My Best Cache Hunting Find
A Huge Coin Hoard of Hammered Silver Coins, ca. 16th century
This was certainly an amazing coin cache discovery! This time, the coin hoard was bigger than ever - almost 3,000 silver hammered coins usually referred to as "Wire Money"!
Out of all coin cache recoveries I had taken part in, this one was probably the most exciting and dramatic. Because of the unusual large size of the hoard, the hoard recovery went into the night and was conducted under the Full Moon and with accompaniment of a singing nightingale that observed the entire process from a nearby tree! In many legends or myths about treasure recoveries, the big treasure is usually dug up under Full Moon conditions. And, by a loud whistling crescendo, the singing nightingale laments the loss of the treasure it has guarded. Nothing could be more symbolic than this particular coin cache recovery!
The coin hoard contained the thin-sectioned, silver coins, also called "fish scales" among treasure hunters and coin collectors in Eastern Europe, that were produced by hammerers during the reign of the Czar Ivan The Terrible (1533 - 1584).
Reverses of hammereds in this hoard showed lines of text (in Cyrillic letters) stating the ruler's name and title (Czar and Knight or Prince) as shown on a picture below. Obverses of most hammereds in this hoard depicted a rider on horseback with a spear symbolizing Saint George, a soldier saint, who slayed the dragon with his lance and saved a life of a beautiful princess of Libya as described in the Golden Legend (ca. 1260s). The legend became part of the Christian traditions, and the motif of the horseman with spear overcoming evil became popular in both Western art and Eastern Orthodox iconography. At the end of the 15th century, the motif's simplified version appeared on obverses of Russian coins, and remained on them for 250 years.
The motif's original Eastern Orthodox version (the princess is not included), reappeared on the modern Russian coins in 1997 and remained there since then.
Saint George's Motif on Old and Modern Russian Coins of "Kopeck" Denominations
During the excavation of the hoard, retrieval of all coins from the ground lasted for 16 hours(!). Fortunately cleaning such a mass of coins did not take that long. In fact, it was quick - no longer than five minutes! Because the coins were made of the highest-grade silver and did not have any oxidation, they were cleaned by the easiest way possible - by rinsing them all under tap water (using a hand shower) at once. The coins/dirt mix was placed inside a kitchen tray for utensils, which was plastic and had holes smaller than an average diameter of the silver hammereds; thus, functioning as a sieve or screen. A large basin was placed underneath the tray to collect all dirt that was washed through the holes. Right after rinsing, the hammereds looked like freshly minted!
All Hammered Silver Coins in Kitchen Utensils Tray
No matter how many coin hoards you find, every time a discovery like this can not be taken for granted and makes you wonder whether this is happening in reality or it is just a dream. There are no words to explain feelings and emotions that overwhelm a coin-cache finder during an unforgettable moment of discovery followed by the cache-retrieval process. Certainly it was thrilling to "hit a jack-pot" in the beginning of the metal detecting season in Eastern Europe!
All Coins from The Cache
To read detailed descriptions of obverses and reverses of some wire money, and to see the exact Cyrillic letters inscribed in the wire coins' legends, please visit my Photo Gallery of Russian Medieval Hammered Coins - Wire Money. You may also want to visit this page: Brief Information on Hammered Wire Coins.
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