Remains Reveal How Gold Thieves Came to a Deserving End

More than five decades ago, archeologist Robert Dyson and his team were excavating a massive Iron Age citadel when they stumbled upon a remarkably beautiful solid-gold bowl at what appeared to be the bottom of a refuse shaft. So how did something so valuable wind up there? A recent investigation has led to a promising answer that is complete with a stern warning for wannabe gold thieves.

According to a intriguing study published in a recent issue of Antiquity, the gold bowl in question is about 2800 years old. It is a beautiful piece made entirely of malleable gold, which was expertly hammered to depict chariots, mythological creatures, and the trappings of wealth.

And yet when Dyson discovered the bowl in 1958, it was found at the bottom of a refuse shaft in the long-buried citadel of Teppe Hasanlu, near the Solduz valley in north-west Iran. So why was it there?

Michael Danti, a former student of Dyson's and the author of this recent paper, closely analyzed his teacher's notes and pictures, working to recreate the tragic moment that put the bowl where it was.

And we say "tragic" not just because some valuable kitchenware went down the trash-shoot. According to Danti's work, the bowl would up where it was in the wake of a brutal invasion in 800 BC, when the citadel was pillaged and destroyed by an Urartian army, earning Hasanlu its name "the Burned City."

Danti believes that the bowl was found in the ashy remains of "an elite residence." A trio of skeletons found within that were initially thought to have been wealthy citizens trying to hide from invading soldiers, but after closer inspection, Danti suspects that they were actually greedy invaders, who spent too long in a fire of their own making.

"The soldiers are robbing the treasury and they're trying to get out in a fire, so head for the stairs - but the building collapses around them. This sends them hurtling down into a waste-disposal site," the Danti told New Scientist.

This puts the "Golden Bowl of Hasanlu," a once renown archeological find, in a new light, casting it as a stern warning about the consequences of greed and savagery.