Queen of the Maashorst / Vorstin van de Maashorst

The Sovereign of the Maashorst (De Vorstin van de Maashorst)

In 2010 archaeologists on the Slabroekse Heide found a grave that broke the pattern. Among about a hundred burial mounds from the early Iron Age, where everyone had been cremated, one person had been laid out whole in a pit more than a metre and a half deep. The grave held bronze bracelets and anklets, pins, hair rings and even a toilet set. Almost nothing of the body survived, so to this day nobody can say for sure whether this was a man or a woman. The jewellery points to a woman. Pablo Slenders made that choice: for him she is the Sovereign of the Maashorst, a woman who lived here some 2,600 years ago.

He gave her no throne and no burial mound. She comes through the wall as if through a gateway, her hands gripping the edge of a green field that she holds out to you like a piece of the land she once ruled. Her shadow falls back into the wall behind her. She looks you in the eye.

The ornament in her crown and dress is Art Nouveau, and that is a deliberate link. Around 1900 designers borrowed from rediscovered Celtic patterns, which grew out of the same Iron Age world that made her bronze rings. The green is the Maashorst itself, 3,500 hectares of forest and heath. The purple is the heather on the Slabroekse Heide in late August, on the spot where her grave was found. Walk into the reserve after seeing the wall and you will find the same colours.