Until the 19th century, when German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the city of Troy, the focus of Homer’s epic the Iliad, was considered a myth. Upon its discovery, certain other aspects of Homeric legend became more tangible, such as the so-called gold Treasure of Priam, apparently belonging to the Trojan king of the same name.
The discovery of King Priam of Troy’s gold treasure
In 1871, Schliemann began excavation work on the site of Hisarlik, now recognized as the ancient city of Troy. After discovering a level known as Troy II and identifying it as the same Troy written about in the Iliad, his next aim was to find the gold Treasure of Priam.
Being that Priam was the monarch of Troy, Schliemann deduced he must have hidden his treasure somewhere in the city to prevent it from being stolen by the Greeks if his city fell. On May 31, 1873, Schliemann unearthed the legendary treasure he was seeking.
He supposedly stumbled upon it by chance, as he is said to have caught a glimpse of gold in the trench-face while straightening the side of a trench on the southwestern side of the site.
After excavating the treasure and retrieving it from the ground, Schliemann took the finds and stored them in his wooden house. Aside from the gold and silver objects, the Treasure of Priam included several weapons, a copper cauldron, a shallow bronze pan, and a bronze kettle.
Despite Schliemann’s report that the Treasure of Priam was a singular find, other scholars have doubted this claim, arguing it was but a section of the full treasure, of which most of the significant objects were unearthed by Schliemann. Other artifacts were discovered at an earlier date.
Once the treasure had been found, Ottoman authorities were keen to get their hands on it. However, Schliemann was against this and devised a strategy to get the artifacts out of Ottoman territory.
A mystery still surrounds the manner in which Schliemann managed to do this, and many posited suggestions and theories have tried to explain it. One tale has it that Schliemann’s wife, Sophia, smuggled bits of the treasure through Ottoman customs by hiding them in her knickers. Schliemann was eventually sued by the Ottoman government.
He lost the case and was fined £400 ($500) as compensation to the Ottomans, but he voluntarily paid £2,000 ($2,500) for reasons that remain unknown.
Where is the treasure now?
Subsequent to the unearthing of the gold Treasure of Priam, Schliemann concentrated his efforts on finding a suitable museum to display the artifacts. In the meantime, the hoard was being kept in Schliemann’s house. This was supposedly a cause of anxiety for him.
It was in 1877 that the gold Treasure of Priam had its first public display in London’s South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). After being on display for many years in London, the gold Treasure of Priam was moved to Berlin in 1881, and between 1882 and 1885, the artifacts were temporarily displayed in the Kunstgewerbe Museum before being transferred to the newly built Ethnological Museum.
In the following decades, the gold Treasure of Priam was housed in Berlin’s Ethnological Museum. Following the defeat of the Nazi regime at the end of World War II, however, the hoard disappeared.
It is widely suspected that Soviet troops occupying Berlin were responsible for looting the treasure and countless other invaluable objects and artwork, which they then transferred to Moscow.
That the Soviets took the gold Treasure of Priam was denied by them until 1993, when it was first officially admitted that the treasure was in fact in Russia. Today, the gold Treasure of Priam remains in Russia. While the Russians consider the hoard to be war plunder, to compensate for their losses during World War II, the Germans see it as looted property and want to see it returned.
