Keleč Treasure

KELČSKÝ ( Kelečský) treasure

In a dangerous and turbulent time, after the death of Prince Boleslav III, around 1002, an unknown merchant wandered through our country. For reasons known only to himself, he buried and hid his fortune in this place, perhaps to retrieve it when the danger passed. It never happened ... and in 1938, in October, while ploughing potatoes, a then 14-year-old boy found the treasure. "Only" 433 grams - 1500 pieces of silver coins, parts and whole, and jewelry.

The Amber Trail

At that time, merchant caravans took orange-yellow amber from the shores of the Baltic to Turkey and Byzantium, where it was a sought-after commodity.It was here in Kelč, across Europe, that the trail called the Amber Trail led. The composition of the find suggests that the owner was a travelling merchant, perhaps one of the Arab traders who Europe at that time, and who, about the year 1000, set out on this dangerous journey from far across the Caspian Sea, and to follow the ancient Amber Road.

Finding

Coins and their fragments (1451 pieces). Among the coins are the so-called. oto-adelheid denarii(144 pieces whole, 44 pieces in fragments), cross denarii (15 pieces whole , 136 in fragments), dadenarii from Bohemia, Rhineland, Friesland, Saxony, Bavaria, England, Provence, France, Hungary and one Islamic Abbas dirham and their fragments. The oldest valid coin is the denarius of Louis the Blind (r.901-934).The unique and oldest is the Trajan's denarius from the Roman Empire, which has entered the hoard as a historical obsolete coin representing only a certain amount of silver. The youngest are the Bohemian denarii of Boleslaus III (r. 999-1002).

Jewels and their fragments (246 pieces)

These are mainly Slavic jewels which appear in the Kiev, Polish, Silesian, Bohemian and Moravian areas.The jewels are not preserved intact, most of them are in fragments, only some of the pearls are preserved whole. Most of the artefacts are more or less deformed by pressure and bending. The disfigurement was achieved by multiple breaking, chipping and shearing. The find includes a large number of earring fragments, 148 pearls and their fragments . A pearl in this case means a piece of silver jewellery, then fragments of buttons, clasps, decorated plumes, etc.

Source: internet. Photo: loner.

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