The Misnamed but Still Cool "Ice Prince"

Back in 2021, German archaeologists were excavating a late Roman villa in Bavaria when they found an intrusive burial. Dating to the 7th century AD, the burial seemed to be a very special boy.

To get the whole burial safely back to their lab, the archaeologists froze it using liquid nitrogen, which led the German press to dub this the Ice Prince.

The grave has now been fully excavated and the results are being made public. The boy was about 18 months old, but they buried him with a sword anyway; you can see the decorated hilt in this image. It was a small sword, but not a toy. The burial took place around 680 AD:

Laid to rest on a fur, the child was dressed in leather shoes, trousers and long-sleeved shirt made of fine linen decorated with strips of Byzantine silk on the cuffs and front. He had silver bracelets on each wrist and silver spurs on his leather shoes. A short slashing sword decorated with elaborate gold filigree fittings was strapped to his belt inside a leather scabbard. A textile stitched with a cross made of two strips of gold sheeting was included in the burial.

Here is the sword as displayed, with an x-ray image that reveals more details.

The child was laid to rest within a small mortuary building constructed in the center of a ruined Roman villa. The tomb became a shrine that was maintained for decades, undergoing two separate episodes of remodeling. Which raises all sorts of fascinating questions: who was this boy, and how was he remembered? Was this Roman ruin already regarded as a special place, and so approprate to be the burial site for this very special boy?