Dan Snow's History Hit - Mystery of the Alexander the Great Coin Hoard

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

Off the coast of the Gaza Strip fishermen have been discovering coins of extreme rarity and importance. They date from the brief reign of Alexander the Great in the Third Century BC.Strangely, months later, a collection of very very similar coins were sold in a London auction house. What's the story here? Were they illegally trafficked? And what does that tell us about the antiquities found in some of the world's most troubled regions?I talked to Sarah Saey a lead producer for the BBC who broke this story, and also to producer Hazem Balousha in Gaza itself. It is a fascinating piece of archaeological sleuthing that took me from the chaos following the death of Alexander to the modern antiquities trade....For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, including our new in depth documentary about the bombing war featuring James Holland and other historians, please signup to www.HistoryHit.TV We have got a special offer on at the moment- use code 'pod3' for a month free and the first THREE months for just £/€/$1 per month.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. How is everybody doing out there? Staying socially distanced, I hope. That's a weird thing to wish on anyone. Two months ago, the biggest problem facing us all, of course, was staying inside, isolation, not getting enough exercise. Now we're urging people to pursue that path. Times change. Historians knew that it would.

This podcast is brilliant. This began, this story, with the discovery of some extraordinarily rare and valuable coins dating from Alexander the Great's brief reign in the fourth century BC. These coins were found off the Gaza Strip, one of the most troubled, contentious pieces of territory in the world. It's been under blockade from Israel for years. Fishermen found these coins. Then in a twist, surprisingly, very similar coins turned up in a London auction house. The BBC producer Sarah Say got on the case, working alongside her producer in Gaza, Hazem Bolusha. I was lucky enough to talk to both of these two about this remarkable case.

If you Google Alexander the Great Coins BBC, you can watch the extraordinary content they produced using all the latest tricks of technology a wonderful way of delivering history and current affairs content to people go and check that out if you want to support history hit should you be minded to do so we'd be very grateful the best way is become a subscriber subscribe to history hit tv you get all of our back catalogue of podcasts exclusively they're not available anywhere else in the world they're only available on there you also get hundreds of history documentaries it's like netflix for history if you use the code pod one you get free month and then you get the first month for just one pound euro or dollar so it's a pretty sweet deal

we'd be enormously excited to have you on board we're growing all the time and we're getting more and more ambitious so here everyone is sarah say the producer of this BBC project. Thanks very much for coming on the show. This is an amazing story. Thank you for inviting me. When did you find out about this? How did you find out about it? So I was freelancing with BBC Arabic and this young historian came to the BBC with a pitch and she really wanted to do a story about heritage sites in Gaza, more specifically endangered heritage sites in Gaza, more specifically endangered heritage sites in Gaza and the various threats, mainly because of the siege and sort of ongoing sanctions.

I think most of us were quite surprised by this because it's not really the first thing you think about when you think of Gaza. And so we started to look into the story and we were trying to work out a way into the story. And while we were were doing some research we heard from a archaeologist in France called Professor Bouzou who actually features in our project and he told us that some fishermen had found a hoard of ancient coins from the time of Alexander the Great just off the coast of Gaza. In fact on the site of an ancient city called Amphedon, he also sent us a link to an auction house in London who had, six months after the reports from Gaza, had sold the same type of coin for £100,000. Whoa.

And so when we got those two bits of information, we thought, this is a way into the story. Right, so let me just part the journalism, because that's very exciting, for one second. Tell me about the coins. Right. So let me just part the journalism because that's very exciting for one second. Tell me about the coins. Tell me about Alexander the Great because people forget he actually campaigned right down the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Huge sieges. Do we have any idea how the coins might have got there? The coins that the fishermen found, first of all, were the hoard of coins they found were in the time of Alexander the Great. Most of the coins were quite common tetradrams, which were a relatively common trading coin at the time of Alexander the Great, most of the coins were quite common tetradrams, which were a relatively common trading coin at the time of Alexander the Great,

and are commonly seen in auction houses. But amongst those coins were dozens of Alexander the Great decadrams, which are much bigger silver coins, pure silver coins, about 42 grams. It wasn't just one fisherman or even one group of fishermen that found these coins. It was multiple groups of fishermen over a period of time. So we don't know exactly how many coins were found. But having spoken to people on the ground, we've heard tens, even as many as 70 of these Alexander the Great decadrams. And to put that into context, the largest hoard of these coins ever found previously was in 1973 in Babylon, which is modern day southern

Iraq. And in that hoard, there was eight Alexander the Great decadrams. And in total, there are only 12 Alexander the Great decadrams officially recorded or known of. So the fact that there were dozens, maybe as many as 70 found in Gaza makes this an exceptionally significant archaeological find in Gaza. The 12 coins that were found in and around Babylon were all found in and around Babylon and so what so many of them were doing a thousand miles away in Gaza is quite intriguing. So we spoke to experts and archaeologists and we told them about these reports from Gaza and we said, you know, what do you make of this? They were all very intrigued because, as I said, all the other known coins of this type were found in Babylon, which is actually

where these coins were minted, I think, shortly before Alexander the Great died. Okay, so they're minted just before Alexander the Great dies. I think he dies in Babylon, doesn't he? I think. So what are a whole load of them, record numbers of doing, in the Sea of Gaza? That's mad. Well, just to kind of give you a little bit more context around the coins themselves, the historians that we spoke to said that because so few have been found, they assume that not many were actually minted, unlike the tetradrams, which made up the main bulk of the hoard, where many of them were found. And those are assumed to have been sort of common trading coins. And so some of the theories are that these were maybe minted to commemorate some sort of event. And so I think they assume that they were

made to commemorate an event and handed out to high-ranking officials in the army. Like the Brexit coin, limited edition. Exactly. And so they think they were probably handed out to commemorate the conquering of the Persian Empire. So that's one of the theories. So then a whole load of them show up in Gaza. And we asked some archaeologists what they think they were doing in Gaza. And their response was generally, well, it's hard for us to know because as archaeologists, we need to be able to go to a site. See the context.

See the context. Yes. We need to be able to see the composition of the hoard itself. We need to know exactly where it was found. exactly where it was found so much of so much information that could help to tell that story is lost like whether or not it looks like they sort of fell off the back of a ship or whether it looked like they were buried intentionally um and so they were found about 20 meters out to sea so one potential theory is maybe they came in on a ship from ancient Greece, going out to Gaza to pay some high-ranking officials stationed in Gaza. What about, what about, okay, I've got a theory.

Alexander, Ptolemy stole Alexander's body, taking it back to Egypt. It's on a ship, they're going on the coast from Gaza, so they have to go over Sinai Desert, on the way to Alexandria, and they drop some overboard. As good as any. Possibly, possibly. I mean, I would, I'd love to hear different people's ideas. Get in touch. We spoke to a number of people and they actually reminded us that the

coast is actually eroding in Gaza. So 20 metres out to sea over 2000 years ago was probably land, which then means that the coins were probably intentionally buried. And apparently, if an archaeologist finds a hoard buried, they assume that there must have been some sort of conflict, whether or not it was a dispute with a neighbour, and you just want to kind of hide your most prized possessions because you feel that they might want to come and take them, or whether it's a bigger conflict, maybe it's an invading force, but you decide you want to bury

your your items because you want to flee and then come back at a later date to retrieve them there's plenty of conflict to decide between in that part of the world yeah over the last two and a half thousand years well i mean that's the you know that's for historians to to answer i mean what was going on in gaza 2 300 years ago? What conflicts might it have been that would have provoked someone to bury a massive hoard of really... There was a gigantic series of successor wars after Alexander the Great died. That could be then. But anyway, it could be lots of things. So why did you produce such a fantastic bit of journalism about this? Because it wasn't just the finding of the coins. What happened from then on?

just a fantastic bit of journalism about this because it wasn't just the finding of the coins what happened from then on so obviously we got these reports from gaza and then six months after the reports the reports came in spring 2017 that's when the majority of this hoard was found six months after that you have the sale of this 100 000 pound coin in london and what's interesting about it is this coin has never been seen before and there's no provenance or no verifiable or detailed provenance attached to this coin. You don't have to do that. You are, actually. There's no law saying that you have to publish provenance. I mean, it adds value to an item.

So it's kind of assumed that if you have that information, you would publish it. But there are legitimate reasons why you might not why a consigner might ask you not to publish any information around it so it's it's not illegal but it's very unusual with exceptionally rare coins I mean you do find it with coins quite a lot because it's quite difficult sometimes to establish the provenance I said there was 12 of these coins officially recorded and so I mean they're well documented and to people within that industry and to people that know about coins these coins stand out. One appeared in September 2017 but then in the next two years 19 altogether end up going on sale across auction houses in the UK, the US and Europe.

All of them never seen before. So we spoke to, they weren't part of this well-known and documented 12. All of them had very weak levels of provenance or no provenance at all attached to them. And so that gave us cause to sort of look into those crimes. And what were you looking into? Are there crimes that may have been committed? Is there just irregularities?

Or is this a story about what happens and who benefits when these discoveries are made in war-torn and in this case blockaded parts of the world? Well, I mean, what we were trying to establish was whether or not these coins being sold in auction houses were from the Gaza hoard. That's what we were trying to establish. And we struggled. We struggled in being able to establish that because we found that, first of all, the first place you go to to try and find out where something's from is the auction catalogs themselves. And since none of them were publishing any origin of these coins, we kind of hit a dead end there.

And we got in touch with the auction houses and we asked them and they all came back to us and said, we can only publish what the consigner gave us the permission to publish or the information the consigner gave us. When we asked them, could you tell us who the consigner was, no we can't for confidentiality reasons. Okay fair enough. So then we go on to the next thing, try and look into import licenses that might have been issued for these items coming into the country in the time frame that we were interested in. So we made an application for those through the Freedom of Information Act and that was rejected for data protection reasons. What would be the crime in this case?

Is it illegal to import coins or antiquities? I mean, there's a whole web of laws around the world, but I guess the most famous one is UNESCO in 1970, and that's generally seen as a watershed period. So anything that's newly found since that time is generally considered illegal to trade. They need to be handed in to the authorities or the Ministry of Antiquities in various countries. So you're not allowed to trade in anything that's newly found.

And the problem is that when you're dealing with items that may well have come from countries where they might have been looted and smuggled out, then they're generally looted and smuggled without the authorities knowing about them. And so they didn't even know they existed, so they're not able to make a claim for them. That is so... It's so sad that a historical treasure trove, a hoard of this importance,

could be found and then just scattered to the wind. So presumably none of them remain in Gaza. So the stories you heard in Gaza are just whispers of these discoveries. Do any of the coins remain behind in Gaza at all? I don't know. We know that from the people that we spoke to on the ground, we know that there was lots of attempts

to sell these items and to get them out. And there was actually multiple reports in mainly the Israeli press that was reporting on having seized coins at the Gaza-Israel border. And I think there was three reports that came out for major seizures of these coins. So where did those go? Well, those will be with the Israeli Antiquities Authority. So we do know coins were coming out of Gaza.

Who are the victims of this crime? I mean, I guess we're the people of Gaza, but we're all kind of the victims of this crime in a way, aren't we? Yeah, for sure. I mean, the main victims are obviously the Gazan people. I mean, it's their history. You. We're also losing an opportunity to know another side to Gaza, to know it's another piece in the puzzle of what was going on in that region at that time. So we're all the losers. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's

Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Is there a boom at the moment going on because of the looting that we hear is going on in Syria,

a little bit in Egypt, after Mubarak fell there was looting going on there, Libya. Is this a particularly busy time for people that are looking to trade and smuggle these objects? What I can say to that is, I don't really know the full extent of that, but what I can say to that is that there's definitely been more attempts made to tighten up regulations, which would suggest that there is an issue. I mean, the EU just last year brought in a new law to try and sort of plug the gaps across the EU because, you know, of just the kind of inconsistencies in the laws and there being some sort of weak spots that people are able to take advantage of. And so there is a kind of Europe-wide law that's come into place,

and that's very much to try and prevent illicit items coming into the EU. I find the idea of owning antiquities so bizarre. And also, it's like a little iceberg. It's like a shark's fin. Something gets found, it briefly gets on public display in an auction house, and then it could disappear forever

because there's no legal regulatory requirement for them to sort of check in going, oh, yeah, by the way, I've got a piece of Napoleon's crown here. It's because they could chuck it in the bin or do whatever they like with it. Yeah. It's amazing. And these items just end up just being these kind of orphaned objects

that are just kind of sat there and often with no stories attached to them. And, you know, it's kind of they are valuable in and of themselves. But it's when you kind of know the context and where they were found, you know, that's when they really come alive. Well, thank you for trying. Thank you for hunting this story down. Is it ongoing? Well, how can people you've done some amazing technology work with it as well, so how can people look at it in a really new way? We decided to use a sort of interactive format to present this story. I'm lucky enough to have been working with BBC Arabic digital documentaries, which are quite innovative and up for experimenting with formats. And I think

when we were doing this story, we didn't know exactly how we were going to present it when we started, but when we were doing the story, we realised that the investigation itself was part of the story and we wanted to allow the audience to be able to go on that journey with us and to be able to look in more detail at the documents that we came across or the photographs. And so we took this interactive online project that sort of looks like an investigation wall and you're in the

position of the investigative journalist going through the story. And it's quite long for an online project, but I think there's an appetite for long form. I've been all the way through it, it was great. And how can people get hold of it? It's online. It's on the BBC website. If you type in BBC Treasure Hunters Gaza, you'll find it. Treasure Hunters Gaza. There's also a documentary version on iPlayer

if you have any trouble being able to access the digital project. Well, thank you very much for coming and telling us about it. Thank you very much for having me. Well, that was Sarah Sayers. You can hear a remarkable story. But I wanted to talk to Hazem Belusha.

He actually works in Gaza. I want to get a sense of what that discovery was like in Gaza, talking to those fishermen, and also what conditions are like in Gaza now, particularly for people interested in history and heritage preservation. Hazem, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Tell me, were you the one who found, you the one who did the hard work on this story in terms of talking to these fishermen in Gaza?

How did you hear about it? Well, first of all, it's the BBC idea. It wasn't my idea myself. The BBC approached me and offered me this job and told me about the story. Actually, before I heard from BBC, I haven't heard of that thing before. I didn't know that Gaza had coins from Alexander the Great's time. But I did the research in the beginning. I met different people. in the beginning. I met different people. I met fishermen, different fishermen, some dealers,

police, Ministry of Antiquities. So I learned a lot about this from the different sources that I have met. Are you in Gaza full-time? Yes, I am. Can you give us a sense of what it is like in Gaza at the moment, operating and trying to make these kind of programs? Well, Gaza is under blockade for about 14 years now since Hamas took over or won the election in 2006. Israel is imposing a clodger on Gaza from the border, the sea and the sky. It's barely, people barely able to leave through the crossing between Egypt and Gaza. A few limited number of passengers allowed every day. There is individual crossing between Gaza and Israel. Not all the people are allowed to cross.

They need a long processed permits from the Israeli side to be allowed to. Economical situation, it is very difficult here. There is a huge recession because of the blockade, because of the division between the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank and ruling Gaza, Hamas authorities that has impact on the daily basis of life. There is ongoing crisis related to electricity, water supplies, drinking water, pollution, environmental issues. These have consequences on the social life of people and mental as well. When you're talking to people and coins are discovered, antiquity is discovered, do people have the time, do people have the bandwidth to care about Gaza's past? Or is this kind of generally regarded as a bit of a distraction from the pressing problems that you face?

Well, I mean, ordinary people don't pay that much attention to this. People, they care about their daily basis life, how to feed the mouthies, how to find work, how to get cooking gas when there is shortage, how to sustain the electricity because of the power cut. So that is like pressing the people, as you just said, and making people not to think and giving these antiquities and the history that much attention. I mean, people here are like under pressure, ongoing pressure. I mean, people don't pay that much attention to the antiquities or history. Of course, it is important for Palestinians in general,

but ordinary people, they think about their daily life, how to sustain their life. So do you think the situation Gaza finds itself in is fertile ground for perhaps unethical trade and removal of antiquities from the Gaza Strip? Well, it's very complicated here. I mean, it's not an excuse for anybody to remove or to smuggle or, you know, like to end the history of Gaza or of the Palestinians' history in Gaza. But I mean, it's a complex of issues. It's different. As like I mentioned earlier, like, you know, the division is deep in the situation here and getting it more worse. The government is busy of sustaining its power, Hamas authority, I mean, here. So the antiquities and history is the least among of these interests and priorities.

I mean, like it's not a priority in Gaza for the people. So that gave people, you know, like greedy people, let me say, dealers, how to use this and to buy from those poor people what they have found or collected, you know, by chance sometimes. And they sell them out. They want to get richer. I mean, those fishermen, even those fishermen who found the coins specifically, they didn't know how valuable these coins were when they found them. So that's why they sold them with very humble prices. Tell me about talking to those fishermen. What was it like? How did they start? How did they come across these coins? There were two types of coins, the tether drums and

dickie drums. You know, tether drums were found in Gaza, I mean, like a few years ago, according to those fishermen and other people that I talked to. So but there was a storm in the sea and in 2017 and some fishermen started to find some bigger coins, as they call them, the digadrons. And they started to talk to each other, you know, like, guys, why shouldn't we go and dig and find things? Because there are some people are interested of this and they want to buy them. So they kept digging for a very short period of time. I mean, where they found them, like they mentioned like about 10 days to two weeks, you know, where they found these coins, the ticket runs, I mean.

And the collectors and the dealers, they were coming to the beach, asking every day if they found anything and they are willing to buy. So they understood that there are some people who are interested. So that made or motivated them to keep digging and looking for these coins. Was it surprising to people that these priceless, very rare Alexander the Great coins were found in Gaza? Well, the reaction in Gaza, especially after the documentary was published, I mean, people were surprised. Most of the people didn't know about it, like me. I mean, before I worked in this the people didn't know about it, like me. I mean, before I worked in this, I didn't know about that.

And there were like a lot of talks in the local media among people somehow who watched the film. Even on the official level, there were some investigations. I don't know how serious these investigations were. investigations. I don't know how serious these investigations were, but I mean, at least the film motivated some of the interest of some parties of the people. Well, Hazem, thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast and giving us the view from Gaza. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, everyone, that is the remarkable story of the coins found off the coast of Gaza. And, of course, some similar coins that were sold in London. We just want to make it clear, just want to make it absolutely clear,

none of the experts and none of the historians the BBC consulted were able to match the photos of the coins by the fishermen with the Alexander Decadrams put up for sale in auction houses around the world. And whilst none of the auction houses who sold the coins were able to tell the BBC where the coins came from, sometimes for privacy reasons, they told the BBC they had no reason to suspect the origin of these coins. Thanks for listening, everyone. can change the world. He tells us what is possible, not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well.

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