Oxus Treasure
Encyclopedia
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
and in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
(mainly the latter, where they have been on show from June 2007 in the newly re-displayed Room 52), with many items bequeathed to the nation by Augustus Wollaston Franks
Augustus Wollaston Franks
Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks KCB was an English antiquary and museum administrator. Franks was described by Marjorie Caygill, historian of the British Museum, as "arguably the most important collector in the history of the British Museum, and one of the greatest collectors of his age".-Early...
.
Style
The griffin-headed bracelets from the hoard are typical of the 5th to 4th century BC court style of Achaemenid Persia. Bracelets of a similar form to ones from the treasure can be seen on reliefs from PersepolisPersepolis
Perspolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire . Persepolis is situated northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran. In contemporary Persian, the site is known as Takht-e Jamshid...
being given as tribute, whilst Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...
writes that armlets (among other things) were gifts of honour at the Persian court. Glass or semi-precious stone inlays within the bracelets' hollow spaces have now been lost.
History
A group of merchants acquired the Treasure (the precise findspot is unknown, but thought to be on the River Oxus); however, on the road from KabulKabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
to Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....
they were captured by bandits, who dispersed the Treasure before they were rescued by Capt. F.C. Burton, the British political officer
Political officer (British Empire)
In the British Empire, a Political officer or Political Agent was an officer of the imperial Civil Administration , as opposed to the Military administration , usually operating outside imperial territory from a base outside or inside imperial territory...
in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. He then helped them to recover the Treasure and, in gratitude, they sold him a companion piece to one of the bracelets now at the British Museum; this companion piece is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
. These merchants then continued to Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi , locally known as Pindi, is a city in the Pothohar region of Pakistan near Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad, in the province of Punjab. Rawalpindi is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad...
to sell the rest of the Treasure. Thus pieces of the Oxus Treasure were then bought from the bazaars of India, and finally ended up in the British Museum after this long journey.
Articles
- Stealing Zeus's thunder
- Tajik president calls for return of treasure from British Museum (Guardian - Tuesday April 10, 2007)
- "O. M. Dalton, The Treasure of the Oxus with Other Examples of Early Oriental Metal-Work", reviewed by Edwin M. Yamauchi - Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 90, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1970), pp. 340-343 (JSTOR - subscription required)