Archaeologists have discovered a 2,400-year-old treasure trove in Turkey

In the late fifth century BC, a mercenary soldier buries a small jug, known as an olpa, filled with his savings - gold coins called darics - in his humble dwelling. This jug was hidden but not found for 2,400 years.

Christopher Ratte, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan, offers just such a scenario to explain the cache his team found in the ruins of Notion, an ancient city-state in present-day Turkey, The New York Times reports.

Excavating the courtyard of a third-century B.C. house, they discovered an earlier dwelling in which the coins were hidden.

The coins were buried in a corner of the older building," Dr Ratte said. - 'We weren't really looking for a pot of gold.

Dariks were mainly used to pay hired soldiers. Andrew Meadows, an archaeologist from Oxford University, emphasised the importance of the find.

'This is a find of the highest importance,' he said. - The archaeological context of the hoard will help us clarify the chronology of Achaemenid gold coinage.

The Notion darics depict a Persian king kneeling in a long tunic, holding a bow in his left hand and a spear in his right. The reverse side of the coins is blank except for the punch mark. The treasure is stored at the Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selcuk, Turkey, along with Athenian pottery from the excavations.

The archaeological site of Notion occupies 80 acres on a promontory in western Anatolia, the border region between Asia and Europe. It was one of the Greek-speaking communities that emerged in the early first millennium BC, possibly as a result of migration across the Aegean Sea. The treasure was lost during a period of wars and insecurity.

Dr Ratte believes that the unclaimed nature of a treasure means the death of its owner.

'No one ever buries a hoard of coins, especially precious metal coins, without intending to retrieve it,' he says. - Therefore, only the most serious misfortune can account for the preservation of such a treasure.

The location of Notion reflects the troubled history of the region, which is now reflected in the Syrian refugee crisis: the small harbour once served as a departure point for refugees fleeing to Europe.

Historical Background

Anatolia is the birthplace of the Western world's first state coin, the staters, created by the Lydians. King Alyattes standardised the stater, minted from electrum, around 610 B.C. His son Croesus minted the first true gold coin, the crozeid, giving rise to the expression "rich as Croesus".

In 546 BC, the Achaemenid Persian Empire conquered Ionia, including Notion. The Persians continued to use Kroesides until they introduced their own bimetallic currency: silver coins were called sigla and gold coins were called darik. The name "daric" comes either from the name of Darius I, who ruled from 522 to 486 BC, or from the Old Persian word "dari", meaning gold.

In 427 BC, according to Thucydides, an Athenian commander named Paches defeated pro-Persian mercenaries at Notion, reorganising the city under Athenian control. Two decades later, the decisive naval battle of the Peloponnesian War took place off the coast of Notion, which the Athenians used as a naval base. The gold hoard may be related to these events or may simply be the savings of a mercenary soldier.

By 387 B.C., following Athens' defeat of Sparta, Notion and other Ionian cities were reincorporated into the Persian Empire until conquered by Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. The production of darics declined after this, and many coins were melted down and remade, making them rare today.