Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Karkamis treasure

(via MvR) MvR has provided us with a Hürriyet story and English translation on “the Karkamis treasure” — an enormous hoard of 3000 ancient coins including 13 dekadrachms. Found in 1995, smuggled out of Turkey and sold in the last decade. The article says a few dekadrachms remain for sale from Hikmet Gül, but that he's gone missing.

I could not find the translated article on Hürriyet's website. The dollar values for the coins cited by Brand appear to be on the high side. Brand calls the find “the Carchemish-hoard” on his yahoo group EarlyElectrumCoinage and that phrase doesn't occur in the article.... still, no reason to doubt that a major hoard was smuggled out of Turkey and sold through top US dealers.

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