Ancient pot of gold unearthed in Turkey hints at ‘gravest misfortune,’ researchers say

(CNN) — The ongoing excavation of an ancient Greek city in western Turkey has uncovered artifacts and archaeological remains dating as far back as the fifth century BC — including a pot filled with an undisclosed number of valuable gold coins that was hidden away for more than 2,000 years.

Researchers discovered the stash in Notion, an 80-acre fortified city that was occupied from about the sixth century BC to the first century AD. Found buried — likely intentionally — beneath the floor of a fifth century BC courtyard house, the fortune could tell the story of an ancient mercenary soldier during those conflict-ridden times, according to a news release from the University of Michigan.

“The discovery of such a valuable find in a controlled archaeological excavation is very rare,” said excavation leader Dr. Christopher Ratté, professor of ancient Mediterranean art and archaeology at the University of Michigan and director of the Notion Archaeological Project, in the release.

“No one ever buries a hoard of coins, especially precious metal coins, without intending to retrieve it. So only the gravest misfortune can explain the preservation of such a treasure.”

The site includes the typical features of an ancient Greek city, such as a theater, temples, townhouses and a marketplace. Notion sat largely untouched and unexplored for thousands of years until about a decade ago when Ratté and a team of researchers began the process of aerial surveying and mapping the visible remains of the city found to be from the Hellenistic era (323 BC to 30 BC).

But when the researchers started their excavation in 2022, aiming to study the remains not visible above ground, they made a thrilling discovery: Under the foundation of a large courtyard townhouse from the Hellenistic era were the remains of an older house with pottery fragments within its walls dating to the fifth century BC, according to the release. The researchers then found the hoard of coins buried beneath the floor in the older house.

The artifacts tell the story of those residing in the city not just during the period between Alexander the Great’s reign and the Roman Empire but also of hundreds of years earlier, when tension was high between the Greek civilization and the Persian Empire.

Persian darics for a soldier

The newly found coins are from the reign of the Persian Empire (sixth century BC to about 330 BC) and are known as Persian darics for the kneeling archer on the front of the coin that depicts Persian King Darius. Like most ancient coins from the sixth to fourth century BC, this currency does not have dates on it, posing a challenge for researchers looking to pinpoint when it was produced, said Dr. Peter van Alfen, chief curator at the American Numismatic Society, who was not part of the excavation.

“Several enormous hoards of darics have been found in the past, numbering thousands of coins, but these were not found by archaeologists, so the coins were dispersed and the hoard context (was) lost forever,” van Alfen said in an email. “The fact that this daric hoard was found in a controlled archaeological excavation is rare. … The (archaeological) context of this hoard could provide an absolute dating peg for certain types of darics.”

For around the 200 hundred years the coins were in production, they had minor stylistic changes that researchers have attempted to put in chronological order, Ratté said. Discovering coins alongside external dating evidence allows scientists to understand how this coin had a high intrinsic value for the time.

It’s unclear what exactly the valuable coin was used for — one guess is that it was a way of paying mercenaries, van Alfen said. One gold coin would have been the equivalent of a month’s salary for a mercenary soldier, according to the University of Michigan. Silver coins were more commonly used for daily expenses, such as going to the store. Those were known as Persian silver sigloi, 20 of which would equate to one gold coin.

“The fact that this hoard was found in a house suggests that whatever the intended purpose of those producing darics, they were being used in this case as a store of wealth,” van Alfen said. Because of the gold coin’s high value, “it was far more efficient to store wealth in gold coins than in silver,” he added.

As for why the owner never returned to retrieve the gold, Ratté proposed it could be indicative of Notion’s place as a frontier between the Greek civilization and Persian Empire during centuries of conflict. Several scenarios could have led to the coins’ abandonment, he suggested, including one in 427 BC when an Athenian general attacked and massacred a group of mercenaries for Persia.

Another such clash occurred during the end of the fifth century BC when the Spartan navy defeated Athenians in a battle and they had to evacuate the city, he added.

It is also possible the cache could have belonged to some prosperous citizen hoping to one day live like a king, such as “the enormously wealthy Pythius (an ancient Greek architect) did who had some 4 million darics in his coffers as recounted by Herodotus,” van Alfen said.

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