Priam's Treasure

Priam's Treasure is a cache of gold and other artifacts discovered by classical archaeologists Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlık on the northwestern coast of modern Turkey.

As early as 1822, however, the famed Scottish journalist and geologist Charles Maclaren had identified the mound at Hisarlık, near the town of Chanak (Çanakkale) in north-western Anatolia, Turkey, as a possible site of Homeric Troy.

Later, starting in the 1840s, Frank Calvert (1828–1908), an English expatriate who was an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist as well as a consular official in the eastern Mediterranean region, began exploratory excavations on the mound, part of which was on a farm belonging to his family, and ended up amassing a large collection of artefacts from the site.

Meanwhile, Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy international entrepreneur who had achieved a PhD in Classics from the University of Rostock in 1869, had begun searching in Turkey for the site of the historical Troy, starting at Pınarbaşı, a hilltop at the south end of the Trojan Plain.

Guided to the site by Calvert, Schliemann conducted excavations there in 1871–73 and 1878–79, uncovering the ruins of a series of ancient cities, dating from the Bronze Age to the Roman period.

His and Calvert's findings included the thousands of artefacts – such as diadems of woven gold, rings, bracelets, intricate earrings and necklaces, buttons, belts and brooches – which Schliemann chose to call "Priam's treasure".

Schliemann described one great moment of discovery, which supposedly occurred on or about May 27, 1873, in his typically colorful, if unreliable, manner: In excavating this wall further and directly by the side of the palace of King Priam, I came upon a large copper article of the most remarkable form, which attracted my attention all the more as I thought I saw gold behind it.

[2][3] After the capture of the Zoo Tower by the Red Army during the Battle in Berlin, Professor Wilhelm Unverzagt turned the treasure over to the Soviet Art Committee, saving it from plunder and division.