Treasury

[3] ...And there was also silver weighing many thousands of talents and all the royal treasure amounting to a very great sum...The Greek term thêsauros (treasury) was first used in Classical times to describe the votive buildings erected to house gifts to the gods, such as the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi or many similar buildings erected in Olympia, Greece by competing city-states to impress others during the ancient Olympic Games.

[6] ... in fact, practically in every city there are banking places for the holy money ...In excavations of Persepolis, a text containing information pertaining to the activities of a temple treasury were discovered dated to the fifth century BC.

Examples include the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Belgium, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, Ghana, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

In past times revenue collected by the monarch would be kept in a secure stronghold; the kings of England traditionally used the Tower of London, which also housed the Royal Mint.

These treasuries are believed to satisfy a number of essential criteria, which include cost efficiency, security, and the ability to liquidate reserves at short notice.

Collections of personal treasures, where the objects assembled are there because of the interest of the collector, rather than any intrinsic value, have been seen since the times of the Ancient Greeks, and more particularly, the Romans.

In medieval times a number of monarchs had menageries of exotic beasts; Henry III (r.1216-1292) owned three leopards, a polar bear and an African elephant, while emperor Frederick II (r.1220-1250) owned giraffes, cheetahs, lynxes, leopards, exotic birds and an elephant, and had a variety of rare falcons.

The private collection of curiosities in England has been ascribed to 16th century polymath Francis Bacon,[18] and in Europe to the emperor Rudolph II.