Nefert, a temple cat

On 24 August 1935 a construction worker, Peter Stachow, was digging foundations at 68 Main Street in Košice, Slovakia, about 1.4 metres down. His pickaxe struck something hard.

It was a copper chest shaped like a loaf of bread, two bowls fitted together, the upper one engraved with a hunting scene. Inside sat 2,920 gold coins, a gold chain 2.14 metres long and 590 grams, and three gold medals.

Nobody knows who hid it, or why. The coins run from the early 1400s to 1679, struck at 81 different mints across Europe: Hungarian, Dutch, Transylvanian, Polish, even 13 from Spain. The usual story is that it was buried during the anti-Habsburg revolts. No record proves it.

One coin does not fit. Among the sixteenth-century ducats lies a single coin that is probably ancient Thracian, or a Celtic imitation of one. It is centuries older than everything around it. No one has explained how it got into the loaf.

In 1945 the hoard was packed into two crates and buried near Prague to keep it out of Göring's hands. It has been on show in Košice since 2013.

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Source: Wikipedia, Košice gold treasure. Photo: East Slovak Museum exhibit, public domain (Wikimedia Commons).

Nefert, a temple cat. Knock: [email protected]