Foged's Bronze Sun Chariot

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Trundholm sun chariot.

It was discovered in 1902 in the Trundholm moor in West Zealand County on the northwest coast of the island of Zealand (Sjælland) in Denmark, in a region known as Odsherred (approx. 55°55'N, 11°37'E).


The disk is interpreted as a depiction of the sun. It is unclear if the sun is imagined as being itself a chariot, or as riding in a chariot. A model of a horse-drawn vehicle on spoked wheels in Northern Europe at such an early time is astonishing, the earliest known actual chariots (as opposed to ox-drawn carts on solid wheels without spokes) in Europe are from the Iron Age, dating from ca. the 6th century BC (see Etruscan chariot). But Bronze Age single spoked wheels have been found in Switzerland (Corcelettes), Drenthe (Netherlands) and Stade (Germany).
The disk has a diameter of ca. 25 cm, and is gilded on only one side, the right-hand one relative to the horse. This has been interpreted as an indication of the belief that the sun is drawn across the heavens from East to West during the day, showing its bright side, and back from West to East during the night, showing its dark side.
Professor of Archeology at the University of Copenhagen, Klaus Randsborg has shown that you can add the number of spirals in each circle of the disk, timed by the number of the circle in which they are found, counted from the middle (1x1 + 2x8 + 3x20 + 4x25). The result is 177, which comes very close to the number of days in 6 synodic months, only 44 min 2.8 s shorter each. This shows that the disk was designed by a person with some measure of astronomic knowledge and that it may have functioned as a calendar.
Date
The chariot has been dated to the 14th and the 15th centuries BC.

This coin was made for the Rørvig summerevent 2007, by pli and Hr. & Fru Danmark