Karun Treasure

After having dug for days and unable to break through the marble masonry of the chamber door, they had dynamited the roof of the tomb in the night of 6 June 1966, to be the first to see the breathtaking sight of the buried Lydian noblewoman and her treasures after 2600 years.

[5] The efforts made by successive Turkish governments to retrieve the collection were incited since the very beginning and followed until conclusion by the journalist Özgen Acar.

He acted as a voluntary envoy of the Ministry within the frame of the judicial case launched in New York City in 1987 and brought to conclusion in 1993,[7] at the same time as he was named consultant in the larger framework of the Turkey's participation in the work carried out by UNIDROIT regarding the protection of historic, cultural and religious heritage.

Acar's name is also synonymous in Turkey for the retrieval of another set of smuggled archaeological goods, termed "Elmalı Treasure" in reference to their site of origin, the town of Elmalı in southwestern Turkey, and involving this time Lydian coins and extremely rare decadrachms dating from the period of the Delian League, with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as his opposite party.

But the small museum in Uşak where the collection was placed, more focused on storage of Ushak carpets and operating under conditions of budgetary and staff restraints,[10] did not fully meet the requirements for the preservation of Karu Treasure.