A Glimpse into History: The Notion Hoard Discovery
In the late fifth century B.C., a mercenary soldier finds himself in a humble dwelling, kneeling on the earthen floor as he carefully excavates a small hole. Within this concealed space, he places a treasured olpe, a type of jug, designed to safeguard his hard-earned savings. Nestled inside the olpe are numerous gold coins known as darics, each representing a month’s worth of pay for the soldier. However, fate takes a dark turn, and the soldier never returns to recover his hidden treasure, which lies undisturbed for over 2,400 years.
This intriguing scenario is one of several proposed by Christopher Ratté, an archaeologist from the University of Michigan, regarding the extraordinary cache recently uncovered by his research team at the ruins of Notion, an ancient city-state located in present-day Turkey. While excavating beneath the courtyard of a structure dating back to the third century B.C., the team stumbled upon the remains of an even older dwelling. “The coins were buried in a corner of the older building,” Dr. Ratté explained. “We weren’t actively searching for a pot of gold.”
Darics were predominantly utilized as a form of payment for mercenaries and soldiers of fortune during this tumultuous period. Andrew Meadows, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford who was not part of the excavation project, remarked on the significance of this discovery. “I am not aware of any other hoard of this nature being found in Asia Minor,” he stated. “This is a find of the highest importance. The archaeological context surrounding the hoard will enable us to refine the chronology of Achaemenid gold coinage.”
The archaeological site of Notion spans an impressive 80 acres atop a promontory in western Anatolia, a region that historically served as a borderland between Asia and Europe. During the early first millennium B.C., it evolved into one of the Greek-speaking communities that emerged in this area, likely due to migrations across the Aegean Sea. The burying and subsequent loss of the Notion hoard occurred amidst a backdrop of warfare, instability, and complex power dynamics in a contested frontier zone.
“This reality echoes throughout history, as immortalized in the tales of the Trojan War,” Dr. Ratté noted. “And it remains pertinent to contemporary issues, as exemplified by the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis.” He highlighted that the small harbor located on the eastern side of the city served as one of the departure points for many Syrian refugees who fled across Turkey towards Europe during the crisis that began a decade ago.
