Karun Treasure is the name given to a collection of 363 valuable

Lydia Lydia (Lydian language, Lydian: ‎𐤮𐤱𐤠𐤭𐤣𐤠, ''Śfarda''; Aramaic: ''Lydia''; el, Λυδία, ''Lȳdíā''; tr, Lidya) was an Iron Age Monarchy, kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the mod ...

n artifacts dating from the 7th century BC and originating from Uşak Province in western Turkey, which were the subject of a

legal battle - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil acti ...

between

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

and

New York Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

between 1987–1993 and which were returned to Turkey in 1993 after the Museum admitted it had known the objects were stolen when they had purchased them. The collection is alternatively known as the ''Lydian Hoard''. The items are exhibited in the

Uşak Museum of Archaeology The Uşak Museum of Archaeology ( tr, Uşak Arkeoloji Müzesi) is an archaeology, archaeological museum in Uşak in western Turkey. Founded on May 23, 1970, the museum is best known for its exhibitions of Karun treasure. In the museum, items on ...

. The collection made sensational news once again in May 2006 when a key piece, a golden

hippocamp The hippocampus or hippocamp, also ''hippokampos'' (plural: hippocampi or hippocamps; grc, ἱππόκαμπος, from , "horse" and , "sea monster"

, on display in

Uşak Uşak (; el, Ουσάκειον, Ousakeion) is a city in the interior part of the Aegean Region of Turkey. The city has a population of 500,000 (2016 census) and is the capital of Uşak Province. Uşak city is situated at a distance of from İ ...

Museum along with the rest of the collection, was discovered to have been switched with a

fake Fake may refer to: * Deception, an act or a statement intended to deceive ** Charlatan, a person who practices deception to obtain money or other advantages ** Counterfeit, a reproduction of an item, intended to deceive ** Cover-up, an attempt to ...

, probably between March and August 2005. Yet another term used for the collection is "Croesus Treasure". Although the artifacts were closely contemporary to

Croesus Croesus ( ; Lydian: ; Phrygian: ; grc, Κροισος, Kroisos; Latin: ; reigned: c. 585 – c. 546 BC) was the king of Lydia, who reigned from 585 BC until his defeat by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 547 or 546 BC. Croesus was ...

, whether they should be directly associated with the legendary Lydian king or not remains debatable. Croesus' wealth had repercussions on a number of

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

n cultures in a vein similar to his fame in the western cultures, and is referred to either as Qarun (

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

) or Karun ( Turkish), or

Korah Korah ( he, ''Qōraḥ''; ar, قارون ''Qārūn''), son of Izhar, is an individual who appears in the Book of Numbers of the Hebrew Bible and four different verses in the Quran, known for leading a rebellion against Moses. Some older Englis ...

, with the mythical proportions of his fortune also echoed in various ways, parallel to the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

expression "as rich as Croesus". This explains why the term "Karun Treasure" took hold, and in any case, the king Croesus' Treasure consisted of more than 363 pieces and the tomb chamber

tumulus A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or ''kurgans'', and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones buil ...

where most artifacts were discovered (they originate from close but different sites) was that of a woman.

Discovery and smuggling

The main and the most precious part of the treasure comes from a tomb chamber of a Lydian princess reached through illegal excavations carried out by three fortune-seekers from Uşak's depending Güre village, at the proximity of which the tomb was located, at the locality called Toptepe. After having dug for days and unable to break through the marble masonry of the chamber door, they had

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and Stabilizer (chemistry), stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish people, Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germa ...

d 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. The treasure looted from this particular tomb was enriched by further finds by the same men in other

tumuli A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or ''kurgans'', and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones buil ...

of the locality during 1966-1967. The collection was smuggled outside Turkey in separate dispatches through

İzmir İzmir ( , ; ), also spelled Izmir, is a metropolitan city in the western extremity of Anatolia, capital of the province of the same name. It is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara and the second largest urban agglo ...

and

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

, to be bought by the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

between 1967–1968, at an invoiced cost of $1.2 million for 200 of the pieces within the collection.

Legal battle

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 Özgen is a Turkish surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Abdulkadir Özgen (born 1986), Turkish-German footballer * Pemra Özgen Pemra Özgen (born 8 May 1986) is a Turkish tennis player. Özgen has won 18 singles and 23 double ...

. Acar had chanced upon some pieces of the collection for the first time in 1984 in a Met Museum catalogue and had informed Turkey's

Ministry of Culture Ministry of Culture may refer to: *Ministry of Tourism, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Sports (Albania) * Ministry of Culture (Algeria) *Ministry of Culture (Argentina) *Minister for the Arts (Australia) *Ministry of Culture (Azerbaijan) * Ministry of ...

of their clear provenance, while he also wrote several articles and pursued the bureaucratic channels within Turkey with insistence throughout the affair. He acted as a voluntary envoy of the Ministry within the frame of the judicial case launched in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1987 and brought to conclusion in 1993, at the same time as he was named

consultant A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

in the larger framework of the Turkey's participation in the work carried out by

UNIDROIT UNIDROIT (formally, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law; French: ''Institut international pour l'unification du droit privé'') is an intergovernmental organization whose objective is to harmonize international privat ...

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 Elmalı is a town and district in Antalya Province, the Mediterranean region of Turkey. It lies about inland, near the town of Korkuteli and west of the city of Antalya. In 2007, the population for the whole district was 36.213, of which 14,03 ...

in southwestern Turkey, and involving this time

n coins and extremely rare decadrachms dating from the period of the

Delian League The Delian League, founded in 478 BC, was an association of Greek city-states, numbering between 150 and 330, under the leadership of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victory in the Battle of Pl ...

, with the

Boston Museum of Fine Arts The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

as his opposite party.

Uşak Museum case

The clear need for a museum worthy of the treasure was being voiced ever since the artifacts had returned to Turkey. With the seizure by the authorities of ten other illegally excavated artifacts in 1998, further archaeological discoveries and the known presence of eight gold pieces that had appeared in 2000 during an exhibition in a

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

private gallery for which attempts for retrieval were yet to be made, a handsome collection of base consisting of a total of 375 pieces was already accumulated. But the small museum in

where the collection was placed, more focused on storage of

Ushak carpet Uşak carpets, Ushak carpets or Oushak Carpets ( tr, Uşak Halısı) are Turkish carpets that use a particular family of designs, called by convention after the city of Uşak, Turkey – one of the larger towns in Western Anatolia, which was ...

s and operating under conditions of budgetary and staff restraints, did not fully meet the requirements for the preservation of Karun Treasure. Doubts about the site's suitability were reinforced by the filing of currently unresolved legal action against museum staff regarding the 2007 theft. The museum's former director remains the only person to be still kept in custody among the ten initially accused in the frame of the case around the hippocamp's replacement with a fake.

Curse of the treasure

Some in Uşak and beyond associate the treasure with a

curse A curse (also called an imprecation, malediction, execration, malison, anathema, or commination) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, ...

. Legend has it that the seven men who took part in the illegal digs "died violent deaths or suffered great misfortune".

Gallery

File:Uşak Museum Karun Treasure 2191.jpg, Uşak Museum Karun Treasure vessel File:Uşak Museum Karun Treasure 2174.jpg, Uşak Museum Karun Treasure necklace File:Uşak Museum Karun Treasure alabastron 2297.jpg, Uşak Museum Karun Treasure alabastron File:Uşak Museum Karun Treasure gold bracelet 2274.jpg, Uşak Museum Karun Treasure gold bracelet File:Uşak Winged Karun Treasure fake seahorse brooch 2303.jpg, Uşak Winged Karun Treasure fake seahorse brooch File:Uşak Museum Karun Treasure incense burner 2199.jpg, Uşak Museum Karun Treasure incense burner File:Uşak Museum Karun Treasure incense burner 2197.jpg, Uşak Museum Karun Treasure incense burner File:Uşak Museum Karun Treasure 2166.jpg, Uşak Museum Karun Treasure necklace File:Uşak Museum Karun Treasure 2219.jpg, Uşak Museum Karun Treasure vessel

References