The definition of treasure hunting nowadays has evolved from archaeological digging up of lost treasure to solving a series of puzzles to reveal a final answer or reward. There is a cult activity in Seattle called The Game that is a treasure hunt but has no treasure at all – the winners, who are the first to solve a series of diverse challenges, instead claim nothing more than bragging rights over fellow participants.
Going back to it’s original meaning, allow us to introduce you to the grandaddy of treasure hunting. The gentleman to your left is Mr Heinrich Schleimann. He analysed and dissected Homer’s Illiad to discover the lost location of Troy in Turkey in 1873.
Ten years later Robert Louis Stevenson published Treasure Island. The significance of this is that it is the first time we see the glamorisation of pirates, treasure maps, buried treasure and X marks the spot.
Forty years later in 1922 Howard Carter made his famous discoveries in Egypt of the tomb of Tutankhamen.
Advances in technology resulted in a couple more finds far more recently, especially in the field of diving. In 1985, Mel Fisher recovered $450m of gold and silver from the 1622 Spanish ship, Nuestra Senora de Atocha. The discovery, consisting of pieces of eight, emeralds (the source of the emerald city) and jewellery is more commonly known as the Atocha Motherload. Over two decades after the death of Fisher, they are still recovering articles from the site – so far they’ve got less than half of the recorded payload.
In the very recent history, Dave Crisp using a metal detector uncovered a hoard of 52,000 Roman coins in Frome, Somerset. He has been hunting for over 24 years without great success and in one week discovered two.
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Schliemann took over the Troy diggings from Frank Calvert after proving the archaeological site was in fact Troy. After his wife Sophie wore the “Jewels of Helen” to create public interest, the Turkish government revoked his right to dig and sued him for a share of the gold. Ironically, he and Calvert collaborated and smuggled the treasure out of the country. Some of this “Priams Treasure” was later traded to Turkish authorities for the rights to dig at Troy again and are now located in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The rest of it made it’s way to the Imperial Museum of Berlin until 1945 when the Soviet Union’s Red Army removed it. During the cold war, the Soviet Union denied it’s existence until it showed up in Pushkin Museum in Moscow around 1993. A treaty was created to return the treasure to Germany but currently Russian museum directors are claiming they are keeping it as compensation for destruction and looting of Russian cities during the reign of Nazi Germany. Interesting huh?
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