the topic of my PhD dissertation in linguistics and archaeology at Harvard University, published in 1979 by Collection Latomus.
All admit the Chiemsee cauldron closely resembles the Gundestrup cauldron. I would submit that studying the Gundestrup cauldron is a prerequisite for investigating the Chiemsee cauldron. Celtic decorated cauldrons are complex, containing vast amounts of information to unravel, as Rolf Hachmann’s massive 1990 work on the displayed items (among a sea of other publications) would indicate. Beside this present work on the metal analysis, my many studies on all the above aspects of the gold and silver Celtic cauldrons are now freely available under my profile on academia.edu.
From a determination that the solder used to fasten the plates contained around 5% zinc, Ludwig Wamser and Rupert Gebhard concluded that the Chiemsee cauldron was made after 1600 AD, when zinc became available in its metallic form. From the Chiemsee cauldron’s close similarity to the Gundestrup cauldron, they went on to conclude that the Chiemsee cauldron would have to have been made after that item was found in Denmark in 1891. However, recent studies indicate that rudimentary small-batch cementation techniques can produce brass with a two-to-one ratio of copper to zinc as found in the Chiemsee solder, a necessary level of the zinc in the brass, in an item containing 10% copper, for the zinc in the solder to reach 5% (a ratio of copper to zinc of 2/1). Thus, it is now clear that the zinc in the solder could have come from Gaulish-produced brass containing 2/3 copper and 1/3 zinc. New investigations demonstrate that not only was brass being produced in north Gaul by 70 BC, but that the small-batch methods utilized were capable of producing brass with such high-levels of zinc, especially as relates to foil-like paillons for the solder. Since ancient techniques could reach this 2/1 ratio of copper to zinc, the 5% zinc in the solder cannot be used to rule out the possibility of the cauldron’s ancient production by the same culture which produced the Gundestrup cauldron. Both cauldrons being made by the same culture would explain the close resemblance in the art style and engraving technique of the gold cauldron to the silver cauldron (see Olmsted 2022b).
Since the Chiemsee cauldron contains three-quarters gold and one quarter silver, the Bavarian Ministry found the ratio suspiciously close to that of dental gold, which might have been obtained during the NS-regime. This suspicion of NSDAP-production ultimately led to the National Geographic’s 2012 documentary: The Chiemsee Cauldron and the Nazi Temple of Doom. Fortunately, from 2004 to 2007 the Chiemsee cauldron was the subject of intensive metal-content analysis by some of the world’s most-gifted metallurgists. Literally, we know the Chiemsee cauldron inside and out. Because of low levels of platinum and palladium, the cauldron cannot have been made from dental gold, which contains high amounts of these elements to harden it.

This revised edition of my 2001 Celtic Art in Transition during the First Century BC has been rewritten to include a grammar of the artistic techniques used to construct the abstract imagery on coins and on repousse sheet metal from a limited set of basic shapes. The most important new piece incorporated into this study is the Chiemsee cauldron. Although found by Jens Essig with a metal detector, with the top covered by 30 cm of muck at the bottom of the Chiemsee in 2001, the cauldron has been locked away in vaults ever since its initial discovery. It has never been exhibited for public inspection. This revised edition of my 2001 study is the only work which has attempted to study the Chiemsee motifs in comparison to those on the Gundestrup cauldron as well as in comparison to other items of north Gaulish production.
The similarities between the art style of the motifs in the Chiemsee cauldron and those in the Gundestrup cauldron are so blatant, either the Chiemsee cauldron was made by ancient craftsmen working in the same style as those who created the Gundestrup cauldron, or it is a copy created after the discovery of the Gundestrup cauldron in Denmark in 1891. If the Chiemsee cauldron is not a recent copy, both it and the Gundestrup cauldron must have been produced in the same region during the same period. If the Chiemsee cauldron is real, then a determination of the find spot of the Gundestrup cauldron will determine that of the Chiemsee cauldron and vice-versa.
The research for the original 2001 edition of this work utilized a high-resolution scanner and Adobe Photoshop to generate plates with arrays of motif-images rendered to the same size, enabling one easily to examine and compare, side-by-side, pieces of similar style and technique, no matter what the original scale of the image. Thus, images of the small-scale motifs on coins could be magnified and set side-by-side with images of the reduced largescale motifs on sheet-metalwork items, such as phalerae and cauldrons. A comparison of the motifs studied in this fashion demonstrates that the decorative imagery on both eastern and western European metalwork during the first-century BC, apart from Greece and Rome, was driven by coin art. The metalwork items were the productions of metalsmiths who were at the same time mint masters. Since the tribal coinages are generally localized in their find distributions, these coins enable one to determine the region in which a given motif was utilized in the artistic repertory.
In this revised edition a detailed analysis of the artistic technique behind the Chiemsee cauldron has been added to that of the Gundestrup cauldron. This revised study of the art of the Celtic cauldrons, in relation to each other as well as to that on coins, utilized around 50 high-resolution 80-megabyte digitalized images of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons to examine the artists techniques in greater detail. Furthermore, in 2003-4 the Danish National Museum conducted a detailed study of the techniques used to construct the Gundestrup cauldron, which was published in Acta Archeologica: 76 (Nielsen et al: 2005) and is now available on academia.edu. The conclusions of this study included the important result the Gundestrup-cauldron silver came from two sources: one used to mint north Gaulish quinars and the other to mint Armorican Coriosolite staters, demonstrating that the Gundestrup cauldron was made from western, not eastern, sources of silver. The results of this Danish-National-Museum study have been incorporated into the present work as well as into my other more recent studies of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published in academia.edu.
After a cursory inspection, the National Museum in Munich decided not to accept the Chiemsee cauldron, suspecting that it might have been made of dental gold during WW2. This suspicion was based upon a vague similarity in the gold and silver percentages in dental gold to the percentages of these metals in the cauldron. This horrifying suggestion finally culminated in the National Geographic documentary: The Chiemsee Cauldron and the Nazi Temple of Doom. After being at the center of a fraud trial in Switzerland, ending in a bankruptcy sale in 2012, the cauldron made its way to a new vault in Houston, Texas. Again, the cauldron became the centerpiece of a lawsuit.
Because of all of this negative publicity, aside from an analysis of the composition of the Chiemsee-cauldron metals, I seem to be the only scholar who has attempted a serious examination of the motifs on the cauldron. The low levels of 7 ppm of either platinum or palladium determined in 2007 by Peter Northover, compared to a minimum of 5000 ppm of each metal for dental gold, proves the fallacy of this dental-gold surmise, removing a lot of the stigma associated with the cauldron. The 1.3 ppm lead in the cauldron also demonstrates that it cannot have been made from an amalgam of electrolytic gold (as Northover then suggested). Aside from the 70-80% gold, the cauldron also contains 20-25% silver. If the gold came from electrolytic gold, electrolytic silver would then be the purest source of silver which could have been added to create the amalgam. However, such an amalgam would still contain a minimum of at least 50 ppm lead, since electrolytic silver contains 250 ppm lead.
Gold/silver nuggets from Cornwall show a similar composition to the Chiemsee cauldron amalgam in gold and silver as well as similar trace elements of lead and platinum, and they are the likely source for the metal used to construct the cauldron. The zinc, which Northover found in the solder to fasten the cauldron plates, could have come from cementation-produced brass, which was being created in north Gaul as early as 80 BC, twenty years before the probable construction-date of the Chiemsee cauldron. The presence of zinc in the solder cannot be used to deny the ancient origin of the cauldron. The ancient nature of the Chiemsee cauldron then rests upon an examination of the motifs portrayed on it.
In 2019 the then-owner requested that I examine the Chiemsee cauldron. After an initial study of the photos and Northover’s metallurgical analysis of the cauldron, the late Ralph Rowlett and I concluded that the cauldron might indeed be late Iron Age in date. The likely genuine nature of the cauldron was confirmed by a careful inspection of the piece in Houston. Three years of research and writing about the cauldron have followed that initial inspection. It is my firm belief that there is no possibility whatsoever that the Chiemsee cauldron is fake. Ralph Rowlett and I presented our initial findings in a joint lecture to the Archaeological Institute of America in St Louis (“Tale of Two Kettles”, November 11, 2019). Earlier, I had presented these findings to the Celtic Congress in Bangor, Wales (July, 2019).
In 1995 a mint-master metalsmith’s workshop was uncovered in Swabia. However, the finds were not published until 2011. The finds include a hammer for finishing small objects, files, chisels, eight iron piece-punches with different faces: a fine line, two sorts of dots, an oval, a fine curve and a broader curve. The find also included the iron dies for silver quinarii produced by these punches (Ziegaus 2011: 289-294). We now know the exact techniques used to produce the coin images. The analysis of Gaulish coins also has been revised to incorporate the conclusions of John Sills’s 2003 study Gaulish and Early British Gold Coinage as well as Philip de Jersey’s series published in academia.edu on the Câtillon-II hoard.
This work, which includes a detailed analysis of the art style of the Chiemsee cauldron (as well as that of the Gundestrup and Rynkeby cauldrons), thus, completes three years of research and writing on all aspects of the Chiemsee cauldron. This work also completes fifty years of research and writing about all aspects of the Gundestrup cauldron. Other works on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published by me on academia.edu as a result of this research include: Celtic Gods who Control Rejuvenation, Rebirth, and the Island where the Sun Sets (2021a); The Armorican Origins of the Silver and Gold Celtic Cauldrons from Gundestrup and the Chiemsee (2021b); A History of the Chiemsee Cauldron (2021d), and The Myths Portrayed on the Chiemsee Cauldron (2022). A revised edition of my earlier work on the gods and myths portrayed on the Gundestrup cauldron is also available on academia.edu: The Gods of the Celts and the Indo-Europeans (1992-2019). One may also find on academia.edu all my works of the Coligny calendar.
The original research, conducted in 1999-2000, begun after viewing, for comparison with western European items, the important pieces of Thracian silverwork housed in Romanian and Bulgarian museums. The research required the computer-generation of around 1500 four-megabyte images of the motifs under study to be projected onto 142 plates. The original study was made available in a joint publication of Archaeolingua and Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. By combining plates from the original edition and eliminating those which were of lesser importance, I have limited the number of plates in this addition to 82. Where plates have been eliminated from the current edition, I have provided references to the earlier edition. By transforming the images for this addition from 300 dpi to 72 dpi, I was able to divide the work into four sections, each containing around twenty 450-kilobyte plates (with 10 to 12 comparable items per plate), keeping each section under 10 megabytes for ease of downloading.

This revised edition of my 2001 Celtic Art in Transition during the First Century BC has been rewritten to include a grammar of the artistic techniques used to construct the abstract imagery on coins and on repousse sheet metal from a limited set of basic shapes. The most important new piece incorporated into this study is the Chiemsee cauldron. Although found by Jens Essig with a metal detector, with the top covered by 30 cm of muck at the bottom of the Chiemsee in 2001, the cauldron has been locked away in vaults ever since its initial discovery. It has never been exhibited for public inspection. This revised edition of my 2001 study is the only work which has attempted to study the Chiemsee motifs in comparison to those on the Gundestrup cauldron as well as in comparison to other items of north Gaulish production.
The similarities between the art style of the motifs in the Chiemsee cauldron and those in the Gundestrup cauldron are so blatant, either the Chiemsee cauldron was made by ancient craftsmen working in the same style as those who created the Gundestrup cauldron, or it is a copy created after the discovery of the Gundestrup cauldron in Denmark in 1891. If the Chiemsee cauldron is not a recent copy, both it and the Gundestrup cauldron must have been produced in the same region during the same period. If the Chiemsee cauldron is real, then a determination of the find spot of the Gundestrup cauldron will determine that of the Chiemsee cauldron and vice-versa.
The research for the original 2001 edition of this work utilized a high-resolution scanner and Adobe Photoshop to generate plates with arrays of motif-images rendered to the same size, enabling one easily to examine and compare, side-by-side, pieces of similar style and technique, no matter what the original scale of the image. Thus, images of the small-scale motifs on coins could be magnified and set side-by-side with images of the reduced largescale motifs on sheet-metalwork items, such as phalerae and cauldrons. A comparison of the motifs studied in this fashion demonstrates that the decorative imagery on both eastern and western European metalwork during the first-century BC, apart from Greece and Rome, was driven by coin art. The metalwork items were the productions of metalsmiths who were at the same time mint masters. Since the tribal coinages are generally localized in their find distributions, these coins enable one to determine the region in which a given motif was utilized in the artistic repertory.
In this revised edition a detailed analysis of the artistic technique behind the Chiemsee cauldron has been added to that of the Gundestrup cauldron. This revised study of the art of the Celtic cauldrons, in relation to each other as well as to that on coins, utilized around 50 high-resolution 80-megabyte digitalized images of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons to examine the artists techniques in greater detail. Furthermore, in 2003-4 the Danish National Museum conducted a detailed study of the techniques used to construct the Gundestrup cauldron, which was published in Acta Archeologica: 76 (Nielsen et al: 2005) and is now available on academia.edu. The conclusions of this study included the important result the Gundestrup-cauldron silver came from two sources: one used to mint north Gaulish quinars and the other to mint Armorican Coriosolite staters, demonstrating that the Gundestrup cauldron was made from western, not eastern, sources of silver. The results of this Danish-National-Museum study have been incorporated into the present work as well as into my other more recent studies of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published in academia.edu.
After a cursory inspection, the National Museum in Munich decided not to accept the Chiemsee cauldron, suspecting that it might have been made of dental gold during WW2. This suspicion was based upon a vague similarity in the gold and silver percentages in dental gold to the percentages of these metals in the cauldron. This horrifying suggestion finally culminated in the National Geographic documentary: The Chiemsee Cauldron and the Nazi Temple of Doom. After being at the center of a fraud trial in Switzerland, ending in a bankruptcy sale in 2012, the cauldron made its way to a new vault in Houston, Texas. Again, the cauldron became the centerpiece of a lawsuit.
Because of all of this negative publicity, aside from an analysis of the composition of the Chiemsee-cauldron metals, I seem to be the only scholar who has attempted a serious examination of the motifs on the cauldron. The low levels of 7 ppm of either platinum or palladium determined in 2007 by Peter Northover, compared to a minimum of 5000 ppm of each metal for dental gold, proves the fallacy of this dental-gold surmise, removing a lot of the stigma associated with the cauldron. The 1.3 ppm lead in the cauldron also demonstrates that it cannot have been made from an amalgam of electrolytic gold (as Northover then suggested). Aside from the 70-80% gold, the cauldron also contains 20-25% silver. If the gold came from electrolytic gold, electrolytic silver would then be the purest source of silver which could have been added to create the amalgam. However, such an amalgam would still contain a minimum of at least 50 ppm lead, since electrolytic silver contains 250 ppm lead.
Gold/silver nuggets from Cornwall show a similar composition to the Chiemsee cauldron amalgam in gold and silver as well as similar trace elements of lead and platinum, and they are the likely source for the metal used to construct the cauldron. The zinc, which Northover found in the solder to fasten the cauldron plates, could have come from cementation-produced brass, which was being created in north Gaul as early as 80 BC, twenty years before the probable construction-date of the Chiemsee cauldron. The presence of zinc in the solder cannot be used to deny the ancient origin of the cauldron. The ancient nature of the Chiemsee cauldron then rests upon an examination of the motifs portrayed on it.
In 2019 the then-owner requested that I examine the Chiemsee cauldron. After an initial study of the photos and Northover’s metallurgical analysis of the cauldron, the late Ralph Rowlett and I concluded that the cauldron might indeed be late Iron Age in date. The likely genuine nature of the cauldron was confirmed by a careful inspection of the piece in Houston. Three years of research and writing about the cauldron have followed that initial inspection. It is my firm belief that there is no possibility whatsoever that the Chiemsee cauldron is fake. Ralph Rowlett and I presented our initial findings in a joint lecture to the Archaeological Institute of America in St Louis (“Tale of Two Kettles”, November 11, 2019). Earlier, I had presented these findings to the Celtic Congress in Bangor, Wales (July, 2019).
In 1995 a mint-master metalsmith’s workshop was uncovered in Swabia. However, the finds were not published until 2011. The finds include a hammer for finishing small objects, files, chisels, eight iron piece-punches with different faces: a fine line, two sorts of dots, an oval, a fine curve and a broader curve. The find also included the iron dies for silver quinarii produced by these punches (Ziegaus 2011: 289-294). We now know the exact techniques used to produce the coin images. The analysis of Gaulish coins also has been revised to incorporate the conclusions of John Sills’s 2003 study Gaulish and Early British Gold Coinage as well as Philip de Jersey’s series published in academia.edu on the Câtillon-II hoard.
This work, which includes a detailed analysis of the art style of the Chiemsee cauldron (as well as that of the Gundestrup and Rynkeby cauldrons), thus, completes three years of research and writing on all aspects of the Chiemsee cauldron. This work also completes fifty years of research and writing about all aspects of the Gundestrup cauldron. Other works on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published by me on academia.edu as a result of this research include: Celtic Gods who Control Rejuvenation, Rebirth, and the Island where the Sun Sets (2021a); The Armorican Origins of the Silver and Gold Celtic Cauldrons from Gundestrup and the Chiemsee (2021b); A History of the Chiemsee Cauldron (2021d), and The Myths Portrayed on the Chiemsee Cauldron (2022). A revised edition of my earlier work on the gods and myths portrayed on the Gundestrup cauldron is also available on academia.edu: The Gods of the Celts and the Indo-Europeans (1992-2019). One may also find on academia.edu all my works of the Coligny calendar.
The original research, conducted in 1999-2000, begun after viewing, for comparison with western European items, the important pieces of Thracian silverwork housed in Romanian and Bulgarian museums. The research required the computer-generation of around 1500 four-megabyte images of the motifs under study to be projected onto 142 plates. The original study was made available in a joint publication of Archaeolingua and Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. By combining plates from the original edition and eliminating those which were of lesser importance, I have limited the number of plates in this addition to 82. Where plates have been eliminated from the current edition, I have provided references to the earlier edition. By transforming the images for this addition from 300 dpi to 72 dpi, I was able to divide the work into four sections, each containing around twenty 450-kilobyte plates (with 10 to 12 comparable items per plate), keeping each section under 10 megabytes for ease of downloading.

This revised edition of my 2001 Celtic Art in Transition during the First Century BC has been rewritten to include a grammar of the artistic techniques used to construct the abstract imagery on coins and on repousse sheet metal from a limited set of basic shapes. The most important new piece incorporated into this study is the Chiemsee cauldron. Although found by Jens Essig with a metal detector, with the top covered by 30 cm of muck at the bottom of the Chiemsee in 2001, the cauldron has been locked away in vaults ever since its initial discovery. It has never been exhibited for public inspection. This revised edition of my 2001 study is the only work which has attempted to study the Chiemsee motifs in comparison to those on the Gundestrup cauldron as well as in comparison to other items of north Gaulish production.
The similarities between the art style of the motifs in the Chiemsee cauldron and those in the Gundestrup cauldron are so blatant, either the Chiemsee cauldron was made by ancient craftsmen working in the same style as those who created the Gundestrup cauldron, or it is a copy created after the discovery of the Gundestrup cauldron in Denmark in 1891. If the Chiemsee cauldron is not a recent copy, both it and the Gundestrup cauldron must have been produced in the same region during the same period. If the Chiemsee cauldron is real, then a determination of the find spot of the Gundestrup cauldron will determine that of the Chiemsee cauldron and vice-versa.
The research for the original 2001 edition of this work utilized a high-resolution scanner and Adobe Photoshop to generate plates with arrays of motif-images rendered to the same size, enabling one easily to examine and compare, side-by-side, pieces of similar style and technique, no matter what the original scale of the image. Thus, images of the small-scale motifs on coins could be magnified and set side-by-side with images of the reduced largescale motifs on sheet-metalwork items, such as phalerae and cauldrons. A comparison of the motifs studied in this fashion demonstrates that the decorative imagery on both eastern and western European metalwork during the first-century BC, apart from Greece and Rome, was driven by coin art. The metalwork items were the productions of metalsmiths who were at the same time mint masters. Since the tribal coinages are generally localized in their find distributions, these coins enable one to determine the region in which a given motif was utilized in the artistic repertory.
In this revised edition a detailed analysis of the artistic technique behind the Chiemsee cauldron has been added to that of the Gundestrup cauldron. This revised study of the art of the Celtic cauldrons, in relation to each other as well as to that on coins, utilized around 50 high-resolution 80-megabyte digitalized images of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons to examine the artists techniques in greater detail. Furthermore, in 2003-4 the Danish National Museum conducted a detailed study of the techniques used to construct the Gundestrup cauldron, which was published in Acta Archeologica: 76 (Nielsen et al: 2005) and is now available on academia.edu. The conclusions of this study included the important result the Gundestrup-cauldron silver came from two sources: one used to mint north Gaulish quinars and the other to mint Armorican Coriosolite staters, demonstrating that the Gundestrup cauldron was made from western, not eastern, sources of silver. The results of this Danish-National-Museum study have been incorporated into the present work as well as into my other more recent studies of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published in academia.edu.
After a cursory inspection, the National Museum in Munich decided not to accept the Chiemsee cauldron, suspecting that it might have been made of dental gold during WW2. This suspicion was based upon a vague similarity in the gold and silver percentages in dental gold to the percentages of these metals in the cauldron. This horrifying suggestion finally culminated in the National Geographic documentary: The Chiemsee Cauldron and the Nazi Temple of Doom. After being at the center of a fraud trial in Switzerland, ending in a bankruptcy sale in 2012, the cauldron made its way to a new vault in Houston, Texas. Again, the cauldron became the centerpiece of a lawsuit.
Because of all of this negative publicity, aside from an analysis of the composition of the Chiemsee-cauldron metals, I seem to be the only scholar who has attempted a serious examination of the motifs on the cauldron. The low levels of 7 ppm of either platinum or palladium determined in 2007 by Peter Northover, compared to a minimum of 5000 ppm of each metal for dental gold, proves the fallacy of this dental-gold surmise, removing a lot of the stigma associated with the cauldron. The 1.3 ppm lead in the cauldron also demonstrates that it cannot have been made from an amalgam of electrolytic gold (as Northover then suggested). Aside from the 70-80% gold, the cauldron also contains 20-25% silver. If the gold came from electrolytic gold, electrolytic silver would then be the purest source of silver which could have been added to create the amalgam. However, such an amalgam would still contain a minimum of at least 50 ppm lead, since electrolytic silver contains 250 ppm lead.
Gold/silver nuggets from Cornwall show a similar composition to the Chiemsee cauldron amalgam in gold and silver as well as similar trace elements of lead and platinum, and they are the likely source for the metal used to construct the cauldron. The zinc, which Northover found in the solder to fasten the cauldron plates, could have come from cementation-produced brass, which was being created in north Gaul as early as 80 BC, twenty years before the probable construction-date of the Chiemsee cauldron. The presence of zinc in the solder cannot be used to deny the ancient origin of the cauldron. The ancient nature of the Chiemsee cauldron then rests upon an examination of the motifs portrayed on it.
In 2019 the then-owner requested that I examine the Chiemsee cauldron. After an initial study of the photos and Northover’s metallurgical analysis of the cauldron, the late Ralph Rowlett and I concluded that the cauldron might indeed be late Iron Age in date. The likely genuine nature of the cauldron was confirmed by a careful inspection of the piece in Houston. Three years of research and writing about the cauldron have followed that initial inspection. It is my firm belief that there is no possibility whatsoever that the Chiemsee cauldron is fake. Ralph Rowlett and I presented our initial findings in a joint lecture to the Archaeological Institute of America in St Louis (“Tale of Two Kettles”, November 11, 2019). Earlier, I had presented these findings to the Celtic Congress in Bangor, Wales (July, 2019).
In 1995 a mint-master metalsmith’s workshop was uncovered in Swabia. However, the finds were not published until 2011. The finds include a hammer for finishing small objects, files, chisels, eight iron piece-punches with different faces: a fine line, two sorts of dots, an oval, a fine curve and a broader curve. The find also included the iron dies for silver quinarii produced by these punches (Ziegaus 2011: 289-294). We now know the exact techniques used to produce the coin images. The analysis of Gaulish coins also has been revised to incorporate the conclusions of John Sills’s 2003 study Gaulish and Early British Gold Coinage as well as Philip de Jersey’s series published in academia.edu on the Câtillon-II hoard.
This work, which includes a detailed analysis of the art style of the Chiemsee cauldron (as well as that of the Gundestrup and Rynkeby cauldrons), thus, completes three years of research and writing on all aspects of the Chiemsee cauldron. This work also completes fifty years of research and writing about all aspects of the Gundestrup cauldron. Other works on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published by me on academia.edu as a result of this research include: Celtic Gods who Control Rejuvenation, Rebirth, and the Island where the Sun Sets (2021a); The Armorican Origins of the Silver and Gold Celtic Cauldrons from Gundestrup and the Chiemsee (2021b); A History of the Chiemsee Cauldron (2021d), and The Myths Portrayed on the Chiemsee Cauldron (2022). A revised edition of my earlier work on the gods and myths portrayed on the Gundestrup cauldron is also available on academia.edu: The Gods of the Celts and the Indo-Europeans (1992-2019). One may also find on academia.edu all my works of the Coligny calendar.
The original research, conducted in 1999-2000, begun after viewing, for comparison with western European items, the important pieces of Thracian silverwork housed in Romanian and Bulgarian museums. The research required the computer-generation of around 1500 four-megabyte images of the motifs under study to be projected onto 142 plates. The original study was made available in a joint publication of Archaeolingua and Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. By combining plates from the original edition and eliminating those which were of lesser importance, I have limited the number of plates in this addition to 82. Where plates have been eliminated from the current edition, I have provided references to the earlier edition. By transforming the images for this addition from 300 dpi to 72 dpi, I was able to divide the work into four sections, each containing around twenty 450-kilobyte plates (with 10 to 12 comparable items per plate), keeping each section under 10 megabytes for ease of downloading.

This revised edition of my 2001 Celtic Art in Transition during the First Century BC has been rewritten to include a grammar of the artistic techniques used to construct the abstract imagery on coins and on repousse sheet metal from a limited set of basic shapes. The most important new piece incorporated into this study is the Chiemsee cauldron. Although found by Jens Essig with a metal detector, with the top covered by 30 cm of muck at the bottom of the Chiemsee in 2001, the cauldron has been locked away in vaults ever since its initial discovery. It has never been exhibited for public inspection. This revised edition of my 2001 study is the only work which has attempted to study the Chiemsee motifs in comparison to those on the Gundestrup cauldron as well as in comparison to other items of north Gaulish production.
The similarities between the art style of the motifs in the Chiemsee cauldron and those in the Gundestrup cauldron are so blatant, either the Chiemsee cauldron was made by ancient craftsmen working in the same style as those who created the Gundestrup cauldron, or it is a copy created after the discovery of the Gundestrup cauldron in Denmark in 1891. If the Chiemsee cauldron is not a recent copy, both it and the Gundestrup cauldron must have been produced in the same region during the same period. If the Chiemsee cauldron is real, then a determination of the find spot of the Gundestrup cauldron will determine that of the Chiemsee cauldron and vice-versa.
The research for the original 2001 edition of this work utilized a high-resolution scanner and Adobe Photoshop to generate plates with arrays of motif-images rendered to the same size, enabling one easily to examine and compare, side-by-side, pieces of similar style and technique, no matter what the original scale of the image. Thus, images of the small-scale motifs on coins could be magnified and set side-by-side with images of the reduced largescale motifs on sheet-metalwork items, such as phalerae and cauldrons. A comparison of the motifs studied in this fashion demonstrates that the decorative imagery on both eastern and western European metalwork during the first-century BC, apart from Greece and Rome, was driven by coin art. The metalwork items were the productions of metalsmiths who were at the same time mint masters. Since the tribal coinages are generally localized in their find distributions, these coins enable one to determine the region in which a given motif was utilized in the artistic repertory.
In this revised edition a detailed analysis of the artistic technique behind the Chiemsee cauldron has been added to that of the Gundestrup cauldron. This revised study of the art of the Celtic cauldrons, in relation to each other as well as to that on coins, utilized around 50 high-resolution 80-megabyte digitalized images of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons to examine the artists techniques in greater detail. Furthermore, in 2003-4 the Danish National Museum conducted a detailed study of the techniques used to construct the Gundestrup cauldron, which was published in Acta Archeologica: 76 (Nielsen et al: 2005) and is now available on academia.edu. The conclusions of this study included the important result the Gundestrup-cauldron silver came from two sources: one used to mint north Gaulish quinars and the other to mint Armorican Coriosolite staters, demonstrating that the Gundestrup cauldron was made from western, not eastern, sources of silver. The results of this Danish-National-Museum study have been incorporated into the present work as well as into my other more recent studies of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published in academia.edu.
After a cursory inspection, the National Museum in Munich decided not to accept the Chiemsee cauldron, suspecting that it might have been made of dental gold during WW2. This suspicion was based upon a vague similarity in the gold and silver percentages in dental gold to the percentages of these metals in the cauldron. This horrifying suggestion finally culminated in the National Geographic documentary: The Chiemsee Cauldron and the Nazi Temple of Doom. After being at the center of a fraud trial in Switzerland, ending in a bankruptcy sale in 2012, the cauldron made its way to a new vault in Houston, Texas. Again, the cauldron became the centerpiece of a lawsuit.
Because of all of this negative publicity, aside from an analysis of the composition of the Chiemsee-cauldron metals, I seem to be the only scholar who has attempted a serious examination of the motifs on the cauldron. The low levels of 7 ppm of either platinum or palladium determined in 2007 by Peter Northover, compared to a minimum of 5000 ppm of each metal for dental gold, proves the fallacy of this dental-gold surmise, removing a lot of the stigma associated with the cauldron. The 1.3 ppm lead in the cauldron also demonstrates that it cannot have been made from an amalgam of electrolytic gold (as Northover then suggested). Aside from the 70-80% gold, the cauldron also contains 20-25% silver. If the gold came from electrolytic gold, electrolytic silver would then be the purest source of silver which could have been added to create the amalgam. However, such an amalgam would still contain a minimum of at least 50 ppm lead, since electrolytic silver contains 250 ppm lead.
Gold/silver nuggets from Cornwall show a similar composition to the Chiemsee cauldron amalgam in gold and silver as well as similar trace elements of lead and platinum, and they are the likely source for the metal used to construct the cauldron. The zinc, which Northover found in the solder to fasten the cauldron plates, could have come from cementation-produced brass, which was being created in north Gaul as early as 80 BC, twenty years before the probable construction-date of the Chiemsee cauldron. The presence of zinc in the solder cannot be used to deny the ancient origin of the cauldron. The ancient nature of the Chiemsee cauldron then rests upon an examination of the motifs portrayed on it.
In 2019 the then-owner requested that I examine the Chiemsee cauldron. After an initial study of the photos and Northover’s metallurgical analysis of the cauldron, the late Ralph Rowlett and I concluded that the cauldron might indeed be late Iron Age in date. The likely genuine nature of the cauldron was confirmed by a careful inspection of the piece in Houston. Three years of research and writing about the cauldron have followed that initial inspection. It is my firm belief that there is no possibility whatsoever that the Chiemsee cauldron is fake. Ralph Rowlett and I presented our initial findings in a joint lecture to the Archaeological Institute of America in St Louis (“Tale of Two Kettles”, November 11, 2019). Earlier, I had presented these findings to the Celtic Congress in Bangor, Wales (July, 2019).
In 1995 a mint-master metalsmith’s workshop was uncovered in Swabia. However, the finds were not published until 2011. The finds include a hammer for finishing small objects, files, chisels, eight iron piece-punches with different faces: a fine line, two sorts of dots, an oval, a fine curve and a broader curve. The find also included the iron dies for silver quinarii produced by these punches (Ziegaus 2011: 289-294). We now know the exact techniques used to produce the coin images. The analysis of Gaulish coins also has been revised to incorporate the conclusions of John Sills’s 2003 study Gaulish and Early British Gold Coinage as well as Philip de Jersey’s series published in academia.edu on the Câtillon-II hoard.
This work, which includes a detailed analysis of the art style of the Chiemsee cauldron (as well as that of the Gundestrup and Rynkeby cauldrons), thus, completes three years of research and writing on all aspects of the Chiemsee cauldron. This work also completes fifty years of research and writing about all aspects of the Gundestrup cauldron. Other works on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published by me on academia.edu as a result of this research include: Celtic Gods who Control Rejuvenation, Rebirth, and the Island where the Sun Sets (2021a); The Armorican Origins of the Silver and Gold Celtic Cauldrons from Gundestrup and the Chiemsee (2021b); A History of the Chiemsee Cauldron (2021d), and The Myths Portrayed on the Chiemsee Cauldron (2022). A revised edition of my earlier work on the gods and myths portrayed on the Gundestrup cauldron is also available on academia.edu: The Gods of the Celts and the Indo-Europeans (1992-2019). One may also find on academia.edu all my works of the Coligny calendar.
The original research, conducted in 1999-2000, begun after viewing, for comparison with western European items, the important pieces of Thracian silverwork housed in Romanian and Bulgarian museums. The research required the computer-generation of around 1500 four-megabyte images of the motifs under study to be projected onto 142 plates. The original study was made available in a joint publication of Archaeolingua and Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. By combining plates from the original edition and eliminating those which were of lesser importance, I have limited the number of plates in this addition to 82. Where plates have been eliminated from the current edition, I have provided references to the earlier edition. By transforming the images for this addition from 300 dpi to 72 dpi, I was able to divide the work into four sections, each containing around twenty 450-kilobyte plates (with 10 to 12 comparable items per plate), keeping each section under 10 megabytes for ease of downloading.

This work essentially constitutes Part-2 of the Gods of the Celts and the Indo-Europeans (Olmsted 1994-2019). My earlier work dealt with the wider evidence that Táin bó Cuailnge (Táin) is the epic-derivative of an earlier Celtic myth. The myth embedded within the ninth century Táin developed as an aspect of the lunar festival of the first day of Spring (samain). Some fifteen episodes of the core myth are displayed on the inner and outer plates of the Gundestrup cauldron. As I have examined the connections between the Táin and the Gundestrup cauldron extensively in my earlier works, in this work I deal mostly with the tales associated with the characters depicted on the Chiemsee cauldron.
My motivation for examining and demonstrating the interrelated development of these Old Irish, Middle Welsh, and Classical narrative accounts is that early versions of several Old Irish tales seem to be depicted in the narrative portrayals on the silver cauldron found at Gundestrup in 1891 and on the gold cauldron found in the Chiemsee in 2001. However, the portrayals on the cauldrons are not a necessary part of the demonstration that these later stories developed from common prototypes. The literary connections do not depend upon establishing that the stories are portrayed on the cauldrons. Thus, this comparative literary analysis (though much of the material had oral beginnings) is of vital importance to anyone interested in the origins of Gawain and the Green Knight and of Tristan and Isolde (Tristan). The origins of GGK in the Irish tale Fled Bricrend and the origins of the prototype Tristan in Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Gráinne is firmly established here, apart from the depictions of even earlier versions of these tales on the Chiemsee cauldron.
The iconographic depictions on the cauldrons are of vital importance in determining the original nature of the characters in these stories as deities. In the medieval tales which developed out of these myths, the original Gaulish deities, for the most part, have been euhemerized into kings and queens or warriors and their concubines. I demonstrate in this work that the stories associated with these cauldrons arose as myths about deities. In the Chiemsee depictions recalling Classical tales, such as some of those preserved by Ovid in Metamorphoses, the original Gaulish deities have been replaced by their Roman or Greek equivalents. The mythic nature of these Classical stories is still apparent. Here I connect the Classical deities utilized as characters in these stories with their Irish and Gaulish equivalents.

The fragmentary broken-up calendar plate from Coligny (near Lyons) apparently dates to the second-century AD, although the Gaulish calendar engraved on this plate is plainly the result of a long transmis¬sion process. The 25-year-cycle calendar, the final system of this transmission process, probably originated early in the first-century BC, before Caesar’s conquest. It is within this late pre-Roman period that the calendar took on its final form and notation to enter a two-century long transmission process during which many copying errors were introduced. Embedded within the notation of the 25-year-cycle Coligny calendar is a 30-year-cycle calendar. The notation on the Coligny plate indicates that the original constant-lunar 30-year-cycle calendar system (from which the later shifting lunar calendar developed) had each month begin on the first day of the new moon. Using a photo-processing program (Adobe Photoshop V) segments duplicating the missing notation were copied from surviving fragments of the Coligny calendar and then were utilized to fill in the missing sequences on the calendar maintaining the original spatial integrity of the fragmentary mosaic (taken from RIG: III at ¾ scale, but shown in plates 2 and 3 at about ¼ scale and elsewhere at ½ scale). Indeed, the original fragmentary mosaic (plate 2) is still embedded in the digitally-reconstructed whole calendar (plate 3). Thus, the fragmen¬tary calendar was brought to photographic completion utilizing the original wording and engraving to be found on the surviving fragments. Pinault, one of the coauthors along with Duval of RIG: III: Les Calendriers, has also accepted my reconstruction of the original pattern in the distribution of these TII marks and their associated terminology (in a review in Gnomen (1996), vol. 68: 706-710).

In this revised edition for publication on academia.edu, I leave off the month reconstructions and the glossary as they were revised in my 2001 A Definitive Reconstructed Text of the Gaulish Coligny Calendar. The reconstructed Months 102 to 212 will be found at the end of that work, while Months 301 to 512 are found in the companion Reconstructed Text of the Gaulish Coligny Calendar since all of the months would not download in academia.edu as a single text. The original glossary in the 1992 work suffered from the limitations of the 1980’s word processors with limited character sets. The original month reconstructions given in the 1992 Habelt publication are accurate, but I feel it is best to give them alongside the reconstructed Photoshop months for credibility. This revised edition of the 1992 Habelt work The Gaulish Calendar then may be seen as the first half of a complete work on the calendar. The major innovation is a revised analysis of the month names, based upon utilizing the Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, and Icelandic month names to provide a context as well as a greater understanding of the nature of Celtic deities than I had in 1992. However, I have drawn the line at referencing books published after 1992 in this limited revision, based upon correcting errors in analysis as well as in editing. Having read the whole 1992 work through several times, there is little if anything printed here that I would not find apt in 2002 in describing the Coligny Calendar on this 30th anniversary of completing the original work on the calendar.
The fragmentary calendar plate from Coligny (near Lyons) apparently dates to the second-century AD, although the Gaulish calendar engraved on this plate is plainly the result of a long transmission process. The 25-year-cycle calendar, the final system of this transmission process, probably originated early in the first-century BC, before Caesar’s conquest. It is within this late pre-Roman period that the calendar took on its final form and notation to enter a two-century long transmission process during which many copying errors were introduced. Embedded within the notation of the 25-year-cycle Coligny calendar is a 30-year-cycle calendar. The notation on the Coligny plate indicates that the original constant-lunar 30-year-cycle calendar system (from which the later shifting lunar calendar developed) had each month begin on the first day of the new moon.
Using a photo-processing program (Adobe Photoshop V) to create the month for my 2001 work, segments duplicating the missing notation were copied from surviving fragments of the Coligny calendar and then were utilized to fill in the missing sequences on the calendar maintaining the original spatial integrity of the fragmentary mosaic (taken from RIG: III at ¾ scale, but shown in plates 2 and 3 at about ¼ scale and elsewhere at ½ scale). Indeed, the original fragmentary mosaic (plate 2) is still embedded in the digitally-reconstructed whole calendar (plate 3). Thus, the fragmentary calendar was brought to photographic completion utilizing the original wording and engraving to be found on the surviving fragments. Pinault, one of the coauthors along with Duval of RIG: III: Les Calendriers, has also accepted my reconstruction of the original pattern in the distribution of these TII marks and their associated terminology (in a review in Gnomen (1996), vol. 68: 706-710).

OVERVIEW Constructed of 11 kilograms of gold (slightly heavier than Tutankhamun's mask) the Chiemsee cauldron has been maligned as "the greatest treasure never". Here, I shall demonstrate that the gold cauldron retrieved in 2001 from the bottom of a Bavarian lake is real, deriving from the same cultural background as the silver Gundestrup cauldron, dug from a Danish peat bog in 1891. Scholars also have surmised that the Sark, Oberaden, and Helden phalerae come from the same metalworking school that produced the Gundestrup cauldron. There are two opinions on the origins of these silver items. One view is that, although found in Western Europe, they were produced in an Eastern-European Celtic-inspired Thraco-Dacian context. A second view is that they come from northwest France, within a Conquest-period Gaulish context. The place and date, from which these decorated metal objects derive, will be found at the convergence of orthogonal parameters within a multidimensional cultural polyspace. One must examine the origins of items similar in construction, items with similar alloy composition, items similar to those displayed in the reliefs, those created in the same art style, items with similar iconographic portrayals, and those with similar narrative motifs. The subjects of widely-separated research areas, these independent dimensions make it unlikely that more than one spatially-limited culture would possess them together in a single period. Nonetheless, these cultural dimensions, the subjects of the following six sections, were applied daily by the smiths who made these items. Indeed, they infused them within their productions. One must approach the study of these items from the broad knowledge base possessed by the original craftsmen. I developed the method, utilized here to examine the Chiemsee cauldron, in 2001 to study first-century-BC Celtic art, building upon my 1976, 1979, and 1994 Gundestrup-cauldron analyses. In this technique, I produce plates, each displaying a dozen-or-so items, to the same dimensions rather than to the same scale, so that both large and small items may be compared side-by-side. Such analysis demonstrates that the art style and objects portrayed on these cauldrons are similar to those on Gaulish and Roman coins of 75-45 BC.

This work is a detailed analysis of the source of the metal and the casting of the plates, alongside an analysis of the portrayed narrative, the portrayed items, the art style, the units of weights and measures, and construction in the determination of the origins of the cauldrons from the Rævemosen near Gundestrup and from the Chiemsee by Seebruck.
First, I wish to state unequivocally that the gold Chiemsee cauldron is not a fake produced in Weimar or NSDAP Germany, nor is its close cousin the silver Gundestrup a product of the intermixing of Celts and Thracians who occupied the region of the lower Danube bordering on the Black Sea. Both these cauldrons are the products of the same school of metalsmiths who produced the billon Armorican coins attributed to the Coriosolites, Osismii, Redones, and the Veneti during the period 75-55 BC. Thus, the Chiemsee cauldron resembles the Gundestrup cauldron, not because the gold cauldron was inspired by the silver cauldron but because both were produced within the same cultural milieu and perhaps even in the same workshop.

The Bigames Cycle, the Enūma Eliš, and the Táin bó Cuailnge, likely originated in the springtime reenactment of the rejuvenation of earth. In contrast, the Ugaritic Ba’al Cycle and the Irish tale of Oenach Carmain celebrate in the fall, a hero/god who saves the grain from draught or blight. Gaulish deity names and the portrayals on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons allow us to generalize these Irish connections to the myths of earlier Celts. Like the Gundestrup cauldron, the Chiemsee cauldron, was made by Venetian craftsmen between 70 and 60 BC. Proving its genuine early Celtic origin, connections between the Chiemsee cauldron and Armorica can be established from: the art style, the portrayed weaponry, the narrative portrayal, the deities portrayed, the trace elements in the metal, and the use of Celtic units of weights and measures in its construction.
The Irish Cath Maige Tuired bears such a close relationship to the Yammu episodes of the Ugaritic Ba’al Cycle that it must have been borrowed into Hispano-Celtic repertoire from Phoenicians settling in southwest Iberia. Although Ireland is far-removed from the Near East, it is closer to Iberia, where Phoenicians began to plant colonies from the ninth-through-the-fourth centuries BC.
De Bello Gallico (VI, 14) records a belief in a cycle of rebirth among the Gauls. In Roman Gaul the god who was associated with this belief was the rejuvenating spirit to be found in hot springs. This Gaulish Apollo was known by various bynames including Vroicos “the Heather”. But, the solar god Maponos also was associated with Apollo. More particularly, Vroicis can be identified with Irish Fraech as well as Apóllōn’s son Asklēpios, the god of healing, whereas Maponos can be identified with Irish Mac-ind-Óc and both with Apóllōn’s musical son Orpheús and Hēlios-Apóllōn’s son Phaethon.
The mythology associated with the rejuvenation of the springtime waters survived in the Táin in the episode where Cú Chulainn drowns his only son Fraech. Fraech descends to the Underworld from which, brought to life again, he reemerges shortly thereafter. Mac-ind-Óc, on the other hand, resided with his Persephónē-like sister on an otherworld-island paradise where the Sun sets and were magical birds sing enchanting music.
Sylla in (Plutarchus: Moralia) outlines two religious concepts derived from Gaulish sources: (1) a belief in an ever-lasting paradise for those who die bravely in battle and for those who control desire in material things, and (2) a belief in a cycle of being reincarnated into new life forms, after being purged in fire and recycled on the moon, for those not yet worthy of paradise. These concepts probably spread from Iberia northward into Europe along with bronze-smelting technology. Iberian-Beaker people spread their ideology of an archer god associated with the symbol of the golden sun-disk and burial in grave cists opening to the setting sun. The beakers perhaps indicate a Eucharist of beer made from sun-ripened grain. Since these Beaker people spread with the development of bronze technology, the process of creating metallic copper from its clay-like ore led to the concept that tarnished souls, like tarnished scrap metal, could be recycled in fire to be born again into new forms. The religion and burial customs of the Iberian Beaker-people then would have been adopted by the Corded-Ware cultures of central Europe with little movement of people. Proto-Indic speakers in the interior bordering on the Atlantic Celtic-speaking zone could have adopted this Beaker mythology before they crossed over into Anatolia and Proto-Celtic speakers have adopted it before crossed over to the British Isles.

The standard explanation for the Quarter Festivals of the Insular Celtic year, which fall around 55 days earlier than the solar solstices and equinoxes, is that they represent a more practical agricultural division of the year. In this explanation spring is seen more sensibly to begin on February 1, the first day of calving season. Summer, likewise, more sensibly begins on May 1 when the bulls are put into the cow herd,  around the time of the appearance of the constellation Taurus. What I shall demonstrate is that the most likely origin of the Insular Celtic quarter-day festivals lies not in some theorized agricultural year but in a simple calendar shift whereby progressively over a long period of time the lunar festivals got out of whack with solar time.
Such a calendar shift is likely to have happened to the Insular Celts, as just such a shift with certainty happened to the Celts in the region around Lugudunum. We know this thanks to the preservation of the very-detailed Coligny calendar, found not far from Lyon. Classical commentary suggests that Britain and Gaul originally utilized the same 30-year calendar cycle, assumed to be that of the cycle of Saturn (Saturn's sidereal year equals 29.457 years). The  5-day week of the Coligny calendar is also described in early Irish law (the cóicde). Well-known is the similarity of the Gaulish month-name Samionios to Irish Samain, both occurring at what in each case was assumed to be the beginning of winter. If the early Irish Celts did utilize the same calendar as the pre-first-century-BC Gauls, the same calendar shift would have occurred in their time reckoning as well.

Since only 40% of the original Coligny calendar survives as a fragmentary mosaic, the reconstruction of the original whole depends upon recognizing repetitive patterns and filling in the missing sequences of these patterns. A determination of the missing sequences was the subject of a previous study (Olmsted 1988: JIES, XVI, pp. 267-339; and Olmsted 1992: The Gaulish Calendar). My new digital photographic reconstruction verifies the results of this previous study. Indeed the original fragmentary mosaic is embedded in a digitally-reconstructed Coligny calendar (Olmsted 2001: JIES Monograph no. 39). Thus the fragmentary calendar was brought to photographic completion utilizing the original wording and engraving found on the surviving fragments. Since the photographic reproduction actually preserves the original fragments of the calendar, the typescript reconstruction presented in my 1992 study is shown to be one which fits within the parameters of the original calendar and lines up with the surviving notation. One interesting aspect emerging from this study is that the day numbers as well as some of the other notation were actually ruled off with a measure (2.76 " .02 cm) based upon one twelfth of a pes Drusianus (33.0 cm), the standard of measure in Roman Gaul and Germany during the later part of the Augustan period. Puisqu'il n'existe plus que 40 pour cent du calendrier original de Coligny, et cela en mosaïque fragmentaire, sa reconstruction en entier n'est possible que par déterminer des patterns répétitifs et les en utilisent pour la reconstitution des séquences disparues de ces patterns. Des études précédentes se sont donné pour but d'identifier ces patterns répétitifs (Olmsted 1988: JIES, XVI, pp. 267-339; et Olmsted 1992: The Gaulish Calendar). Les résultats de ces études précédentes ont été vérifiés grâce a ma nouvelle reconstitution phonographique digitalisée. Ainsi le calendrier fragmentaire a pu être restituer en entier a partir du texte et des gravures des fragments du calendrier original. Effectivement, la mosaïque fragmentaire de l'original se retrouve dans un calendrier de Coligny digitalement reconstitué a l'aide de la photographie digitale utilisant les mots originels et les gravures trouvés déjà sur les fragments survivant (Olmsted 2001: JIES monograph no. 39). Etant donné que la reproduction digitalisée conserve les fragments du calendrier permettant le calque utilisant les mots originels et les gravures trouvés déjà sur les fragments survivant, la présentation par texte dactylographie de mon étude de 1992 se révélé fidèle aux paramètres du calendrier original et s'aligne avec ses notations survivant. Un aspect intéressant de cette étude est le fait que la numérotation des jours aussi bien que quelques-unes des autres notations ont gravé a l'aide d'une règle basée sur la douzième fraction d'un pes Drusianus (33.0 cm), la norme des mesures dans la Gaule Romaine et en Allemagne pendant les dernières années de l'époque Augustinienne.

Beginning around 100 BC in the region between the Seine and the Loire the ever-increasing Roman stylistic influences, mainly from Roman coinage, caused not only additions to the earlier motif repertory used to decorate Gaulish metalwork, but it also caused a distinct reversal in the trend toward abstraction (see Olmsted: 2001). Reversing the earlier trend toward increasing diffusion, abstraction, and geometricization, during the first century BC, the motifs go from diffuse geometric and curvilinear components toward a more compact and realistic portrayal. During the trend toward recomposing after that of abstracting, an earlier composed motif ultimately could be reinterpreted as something distinctive from its original intention. Thus a chariot and horse or horses could reemerge as a griffin, an elephant, or other motif (see pls. 1 and 2). Motifs could evolve in different recomposition trajectories in different regions. The evolving designs of the coinage then drove the designs of the larger-scale metal decorations, which was also distinctive for each period and region. By 75 BC the art style of the region between the Seine and the Loire had entered the full-blown Numismatic Style apparent on the Marlborough vat and on the Gundestrup cauldron. The art style had begun to diverge from La Tène stylization south of the Loire close on the conquest of Provincia Narbonensis, and here Classical influences were in full swing by the beginning of the first century BC. Only in Belgic Gaul and among the Treveri did La Tène art survive in Gaul through the first half of the first century BC. During the second half of the first century BC, La Tène art continued to develop as the predominant style in western Europe only in the British Isles.

There are a dozen independent items (dealing with the metal content, the weight unit, the linear unit, the sword mounts, the iconography, the narrative portrayal, and at least six independent items concerning the art style) on the Chiemsee cauldron which demonstrate conclusively that the Chiemsee cauldron cannot be a modern copy of the Gundestrup cauldron, but that it comes from the same period and cultural area. All of these attributes are completely independent each from the other. Prior to the end of WW2 many of these attributes had yet to be discovered as aspects of pre-Roman Celtic culture. It is virtually impossible that a counterfeiter could have known about them to aid in producing a supposed early Celtic item.

Here is a revised version with the 18 color  plates embedded in the text, so one can examine the plates while reading the description. In 2001 Jens Essig and Stefan Lohmann discovered deep in the muck at the bottom of the Chiemsee the 10.89-kilogram Chiemsee cauldron (Plates 1-2). Half a kilo heavier than the mask of Tutankhamun, it initially was seen as the greatest treasure ever to survive from ancient Europe, but soon it would be seen as the greatest treasure never. However, similarities between the Chiemsee cauldron and the Gundestrup cauldron are not, as was soon suggested, the result of the Chiemsee cauldron’s being a recent copy inspired by the Gundestrup cauldron. Rather, both are products of the same pre-Roman Armorican culture. Independent attributes on both cauldrons converge on northwest Gaul during the first century BC, which must be where these cauldrons were made. This convergence is unlikely to have been contrived by a twentieth-century forger.
At the end of this talk I will reconstruct plot outlines of the myths current in the region defined by the Atlantic Iron Age culture [1], a region which includes Armorican Gaul, Ireland, and Wales. The primary bases for these reconstructions are the following: (one) the discovery (which I made fifty years ago [2]) that the narrative portrayals on the inner plates of the silver Gundestrup cauldron align with the major episodes of the seventh-century poetic versions of the Irish Táin bó Cuailgne; (two) the discovery (which I made four years ago) that the narrative portrayals on the outer plates of the gold Chiemsee cauldron align with major episodes of the ninth-century Irish Fled Bricrend; and (three) the discovery (also four years ago) that the Chiemsee inner plates align with important episodes of the eighth-to-eleventh-century poetic descriptions of the events of Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (TDG), a romantic epic which survives in the Early Modern Irish of the sixteenth century. Since the imagery and art-style of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons also align with Armorican coins datable to 75-55 BC, the cauldron-portrayals demonstrate that mythic versions of these later euhemerized tales were current in Armorica during the decades before Caesar’s conquest.

Voici une version française d'un article lu au Congrès celtique d'Utrecht en juillet 2023 utilisant 18 planches pour montrer les similitudes entre les chaudrons de Chiemsee et de Gundestrups et les représentations sur les monnaies armmoricaines. L'article explique également pourquoi le chaudron du Chiemsee est véritablement vieux.

Dies ist eine deutsche Version des Papiers, das auf dem Keltenkongress im Juli 2023 in Utrecht gehalten wurde. Der Artikel erläutert den Vergleich der Details der Gundestrup- und Chiemsee-Kessel mit denen armorischer Münzen aus der Zeit kurz vor Caesars Eroberung. Die Arbeit zeigt, dass sowohl der Gundestrup- als auch der Chiemsee-Kessel im selben Zeitraum in Armorica hergestellt wurden.
This is a German version of the paper delivered at the July 2023 Celtic Congress in Utrecht. The paper explains the comparison of details on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons to that of Armorican coins dating to ;just before Caesar's conquest. The paper demonstrates that both the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons were in created in Armorica during that same period.

If both the Chiemsee and Gundestrup cauldrons were made in Armorica in the decades before Caesar’s conquest, it would explain why the silver in the Gundestrup cauldron shares a source with Armorican coins and why the gold/silver alloy in the Chiemsee cauldron apparently comes from Cornish nuggets only a short sail away. The art style also points to Armorica in the decades before Caesar’s conquest as the source of the two cauldrons. Artistic motifs on both cauldrons (such as the dragon on Chiemsee outer-plate 2 and those on Gundestrup outer-plate b; see Plate 9) relate to different portions of the same Coriosolite coins which share a silver source with the Gundestrup cauldron. Both cauldrons also portray clothing and weapons of the types utilized in northwest France during the first century BC, but the two cauldrons differ in the actual items they display. Both cauldrons share the same value for the measurement unit in their dimensions (1/12 of a pes Drusianus: 2.75 cm; Olmsted 2021b: 125-8). Both cauldrons share the same unit for the Celtic pound: 311 g/C-pound. Neither of these values were known previous to my own studies. Both cauldrons show nearly identical tool marks in the chasing and the use of similar-shaped punches for the repousse work, the same shapes as found on the smaller punches used to produce the Coriosolite coin dies (Olmsted 2022d: vol. 1: 61-65). 
What I attempt is to reconstruct plot outlines of the myths current in the region defined by the Atlantic Iron Age culture (see Cunliffe 1978, 1991, 2021), a region which includes Armorican Gaul, Ireland, and Wales. The primary bases for these reconstructions are the following: (1) the discovery (which I made fifty years ago) that the narrative portrayals on the inner plates of the silver Gundestrup cauldron align with the major episodes of the eighth-century Irish Táin bó Cuailgne; (2) the discovery (which I made four years ago) that the narrative portrayals on the outer plates of the gold Chiemsee cauldron align with major episodes of the ninth-century Irish Fled Bricrend; and (3) the discovery (also made four years ago) that the Chiemsee inner plates align with important episodes of the eighth-to-eleventh-century poetic descriptions of the events of Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (TDG), a romantic epic which survives in the early modern Irish of the sixteenth century. Since the imagery and art-style of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons align with Armorican coins datable to 75-55 BC, the portrayals on these cauldrons demonstrate that mythic versions of these later euhemerized tales were current in Armorica during the decades just prior to Caesar’s conquest. Since the same myths are to be found as narrative portrayals in pre-conquest Armorica and later as tales recited in early medieval Ireland, presumably they were current throughout the Atlantic Iron Age Culture. Such speaks forcefully against its production by a modern forger. It is also unlikely that a modern forger would have been so adept at working in the style of Armorican-coin art in producing the repousse figures to be found on the cauldrons. That one of the two narrations portrayed on the Chiemsee cauldron can be seen to line up with a story actually recorded in Gaul by Poseidonius during the same period in which the numismatic style of the portrayal was in fashion is the clincher in demonstrating its ancient origin.

Found in 2001, with the top 30cm beneath the muck at the bottom of the Chiemsee, the gold Chiemsee cauldron has been locked away in vaults since its discovery. It has never been exhibited for public inspection. Although the silver Gundestrup cauldron has consumed reams of paper, I am the only one who has endeavored to write about the Chiemsee cauldron as an item of late Iron-Age production.
The Chiemsee cauldron is so-close in style to the Gundestrup cauldron that either it is a copy made after the discovery in 1891 of the Gundestrup cauldron, or it was produced by the same early-Celtic culture. Metallurgical analysis of the Chiemsee cauldron in 2007 generated results inconsistent with modern dental gold or electrolytically-produced metal but which do fit Cornish gold/silver nuggets. The portrayed items and the art-style of both cauldrons are consistent with their having been produced in Armorica in the decades before Caesar’s conquest. The imagery of both cauldrons suggests they display Gaulish narrative-portrayals of later Irish tales, which, nonetheless, predate AD 1000.  
To study the art-style and imagery displayed on the Chiemsee cauldron, I generated over 100 plates with arrays of motif-images rendered to the same size. Thus, images of the small-scale motifs on coins could be magnified and set side-by-side with images of the reduced largescale motifs on sheet-metalwork, a technique I utilized previously (2001) to study the Gundestrup cauldron.
A comparison of the motifs studied in this fashion demonstrates that the imagery on first-century-BC decorative metalwork was driven by coin art. The metalwork items were the productions of metalsmiths who were at the same time mint-masters. Since the tribal coinages are generally localized in their find-distributions, the coins can determine the region in which a given motif was utilized in the artistic repertory.

Volume II of this series on aviation pioneer Charles Olmsted gives a detailed account of the role the Buffalo-Pitts-Olmsted minimum-induced-loss propeller played in the first-proposed and first-flown transatlantic flights of 1914 and 1919. Also covered, since the design concept was revived at MIT during the 1980’s, is the later use of minimum-induced-loss propellers on muscle-powered flights in Mylar craft across the English Channel and over the Aegean Sea. Volume II of this series describes the design and construction of the advanced, solidly-constructed, streamlined, and inherently-stable Buffalo-Pitts-Olmsted airplane (1909-1912), the first airplane built in Buffalo, a city which produced 10,000 planes during World War One and 40,000 planes during World War Two.
Appendix C gives the derivation of the Olmsted minimum-induced-loss propeller equations. Appendix E compares the 1909 equations of Charles Olmsted to those corrected for Goldstein’s vortex induction as well as to Eugene Larrabee’s propellers. The two approaches to minimum-induced loss give identical results.

The spring of 1942 forecast the start of a promising career for the 22-year-old Eugene Larrabee, but for the 61-year-old Charles Olmsted (pl. 1) 1942 held many disappointments. Both men were engineers who worked at the Curtiss-Wright plant in Buffalo: Olmsted as a consultant and Larrabee as a newly-hired graduate of Worcester Polytech. Although 1942 marked the end of Charles Olmsted’s striving as a scientist and engineer, the younger man would learn from the older man how to design the perfect propeller. From this transfer of knowledge Larrabee later became famous for the minimum-induced-loss propeller, while Olmsted, the originator of the idea, has been forgotten. In Larrabee’s hands in 1979, some 70 years after Olmsted had first patented the design, the perfect propeller enabled man to fly self-propelled across the English Channel as well as to fly under his own power, like Daedalus, from Crete to an island off the coast of Greece.
Between 1909 and 1912 Olmsted had completed the design of the perfect plane to be propelled by his perfect propellers (pl. 2). He had nearly completed constructing it as well. Olmsted had formed a syndicate with the Buffalo Pitts Company and some of Buffalo’s most prominent businessmen to develop a plane of solid construction, as opposed to the ultra-light type craft of the day. In his plane, which he called the Bird, every component part was constructed of wood and metal. The design of the plane was focused on achieving strength, low weight, and streamlining. The wings, fuselage, and tail, as well as their final assemblage were perfected by thorough testing of models in the wind-tunnel to achieve maximum efficiency, safety, and stability. The plane was years ahead of its time. The Buffalo Pitts Company, the country’s largest manufacturer of steam traction engines, wished to soar into the twentieth century rather than plod along at the cumbersome rate of their heavy steam engines.

This is a photocopy of a paper I published in Etudes celtiques XVI in 1979 (171-185). The archaic B-Recension of Audacht Morainn contains an interesting commentary on three enclosed hillfort structures and is worded differently from the A-Recension in significant details. These lines provide the earliest description of the uses of enclosed Irish royal sites, such as Dun Ailinne or Emain Macha.

This is a photocopy of an article I published in Etudes celtiques XV in 1978 (537-547). It outlines the original location of the Aided Fraich episode of Tain bo Cuailnge as well as alterations to it. Aided Fraich plays a central role in my recent work, The Myths Portrayed on the Chiemsee Cauldron, also on academia.edu. An earlier Gaulish version of Aided Fraich is portrayed on plate E of the Gundestrup cauldron.

Here is a photocopy of my Antiquity L, 1976 (pp. 95-103 + 9 figs.) article relating the portrayals on the inner plates of the Gundestrup cauldron to the 9th century Irish Tain bo Cuailnge, seeing the cauldron portrayals as an earlier Gaulish version of this Irish tale. I have spent the last 47 years researching the implications of this discovery as it relates toward reconstructing pre-Christian Celtic myth and religion.

Festivals of the year are associated with the major creative processes engendered by the gods and goddess. As these creative processes repeat on a yearly basis, the rituals are reenacted each year, to ensure that the repetitions such as the end of winter and the return of warmth do take place and to celebrate the creative process as well. What lies behind all of these festivals? To simplify, I outline here the basic cosmological view found through analyzing Greek, Celtic, and Indo-Iranian sources through the lens of the comparative method.

This paper refutes James Carney's thesis that the Tain bo Cuailnge had a basis in history rather than myth. Only the first 27 lines of the 71 total actually refer to the Tain bo Cualinge. The last 2/3 of the poem contain material adapted from a minor cattle raid tale combined with a migration myth adopted from the Expulsion of the Desi. Contra Carney Conailla Medb agrees with other seventh century poems referencing the Tain.

The author proposes that the Gaulish inscription from Larzac was com¬posed in a 2/1 stressed meter, the common Celtic short line. It displays 48 lines, all in the same format, with some 90% of the non-fragmentary lines showing alliteration as a linkage across the caesura.

This paper explains how hierarchical clientship structures among people practicing mix farming husbandry can produce a larger number of warriors than can exploitative systems as well as horticultural systems. Clients giving allegiance to nobles able to mobilize the warriors under them for collection of wergeld  and for defense of cattle then provides the glue holding clientship societies together.

The author surveys Vedic and early Greek cadenced meters in the tonal languages of the Eastern IE group and compares them to early Latin, Germanic, Welsh, and Irish verse in the Western IE language group, where stress and consequent stressed meters were dominant. The earliest Irish and Welsh poetry are then compared to probable poetic inscriptions from Gaul and Celtiberia

As an aspect of the counting schemes on the Coligny Calendar, certain days were shifted from their usual order within the months of Samonios and Rivros. The origins of these days were indicated by abbreviations for the ordinal numerals giving their original positions within the months. This paper analyzes the reasons why the counting schemes mandated these shifts as well as the reasons why the ordinal abbreviations occur in what appears to be an archaic dialect of Gaulish.