The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 48, December 1, 2002, Article 16

TURKISH ELMALI HOARD COINS

  Found while looking up other things:  an article about the
  ancient coin hoard found in Turkey some years ago, by
  Anne E. Kornblut of the Boston Globe, titled: "Coins of
  Contention: Turkey Battles to Recover Ancient Trove of
  Silver"

  "BAYINDIR, Turkey - The great coin discovery of the
  century happened almost by chance, rising out of a muddy
  field to the shouts of three men who simply thought they
  struck gold.

  Chasing the whir of a hand-held metal detector, three peasants
  had rushed to dig a hole, kneeling in soil still wet with rain.
  When hundreds of shining pieces began to appear, overflowing
  from a jar lodged in the earth, they jumped up.

  ''We are rich!'' yelled Ibrahim Basbug. ''We are rich!''

  It was, for a brief moment on April 18, 1984, a modern
  leprechaun tale.  But almost as quickly as the peasants could
  stuff the coins into paper bags, exhuming Athenian
  decadrachmas buried more than 2,000 years earlier, an epic
  saga with remarkable twists was beginning to unfold.

  In the years that followed - as the silver slipped out of Turkey,
  allegedly into the hands of smugglers and US collectors - it
  would prompt a lawsuit in Boston federal court, entangling two
  Harvard classmates and an eccentric billionaire, William I. Koch.
  Academics would wring their hands over the fate of one of the
  world's premier antiquities finds. The peasants would go to jail."

  For the complete article, see:
  http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/paintings/121498.htm

  A Turkish government web site pictures some of the coins:
  http://www.kultur.gov.tr/portal/arkeoloji_en.asp?belgeno=6092

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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