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Amulet with Solomon spearing a demon found in ancient Hadrianopolis
An excavation in the ancient city of Hadrianopolis in the Black Sea Region of northern Turkey has uncovered an amulet depicting the prophetic king Solomon on horseback driving a spear into a demon. Based on the stratigraphy of the archaeological context, the amulet dates to the 5th century.
[Karabuk University Faculty of Letters, Department of Archaeology Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ersin ] Çelikbaş noted that the inscription on the pendant reads “Our Lord has overcome evil” and said: “Why was this pendant, this amulet, found here? In fact, it has to do with the military character of Hadrianopolis. We have previously identified evidence of a cavalry unit here through archaeological finds. Solomon is also known as the commander of armies. We understand that he was also considered as a protective figure for the Roman and Byzantine cavalry at Hadrianopolis.”
Çelikbaş said: “The front depicts the Prophet Solomon and mentions God’s triumph over evil, while the back bears the names of our four holy angels: Azrael, Gabriel, Michael, and Israfil. This is also very significant. No similar artifact has been found in Anatolian archaeology to date.
The depiction of the Biblical King Solomon, son of King David, as a man on horseback spearing demons was a popular motif for amulets in the late ancient (4th-7th century) eastern Mediterranean. Solomon had power over demons and the ills they cause, so wearing an amulet of him killing a devil would confer the king’s protection. There are
Historian Flavius Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities extolled the virtues of Solomon that are still very much associated with him today — his wisdom, his prolific compositions of songs and poems, his philosophic bent — but then he concludes:
God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. He composed such incantations also by which distempers are alleviated. And he left behind him the manner of using exorcisms, by which they drive away demons, so that they never return.
Solomon as demon-slayer grew out of a Jewish-Hellenistic tradition that spread through Christian texts in late antiquity. A non-canonical scripture, the Testament of Solomon that was composed in parts before the 4st century, describes Solomon’s command of demons via a magical ring given to him by the Archangel Michael. He orders them to build the temple in Jerusalem, gets them to tell him the incantations that will drive them off and cure the diseases they cause, and captures the wind demon in a wineskin.
The iconographic model for a mounted Solomon spearing demons is the Greek hero Bellerophon on the flying horse Pegasus slaying the chimera. Much later in the Middle Ages, Saint George would take up the same pose slaying his dragon.
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