Buried Treasure: World's Biggest Hoards
Tales of hidden treasure troves have led adventurers to both unimaginable wealth and lifelong wild goose chases. Read our roundup of treasure chests lost and found...
Located off the south shore of Nova Scotia, Canada, lies Oak Island. For centuries it has been the alleged location of the so-called Money Pit, a nickname earned following the mid-nineteenth century discovery of a large stone marking, inscribed with symbols translating as 'Twenty Feet Below, Two Million Pounds Lie Buried'! Over time the island has been linked to Captain Kidd, Spanish sailors, the Inca and even the Holy Grail but countless excavations have uncovered zilch. Despite this, the Money Pit mystery still attracts treasure hunters from all over the globe.
In 1992, Suffolk treasure hunter Eric Lawes stumbled across a cache of around 15,000 late fourth and fifth century Roman coins and around 200 items of silver tableware and jewellery in the village of Hoxne. The Hoxne Hoard is the largest collection of its kind to be discovered in the UK and was bought by the British Museum. Lawes received just under £2 million for the find.
The Holy Grail is the most famous sought treasure in existence. Christian mythology claims this is the cup from which Jesus drank at the last Supper and which caught his blood at the crucifixion. According to some, Joseph of Arimathea brought the Grail from Jerusalem to England and buried it at Glastonbury. The myth of the Grail has captured imaginations the world over, although there is absolutely no hard evidence it exists in any form.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Genghis Khan's Mongol Army took treasure from the conquered cities as far as China in the east, Poland and Hungary in the west and the Middle East in the south. Khan's hoard was reputedly buried in his underground tomb somewhere in the wilderness of Outer Mongolia, but legend has it that the entire burial party was slaughtered by an inner circle of soldiers who were later also executed. The result was no single living witness to the tomb's location; Kahn's enormous wealth was lost in the sands of time.
In 1698, Captain Kidd stole silk, opium, iron, muslins, silver and gold from the Quedah Merchant ship. Fleeing from the British government, Kidd sailed to New York, via Gardiners Island. With the permission of the proprietor, Mrs Gardiner, he buried his treasure in a ravine. Kidd was later imprisoned and Gardiner was ordered to unearth the treasure. But only a minute proportion ever surfaced; it is believed Kidd's haul totalled 400 times what was found. A plaque now marks the burial spot and treasure hunters continue to dig...
Loch Arkaig has long been the number one destination of metal detector wielding parties determined to get their mitts on Jacobite Gold. The booty was provided by Spain to finance Scotland's Jacobite rising of 1745 but when the Jacobites' army was crushed at the Battle of Culloden, the treasure was hidden in the Highlands. During the eighteenth century, groups of Scottish, English, French and Spanish treasure hunters tried in vain to unearth the gems, which may or may not remain deep below Loch Arkaig in the region of Lochaber.
On 15 May 1840 a group of workmen repairing the embankment on a bend of the River Ribble, on the outskirts of Preston, Lancashire, uncovered a huge hoard of over 8,600 items including silver coins and bullion. The treasure trove was handed over to Queen Victoria, who passed it to the British Museum, where most of it remains today. The so-called Cuerdale Hoard - named after the region - dates back to 900 AD.
A huge hoard of treasure is reportedly buried at Chanctonbury Ring in Sussex, and there have been many alleged sightings here of a ghostly figure in the form of an old Druid. The legend goes that in 1866, a hoard of 3,000 Anglo-Saxon silver pennies depicting Edward the Confessor was discovered there. Ever since that time, or so say the locals, an aged spectre with a long white beard appears at dusk, apparently scouring the grounds.
Since the late 1990s, Cuban leader Fidel Castro has enlisted the aid of big businesses to attempt the recover of gold and silver treasures looted by the Spanish conquistadors five centuries ago. This sunken booty is the world's largest known trove of Spanish treasure and could provide new insights into the ancient civilisations of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas. This search still continues, and with good reason: one ship alone, the Santissima Trinida, is believed to be lying at the bottom of the ocean with a cargo worth $400 million!
The lost Ark of the Covenant is a gilded chest believed to contain the broken pieces of a tablet on which God revealed to Moses the Ten Commandments. According to Hebrew texts the Israelites carried the Ark to numerous victories before finally laying it to rest in Solomon's Temple, but when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, the Ark was lost to history and passed into legend. Over the centuries several parties have claimed to be in possession of the Ark; the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Axum still claims to possess this holy relic. The object is kept under constant guard in a treasury near the Church and only the head priest is allowed to view. It's authenticity, however, has not been verified.
Not all buried treasure is valued in terms of money; one of the most famous spiritual treasures ever unearthed, the Dead Sea Scrolls, were found in 1947 by a goat herder in a series of caves in the Middle Eastern desert of Qumran. These tiny fragments of brittle parchment are the oldest New Testament scriptures ever found and provide a missing link between Judaism and Christianity.
