Aegyssus Archaeological Site

Aegyssus Archaeological Site

Historic buildings and places


Address

Strada Fraților 25, Tulcea, Romania

About

The first documentary attestation of the Aegyssus Fortress corresponds to the beginning of the integration process of Dobrogea within the boundaries of the Roman state. Ovid mentions the conquest of the city in AD 12. by the North-Danubian Dacians and its reoccupation by Roman troops. According to the Roman poet, Aegyssus was already an old city (uetus urbs), defended by strong walls, located on the bank of the Danube, in a high place that could hardly be reached.

In late antique sources, the name of the city, probably of Celtic origin, appears in various forms: Egiso (Itinerarium Antonini 226, 2); Aegissos, respectively Accisso (Notitia Dignitatum Or. 39, 8, 17; 34); Aϊγισσος (Hierocles, Synecdemos, 637, 14); Aϊγιστον (Procopius of Caesarea, De Aedificiis, 4, 7, 20); Egypsum (Geographer of Ravenna IV, 5).

The archaeological and epigraphic materials from the Roman era highlight a cosmopolitan population, made up of veterans, merchants, shipowners, landowners. A funerary stela discovered on Miron Costin Street attests to the fact that, in the middle of the second century AD. the city owned a territory where there were villae rusticae settlements and rural farms.

Aegyssus was above all an important garrison headquarters for troops tasked with defending a frontier region of the Roman Empire. Units from the V Macedonica legion and the Roman Danube fleet (classis Flavia Moesica) were to defend the city.

In the second half of the 3rd century AD, a stamp on a tile mentions the name of an auxiliary unit – cohort II Flavia Brittonum. Later, in the late Roman period, the fortification takes on a particularly important role in the defensive system of the province and becomes the seat of the lower pediment of the I Iovia Legion, but also of a cavalry unit (cuneus equitum armigerorum).

In the 6th century it was the seat of a bishopric, as it appears from the Notitia Episcopatum and it appears in the list of Procopius of Caesarea among the cities restored by the emperor Justinian in Scythia.

Many of the archaeological materials discovered during the research organized on the site of the ancient fortress, in the Independence Monument Park, can be found in the permanent exhibition of the Museum of History and Archeology, a museum located right next to the ruins of the fortress. Not to be missed if you come to this place.

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