Tuesday, May 27, 2008

300 BC Cup

I love found artifact stories - and this one is exceptional:
The grandson of a rag and bone man who acquired a small metal cup is in line for a windfall after discovering it is a pure gold vessel dating back to the third or fourth century BC.
The piece could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The 5½ in cup, believed to be from the Achaemenid empire, has two female faces looking in opposite directions, their foreheads decorated with a snake motif.
Experts were baffled by the piece, but laboratory analysis of the gold put it in the third or fourth century BC. The Achaemenid empire was based around Persia, but at its height stretched from Iran to Libya. It was wiped out by Alexander the Great in 330BC.
There's a picture on the Telegraph's website.

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