Stop 4 - Pepper Pot

Frustratingly, this is an object you really need to pick up to actually work out what it's for. But because it's almost sixteen hundred years old and it's silver and very precious, we can't actually let you do it. This may look like a tiny little sculpture but it isn't just a piece of sculpture. If you could pick it up and turn it upside down underneath you would realize that actually this is a pepper pot. There is a little mechanism which enables you to open this pot, sprinkle out a little bit of pepper, or even lots of pepper, or shut it so none comes out. This object is Roman. The Romans has a great taste for Indian pepper and a major international trade grew up between the Roman world and India so that pepper and spices could flow to the Roman world in return for gold and other goods. This taste for pepper stretched as far as the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire. This particular pepper pot actually comes from Britain. And we even know that pepper was being eaten by soldiers on Hadrian's Wall. Who are the two little figures wrestling on this pepper pot? If you look behind there's a clue. Leaning against the leg of one of them is a wooden club. That tells us that he's the hero Hercules. But actually he's the small of the figure, that's because he's wrestling a giant. The story goes that the giant could never be defeated, so long as that one of his feet was always touching the ground. But Hercules was actually strong enough to be able to lift the giant physically up into the air so that both his feet were actually off the ground, and that's why he won.

“Pepper