# The Amphilochios Paten > Unrecorded Byzantine silversmith(s), Kaper Koraon group - Third quarter of the 6th century (Walters Art Museum dating) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unrecorded-syrian-silversmiths-kaper-koraon/kaper-koraon-treasure-walters/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-24 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded Byzantine silversmith(s), Kaper Koraon group - **Date:** Third quarter of the 6th century (Walters Art Museum dating) - **Medium:** Silver - **Dimensions:** 4 x 41.4 cm (1.5 x 16.2 in), height x diameter - **Object type:** Silver - **Period:** Early Byzantine, sixth century - **Current location:** The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A large, plain silver paten made in Syria in the third quarter of the sixth century to hold the Eucharistic bread, inscribed with the vow of an otherwise little-known archbishop named Amphilochios. It is one of twenty-three pieces of church silver that reached the Walters Art Museum together in 1929, part of a hoard clandestinely dug up around 1908-1910 near the village of Kurin and sold through at least two dealers before Henry Walters bought it.For decades the group was catalogued under the vague label 'Hama Treasure', after the Syrian city where it surfaced on the market. Marlia Mundell Mango's 1986 catalogue argued, from an inscription naming the place on a companion chalice, that the vessels in fact belonged to the church of Saint Sergios in ancient Kaper Koraon, the Greek name for Kurin. That reattribution reframed a scattered group of art-market silver as the identifiable furnishings of one rural Syrian church, pieces of which are now held, and separately catalogued, by more than one museum.This record treats the paten on its own evidence: a documented but undocumented-in-detail clandestine find, a firmly documented market and bequest history from 1913 onward, and an honestly incomplete picture of exactly how many vessels belonged to the original hoard and where all of them now are. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **-c. 1908-1910** Unrecorded `[documented]` (clandestine excavation near the village of Kurin (ancient Kaper Koraon), Syria) The fact and approximate date range of a clandestine excavation are documented across the sources consulted, which agree the material was 'photographed in Hama' within this window. No excavator is named, no excavation report survives, and no controlled archaeological record exists for the find in the sources consulted. - **c. 1908-1910-c. 1913** Unknown intermediaries `[unknown]` (gap) How the silver passed from the ground, or from its first finder(s), into the hands of the dealer Tawfic Abucasem is not documented in any source consulted for this record. - **c. 1913-c. 1928** Tawfic Abucasem, of Hama and Port Said `[documented]` (dealer possession) Named in the Walters Art Museum's own published provenance note for this accession group as the dealer who held the material from around 1913. - **c. 1928-1928 or 1929** Joseph Brummer, Paris `[documented]` (purchase from Abucasem, and sale to Henry Walters) The Walters Art Museum's own provenance note dates Brummer's acquisition to circa 1928 and his sale to Henry Walters to 1929. Dumbarton Oaks' annotation of the same material instead states Brummer acquired the treasure by 1928 and sold it to Walters 'that same year'. The two institutional accounts disagree by about a year; this record states the discrepancy rather than resolving it silently. - **1928 or 1929-1931** Henry Walters, Baltimore `[documented]` (purchase, private collection) Held in Henry Walters's personal collection in Baltimore until his death on 30 November 1931. - **1931-present** The Walters Art Museum (formerly the Walters Art Gallery), Baltimore `[documented]` (bequest) Passed to the City of Baltimore by the terms of Henry Walters's will. The institution opened to the public as a municipal museum on 3 November 1934. ## Open questions - Does this specific paten carry Byzantine control stamps, as its companion chalice 57.642 does? The Walters' public record for 57.643 does not state either way. - What is the total original composition of the find? The Walters consistently describes 23 vessels reaching Baltimore together; broader secondary accounts of the reconstructed Kaper Koraon group cite higher figures, up to several dozen pieces across institutions, that this record has not verified against Mango's 1986 catalogue directly. - Are all objects now attributed to Kaper Koraon securely from the same original hoard, or has the group been partly reconstructed by stylistic and epigraphic association across market lots once sold separately as the 'Hama', 'Stuma', 'Riha' and 'Antioch' material? Secondary sources argue for a single original deposit; Dumbarton Oaks' own object catalogue for its Riha-associated pieces does not itself assert the connection. - Is the Metropolitan Museum's Antioch Chalice (accession 50.4) part of the same original church silver as this paten, as some recent scholarship argues, or a genuinely separate find, as its own findspot tradition and the Met's hedged attribution imply? - What price did Joseph Brummer pay Tawfic Abucasem for the group, and what price did Henry Walters pay Brummer? No figure for either transaction is published in the sources consulted. - What happened to the silver between its excavation, reportedly circa 1908-1910, and its documented appearance in Tawfic Abucasem's hands circa 1913? The interval is undocumented in every source consulted for this record. - Was the 1928 date given by Dumbarton Oaks for Henry Walters's purchase, or the 1929 date given in the Walters' own provenance note, correct? The two institutional sources disagree by about a year and this record has not resolved which is right. - Who was Archbishop Amphilochios, beyond the title he gives himself in his own dedication? No further biographical identification was located in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Wikimedia Commons, 'File:Byzantine - Paten - Walters 57643.jpg', reproducing the Walters Art Museum's catalogue entry for accession 57.643. - [2] Wikimedia Commons, 'File:Byzantine - Chalice - Walters 57642.jpg', reproducing the Walters Art Museum's catalogue entry for accession 57.642. - [3] Wikimedia Commons, 'File:Byzantine - Paten - Walters 57644.jpg', reproducing the Walters Art Museum's catalogue entry for accession 57.644. - [4] Wikimedia Commons, 'File:Byzantine - Ewer - Walters 57645.jpg', reproducing the Walters Art Museum's catalogue entry for accession 57.645. - [5] Wikimedia Commons, 'File:Byzantine - Chalice with Apostles Venerating the Cross - Walters 57636 - Profile.jpg', reproducing the Walters Art Museum's catalogue entry for accession 57.636. - [6] Dumbarton Oaks, 'Silver Treasure', annotation to the Bliss-Tyler Correspondence. - [7] Dumbarton Oaks, 'Henry Walters (1848-1931)', annotation to the Bliss-Tyler Correspondence. - [8] Dumbarton Oaks, 'Joseph Brummer (1883-1947)', annotation to the Bliss-Tyler Correspondence. - [9] Dumbarton Oaks Museum, object records for the Riha hoard portfolio (Paten with the Communion of the Apostles, BZ.1924.5; Chalice, BZ.1955.18; Flabellum, BZ.1936.23). - [10] Wikipedia, 'Kaper Koraon Treasure'. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Mango's 1986 catalogue, which it cites as its own primary reference. - [11] Wikipedia, 'Antioch chalice'. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Metropolitan Museum's own catalogue entry for accession 50.4. - [12] Marlia Mundell Mango, 'Silver from Early Byzantium: The Kaper Koraon and Related Treasures' (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1986), edited by Gary Vikan, technical contributions by Carol E. Snow and Terry Drayman Weisser. Bibliographic record only; not directly consulted for this entry. Flagged for direct consultation before this record is deepened further. - [13] Erica Cruikshank Dodd, 'Byzantine Silver Stamps' (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1961). Bibliographic record only; not directly consulted for this entry. Cited as the standard reference for the control-stamp dating method described. - [14] Wikipedia, 'Henry Walters'. Tertiary source, used for supplementary biographical detail, flagged for replacement. - [15] Wikipedia, 'Joseph Brummer'. Tertiary source, used for supplementary biographical detail, flagged for replacement. - [16] The Walters Art Museum, 'Image Rights, Reproduction, and Terms of Use', the museum's published open-access and CC0 rights policy for its collection. - [17] Secondary academic discussion of the 1884 Ottoman Law of Antiquities (Asar-i Atika Nizamnamesi) and its administration under Osman Hamdi Bey. Not directly consulted as a primary legal text for this entry; flagged for replacement with a peer-reviewed source or the law's own text before this record is deepened further. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.