By: Summer Lin

In July 2023, archaeologists discovered a pot overflowing with gold coins under a Hellenistic house in Turkey. OnJuly 30th, 2024, the discovery was made public with permission from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The Persian coinswere most likely used for trading during 510-500 BC.

The Persian coins, or the Persian Daric, depict a Persian king kneeling with a bow in one hand and a spear in the other. The coins were found by Archaeologists from the University of Michigan, and they found them inside a clay jug or an olpe. Each Daric represented a year’s pay, and a soldier probably hid these coins in a jug before going into battle, killed while fighting, and never returned to his savings, filled with coins that he had worked so hard for, or at least this is one of the theories mentioned.

According to the New York Times, Andrew Meadows, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the project, said he knew of no other pile of coins of this type to turn up in Asia Minor.
“This is a find of the highest importance,” Meadows said. “The archaeological context for the hoard will help us fine-tune the chronology of Achaemenid gold coinage.” [1]

According to the Greek historian Thucydides, the first modern Greek historian, an Athenian general named Paches attacked a group of Persian-aligned mercenaries at Notion In 427 B.C. The Persians were then thrown out, and Notion came under Athenian rule. Twenty years later, a naval battle in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta started on the coast of Notion, which the Athenians used as a naval base. Based on the discovery and the theory, University of Michigan archaeologist Christopher Ratté said that the buried gold coins might have been connected to the events of 427 B.C. or with the Athenian evacuation of Notion. [2]

The pot filled with gold coins was an extremely rare discovery, helping historians uncover the past. The coins were probably saved underground in the pot to be retrieved later, but nobody knows the exact scenario. In the future, archaeologists might be able to figure out the true history of this mystery pot of coins.

[1]Archaeologists Find a 2,400-Year-Old ‘Pot of Gold’ in Turkey

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/science/archaeology-turkey-daric.html

[2]Hoard of gold coins from 400 BC found buried in Turkeyhttps://www.kitco.com/news/article/2024-08-02/hoard-gold-coins-400-bc-found-buried-turkey