Lydian treasure

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Golden jug

The Lydian Treasure (also "Croesus Treasure" or "Croesus Treasure") is an archaeological find of 432 Lydian artefacts from the 6th century BC. BC in the Turkish province of Usak . In 1987, a dispute broke out between the Republic of Turkey and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art over the bundle . The objects are exhibited today in the Uşak Arkeoloji Müzesi , which was completed in 2018 .

Even if the artifacts can be dated to the time of Croesus , it is disputed whether objects were in the possession of the last Lydian king.

discovery

The most important and valuable part of the treasure comes from the burial chamber of a Lydian princess, who was discovered during illegal excavations by four farmers in the village of Güre. After digging for days and unable to break through the chamber's marble masonry, they blew up the entrance on the morning of June 6, 1966. The deceased lay buried on a bed with 125 gold and silver jewelry objects around her. Among the finds were a heavy gold necklace with acorn-shaped pendants, a pectoral , bracelets with lion heads, silver bowls, a silver jug ​​with a handle in the shape of a human figure and a gold brooch in the shape of a hippocampus . On the horse with wings and fish tail hang three sets of tassels with three golden braids each, each braid ending in a golden ball in the shape of a pomegranate.

The treasure plundered from this grave was supplemented in 1966/67 by further finds of the same men in other barrows in the region.

The police learned of the theft and were able to recover some of the items in 1966 and hand them over to Turkish museums. But most of the artifacts had already left the country. The looters sold their find to Turkish antique dealer Ali Bayırlar, who sold the treasure to John J. Klejman, the owner of an art gallery on New York's Madison Avenue, and George Zacos, a Swiss art dealer. The Met bought the properties from 1966 to 1970 for a total of $ 1.5 million.

Dispute and return

In 1970, the British Sunday Times reporter Peter Hopkirk visited Cumhuriyet journalist Özgen Acar in Turkey and told of an archaeological find that had been smuggled from Turkey to the United States. Earlier this year, Boston Globe journalists wrote about a pot of gold that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts had illegally acquired and that came from Turkey. The daily also reported on a "Lydian treasure" acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The Turkish government then officially asked the museum. The museum's chief curator denied the purchase, but admitted that “the rumors could be a grain of truth”. Hopkirk wanted to investigate the story, but needed a local partner and offered Acar to publish the story together at the same time. Acar went to Usak, but no one wanted to hear of a pot of gold there. He also visited the Met Museum, but the responsible curator Oscar White Muscarella assured that there were no artifacts from the region in the collection. The research was thus at a dead end and the two journalists had to give up.

Acar continued to research on his own. Between 1970 and 1972, he traveled to the region again and interviewed local residents. It was not until the late 1970s that the journalist caught rumors of excavations in barrows in the region. As early as 1973 new rumors had surfaced in New York that the Met Museum held a treasure trove of over 200 artefacts. The art dealer John J. Klejman acquired the objects for US $ 500,000 and sold them to the Metropolitan Museum between 1966 and 1968. The New York Post also researched and questioned the curator of the Greek and Roman departments, Dietrich von Bothmer . He referred to Klejman. Some of the pieces from the collection were shown in an overview exhibition the previous year, but not published in the catalog. The directors of the Met Thomas Hoving and von Bothmer believed that the museum was under no obligation to determine whether the items had been looted. The takeover preceded the 1970 UNESCO agreement that banned the export and transfer of illegal cultural assets, and both Klejman and the museum justified the purchase under the old rules that called artifacts whose origin had not been specifically proven to be illegal were legally purchased.

Özgen Acar moved to New York in the early 1980s to work for the Turkish newspaper Milliyet and later worked as a freelance journalist. When he visited the Metropolitan Museum in 1984, he discovered 50 objects that exactly matched the description of the Lydian treasure. They were referred to as the "East Greek treasure". Acar flew to Turkey again and did some research there. In 1986 he published a series of seven articles and made his research public. He was able to prove that the museum had bought the Lydian treasure.

Turkey has now urged the artifacts to be returned. Since the museum continued to refuse, the Republic of Turkey filed a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art in federal court in New York on May 29, 1987. The museum initially argued that the illegal purchase was barred. In the course of the trial, Turkey's lawyers were able to prove that the treasures had been stolen from Turkey. The museum's wall paintings fit exactly into the gaps in the graves in Uşak. Looters were also able to describe individual objects precisely, although they were never on public display. The museum tried to reach an amicable settlement and wanted to admit that the treasures would have been bought illegally if the objects were exhibited for five years in New York and then for five years in Turkey. However, the Turkish government refused. Eventually, the museum had to admit that it knew the artifacts had been stolen at the time of purchase. In September 1993, the Metropolitan Museum announced the return of the finds.

Theft at the museum in Uşak

After the treasures returned to Turkey, the finds were exhibited in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara for two years and then taken to the old museum of Uşak. With the confiscation of further artefacts in 1998 and further archaeological discoveries, a total of 432 objects came together.

The collection hit the headlines again in May 2006 when Milliyet newspaper claimed that the golden hippocampus had been replaced with a fake. The object was probably replaced between March and August 2005. The police investigated the case and confirmed the forgery. The original weighed 14.3 grams, while the object exhibited in the museum weighed 23.5 grams. The museum director was immediately suspected of being sentenced to 13 years in prison for theft and embezzlement in 2009. The stolen brooch appeared in Germany in 2012 and was handed over to Turkey.

literature

  • Kurt Rich: Chasing the Golden Hoard: The Story of the Lydian Hoard: A Tale of Theft, Repatriation, Greed & Deceit . AuthorHouse, Bloomington 2012
  • Mark Rose, Özgen Acar: Turkey's War on the Illicit Antiquities Trade . In: Archeology . Vol. 48, No. 2 (March / April 1995), pp. 44-53, 55-56

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Uşak Arkeoloji Müzesi , Türkiye Kültür Portalı, accessed on March 22, 2020
  2. ↑ Nezih Başgelen: Bin tepelerin zengin krallerı Lidiyalılar. (No longer available online.) In: Anadolu Uygarlıkları July / August 2005. Turkish Ceramic Federation, archived from the original on January 22, 2007 ; accessed on March 22, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Sharon Waxman: Chasing the Lydian Hoard. In: Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian Institution, November 14, 2008, accessed March 22, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Karun Hazinesi Uşak Arkeoloji Müzesi'nde sergilenmeye başladı , TRT Haber, September 14, 2018, accessed on March 22, 2020
  5. ^ Croesus riches replaced by fakes. British Broadcasting Corporation , accessed March 22, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Stolen Croesus gold brooch found in Germany , T-Online, December 5, 2012, accessed on March 22, 2020
  7. ↑ Constanze Letsch: King Croesus's golden brooch to be returned to Turkey. In: The Guardian. November 25, 2012, accessed March 22, 2020 .