Gold wreaths from Thrace

The earliest gold laurel wreath of Thrace in the museum, also called the "Zlatinitsa-Malomirovo Treasure," was found at an old burial mound (tumulus) in Zlatinitsa, Elhovo Municipality, in Southeast Bulgaria.

The culture existed from the middle of the second millennium BC to approximately the sixth century AD, encompassing an area including parts of present-day Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Greece, Turkey, Macedonia and Serbia.

[7] Fragments of gold leaves have been found at Kabyle, the Ploska tumulus near Shipka, Rozovets in two different tomb complexes and at Strelcha.

[10] A sole example of ivy leaves was discovered at Resilovo in a grave, dating to the late fourth century BC.

[13] The National Museum of History in Sofia currently has two gold wreaths from inner Thrace, one found in a burial mound at Zlatinitsa in Southeastern Bulgaria.

The mound included "a gold wreath with appliqués, a seal ring, a greav, and two silver rhyta," which a team of archaeologists headed by Daniela Agre found in 2005, the tomb of a Thracian ruler dating to the middle of the fourth century BC.

With due legal documentation, he donated the item to Bulgaria's National Museum of History in Sofia.

Other experts on the culture propose a date ranging from 1200 to 1300 BC, the time of the Trojan War, because of similarities in design to comparable wreaths from Ancient Troy.

The ring linking the gold leaves is in the form of a circular branch, resembling specimens found in Troy, which had known ties to Thrace.

Archaeologists Gavrail Lazov, Elka Penkova, and Lyubava Konova of the National Museum of History, have assessed the gold laurel wreath as likely to have been from the grave of an aristocrat belonging to the line of the last rulers of Ancient Thracia.