Oxus Treasure: Gold and Silver of the Achaemenid Persians

The Oxus Treasure is a collection of about 180 gold and silver objects made in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, mostly between the fifth and fourth centuries BC, and found on the banks of the Oxus River in Central Asia around 1877–1880. Now in the British Museum in London, it is the most important surviving group of Persian gold and silverwork, including a famous model chariot and a pair of griffin-headed armlets. Its journey from a riverbank in modern Tajikistan to London is as remarkable as the objects themselves.

The Achaemenid world

The Achaemenid Persian Empire was founded by Cyrus the Great around 550 BC, as told in Cyrus the Great Founds the Persian Empire, and lasted until Alexander the Great’s conquest in 330 BC. At its height it stretched from Egypt and the Aegean to the Indus and Central Asia.

Bactria, the region on both sides of the upper Oxus in modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was one of its richest eastern provinces. It was a land of irrigated farms, towns and trade routes, and its governors were often princes of the royal family. Gold was available from Central Asian sources, and Persian rulers prized fine metalwork as gifts, tribute and signs of rank.

Discovery and the robbery of 1880

The precise circumstances of the find are uncertain. The treasure was apparently discovered by local people between about 1876 and 1880 on the north bank of the Oxus, today’s Amu Darya, near the ruined site of Takht-i Kuwad. It was sold to merchants from Bukhara, who carried it south through Afghanistan towards India.

In May 1880, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the merchants were seized by robbers on the road between Kabul and Peshawar. Captain F. C. Burton, a British political officer in the area, heard of the robbery, set out with a small escort and recovered a large part of the treasure. He allowed the merchants to continue, and in gratitude they sold him one of the two gold griffin armlets.

The merchants then sold the treasure in Rawalpindi. Some objects were bought by Sir Alexander Cunningham, head of the Archaeological Survey of India, and many passed to Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, a keeper at the British Museum and a great collector. When Franks died in 1897 he bequeathed his pieces to the museum. Burton’s armlet was later sold to the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum, which lends it to the British Museum so the pair can be shown together.

What the treasure contains

The hoard is remarkably varied. Among its best-known objects are:

• The gold chariot model. A small chariot drawn by four horses, carrying a driver and a seated passenger dressed in Median-style clothing. It is one of the finest representations of a Persian chariot.
• The griffin armlets. A pair of massive gold armlets ending in horned griffins, originally inlaid with coloured glass and stones. Armlets like these are shown on the reliefs of Persepolis being brought as gifts to the Persian king.
• The gold plaques. About fifty thin gold plaques incised with human figures, many holding bundles of rods called barsom, used in Iranian religious rituals. They were probably votive offerings.
• Figurines and heads. Small statues in gold and silver, including a silver figure of a nude youth that shows Greek influence and a gold head of a young man.
• Vessels, jewellery and seals. Bowls, a fish-shaped gold vessel, rings, bracelets, a gold sheath decorated with a lion hunt in Assyrian style, and engraved seals.

Many of the objects are small and seem to have been dedicated to a temple or shrine. Some scholars therefore see the hoard as a temple treasure accumulated over generations.

Dating and questions

Most of the gold and silver objects belong to the Achaemenid period, especially the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Some may be earlier, and some show the mix of Iranian, Mesopotamian, Greek and Central Asian styles typical of Persian court art.

Nineteenth-century reports say that a large number of coins were found with the treasure. The roughly 200 coins associated with it today range from Achaemenid issues to coins of the Seleucid and Graeco-Bactrian kings as late as about 200 BC. If they belonged to the same hoard, the treasure was buried after that date.

Because the treasure came through the market, doubts have long existed. O. M. Dalton, who catalogued it for the British Museum in 1905, already noted that dealers in Rawalpindi had copied some pieces. A few scholars have argued that more objects are modern forgeries, but the museum and most specialists consider the great majority genuine.

How the objects were made

Achaemenid goldsmiths used a wide range of techniques. Some pieces were cast, others hammered from sheet gold and chased with fine tools from the front and back. The armlets and some smaller ornaments had cells, a technique called cloisonné, which held inlays of coloured glass, faience or semi-precious stones, most of which have since been lost.

The plaques were made very simply, with figures scratched or punched into thin gold sheet. This contrast between masterpieces and modest offerings suggests that the hoard brought together objects from many different donors, from wealthy nobles to ordinary worshippers. Together they show the full range of Persian metalwork, from royal workshops to local craftsmen.

Takht-i Sangin and the origin debate

From 1976 Soviet archaeologists excavated Takht-i Sangin, a fortified site with a large temple a few kilometres from Takht-i Kuwad. The temple, dedicated to the Oxus river god, yielded thousands of offerings, including weapons, ivories and metalwork, mostly from the Hellenistic period.

Some archaeologists believe the Oxus Treasure was originally part of the offerings of this temple. Others think it came from Takht-i Kuwad itself, as the nineteenth-century reports state. The question cannot be settled, because no archaeologist recorded the find.

Legacy

The Oxus Treasure is a key source for Achaemenid art, which survives mostly in stone reliefs such as those of Persepolis and in a small number of precious objects. Its chariot, armlets and plaques are reproduced in almost every book on ancient Persia, and they are shown in the British Museum’s galleries of ancient Iran.

Because it was found in what is now Tajikistan, the treasure is an important symbol of national heritage there, and its history is part of wider discussions about collecting in the age of empire.

Timeline

• c. 550 BC: Cyrus the Great founds the Achaemenid Empire.
• 5th–4th centuries BC: Most of the treasure’s gold and silver objects are made.
• 330 BC: Alexander the Great conquers the Persian Empire; Bactria later becomes a Greek kingdom.
• c. 200 BC or later: The hoard is probably buried.
• c. 1876–1880: The treasure is found on the bank of the Oxus near Takht-i Kuwad.
• 1880, May: Merchants carrying it are robbed near Kabul; Captain Burton recovers much of it.
• 1897: Franks’ bequest brings most of the treasure to the British Museum.
• 1905: O. M. Dalton publishes the first full catalogue.
• 1976 onwards: Soviet excavations at nearby Takht-i Sangin.

Why it matters

The Oxus Treasure offers a rare, close view of the luxury arts of the Persian Empire, from royal symbols to humble offerings. It shows how the empire’s art united influences from across Asia and the Mediterranean, and how chance, robbery and colonial-era collecting shaped what survives of the ancient world.