Fragment of the Ulcinj ciborium

Description

A stone fragment from the upper cornice of one side of a ciborium — the stone canopy over the altar of a small church in Ulcinj’s Old Town. The ciborium belongs to the Pre-Romanesque group of Zeta and Zahumlje and is dated by an inscription naming the emperors Leo and Constantine: to 813–820 in the prevailing reading, to 720–741 in a more recent one.

From bottom to top the face carries four bands: hooks (paired spiral volutes), an inscription in continuo in rustic capitals, an egg-and-dart frieze and an interlace. Part of the inscription was read from the scan: …OC EDIFICIVM EDIFICAVIT — “[who] built this edifice”. The letters are 43–48 mm high but cut only 0.5–0.9 mm deep — at the very limit of what the scan records.

The top is a dressed bed on which the roof of the ciborium rested, both ends are breaks, and the back is roughly tooled because it was never meant to be seen.