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The Oldest Gold Treasures in the World

Panagyurishte Treasure

 

The Panagyurishte Treasure is a Thracian treasure consisting of nine gold vessels (a phiale, an amphora and seven rhytons) with total weight of 6.164 kg of 23-karat gold. All of the objects are richly and skilfully decorated with scenes of Thracian myths, customs and life. Three of the jugs-rhytons are in the shape of the heads of the goddesses Hera, Aphrodite and Athena. Multiple mythological scenes with heroes of the Greek mythology – Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis – are presented on the rhytons.

The treasure is dated to the 4th-3rd centuries BC, and is thought to have been used as a royal ceremonial set, possibly by a Thracian king. As one of the best known surviving artifacts of Thracian culture, the treasure has been displayed at various museums around the world. When not on a tour, the treasure is the centerpiece of the Thracian art collection of the National Museum of History in Sofia.

                                            ROGOZEN TREASURE

The larg­est, old­est and rich­est Thra­ci­an treas­ure. The mag­nif­i­cent col­lec­tion  con­sists of 165 sil­ver objects, 131 of which gild­ed and weighs over 20 kg.
The dec­o­ra­tion of the sil­ver­ware depicts scenes from the Thra­ci­an reli­gion and from Greek mythol­o­gy and is an inval­u­a­ble source of infor­ma­tion tes­ti­fy­ing to the cul­tur­al exchange between the ancient Greeks and the Thra­ci­an. The sil­ver and gild­ed objects strike with their exqui­site forms, while their rich elab­o­ra­tion shows dif­fer­ent styles and degrees of mas­tery and reveals dif­fer­ent myth­o­log­i­cal plots with Thra­ci­an motifs that in a match­less way pen­e­trate the dis­tant depths of human­i­ty bring­ing our mys­te­ri­ous Thra­ci­an ances­tors to life.

The vari­e­ty in style and work­man­ship of the sil­ver­ware shows they were made, col­lect­ed and add­ed to over a long peri­od of time – from the end of tth to the 4th cen­tu­ry BC. Some of them bear var­i­ous ded­i­ca­to­ry cap­tions reveal­ing the names of Thra­ci­an kings and of the gold­smiths who made them. Undoubt­ed­ly, the great Odry­si­an King Kotis, whose name is inscribed on some of the objects, owned these objects made in cit­ies under his rule when Thra­ci­an cul­ture and Thra­ci­an states on the Bal­kan Pen­in­su­la were at their great­est bloom and might.

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