Karun Treasure

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Kârun Treasure is the name given to a collection of 363 valuable Lydian artifacts dating from the 7th century BC and originating from Uşak Province in western Turkey, which were the subject of a legal battle between Turkey and New York Metropolitan Museum of Art between 1987 and 1993. They were returned to Turkey in 1993 after the Museum admitted it had known the objects were stolen when they had purchased them. The collection is alternatively known as the Lydian Hoard. The items are exhibited in the Uşak Museum of Archaeology. The collection made sensational news once again in May 2006 when a key piece, a golden hippocamp, on display in Uşak Museum along with the rest of the collection, was discovered to have been replaced by a fake, probably between March and August 2005. The original golden hippocamp brooch was returned to the museum several years later when the previous director of the museum, Kazim Akbiyikoglu, who had been instrumental in recovering the artifacts from the US, was arrested with 10 others, and admitted selling museum treasures to pay off gambling debts. He blamed his misfortune on an ancient curse said to afflict those who handle the treasure, and was jailed for 13 years. Yet another term used for the collection is "Croesus Treasure". Although the artifacts were closely contemporary to Croesus, whether they should be directly associated with the legendary Lydian king or not remains debatable. Croesus' wealth had repercussions on a number of Asian cultures in a vein similar to his fame in the western cultures, and is referred to either as قارون Qārūn (Arabic, Persian) or Kârun (Turkish), or Korah, with the mythical proportions of his fortune also echoed in various ways, parallel to the English language expression "as rich as Croesus". This explains why the...