Archaeologists uncover what all hope to find: A pot of gold

What every kid hopes to find at the end of a rainbow, and what archaeologists have now found in Turkey, is a pot of gold.

One of the best things an archaeologist can hope to find is a hoard of gold coins, and a group working in Turkey have found just that, digging up a terracotta pot of gold.

Archaeologists excavating ancient Greek ruins find a pot of gold in a buried building

Excavations among the ruins of Notion, an ancient Greek city-state in modern-day Turkey, turned up the foundations of a house dating to the Achaemenid Persian Empire buried under another house built from the Hellenistic Period, about 180 years later. 

In their excavations, the archaeologists uncovered a terracotta pot containing the gold.

Dr. Christopher Ratte, lead archaeologist on the project, told the New York Times “The Coins were buried in a corner of the older building,” adding that they “weren’t actually looking for a pot of gold.”

The current hypothesis as to the coins’ origins is that they were buried with the full intention of recovering them later; a representation of modern savings.

The coins are known as Darics, dating to the 5 Century BCE; a time of great unrest as Greek city-states fought against each other, against the competing Persians, and were even recorded to fight on behalf of the Persians against other Greeks.

Ancient gold coins act as chronometers of history

However fun it is to find a pot of gold, Andrew Meadows, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, reminds us that “This is a find of the highest importance”, stating “The archaeological context for the hoard [of coins] will help us fine-tune the chronology of Achaemenid gold coinage”.

Coins are one of the great timekeepers of ages past, specifically due to the designs stamped into them, allowing archaeologists to routinely use them to place the birth and decline of emperors and their empires, and states that used their own calendars, correlating them with our current calendars. 

Additionally, the designs can demonstrate what the empire and ruler of that time valued most and what the most important element of symbolism was for the ruler. 

For example, in the case of the gold darics found in the buried building, they depict Darius I, the third emperor of the Persians – and where part of the coin name comes from – kneeling and holding a bow and a spear.

Now, unfortunately, Darics are very rare among ancient coins due to Alexander the Great’s order to melt all previous coins down, re-stamping them with his own image after he conquered the Achaemenid Empire, although this only increases the value of the newly found pot of gold.