Hoxne, Suffolk, England. The Hoxne Pepper Pot is an elaborate silver object that testifies to a dense trade network that pervaded Europe and beyond, all the way to Asia. In 1993, a fabulous collection of precious objects was discovered in Suffolk, buried around 410 AD. The Hoxne Pepper Pot was made around 350 AD of silver and depicts a woman with golden eyes, designed so that when candles are lit in front of her, the eyes appear to move. The object is a pepper pot, likely originating from India, following a long journey across the Red Sea, overland to the Mediterranean, and then across the Atlantic Ocean to England. In the 1st century AD, the pepper pot was used as a container for pepper. In AD 120 Roman trading ships set out each year from Myos Hormos on the Red Sea for India and returned with cargoes worth 7 million sesterces (a soldier earned 800 sesterces a year – the value on the boat was therefore equal to several hundred million dollars in today’s dollars, perhaps as much as a billion dollars in each boat).
