Tea at Trianon: What Happened to King Priam's Gold?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

What Happened to King Priam's Gold?

I know I have blogged about this before; I find it endlessly fascinating. From The Greek Reporter:

In 1871, Schliemann began excavation work on the site of Hisarlik, now recognized as the ancient city of Troy. After discovering a level known as Troy II and identifying it as the same Troy written about in the Iliad, his next aim was to find the gold Treasure of Priam.

Being that Priam was the monarch of Troy, Schliemann deduced he must have hidden his treasure somewhere in the city to prevent it from being stolen by the Greeks if his city fell. On May 31, 1873, Schliemann unearthed the legendary treasure he was seeking. He supposedly stumbled upon it by chance, as he is said to have caught a glimpse of gold in the trench-face while straightening the side of a trench on the southwestern side of the site.
Despite Schliemann’s report that the Treasure of Priam was a singular find, other scholars have doubted this claim, arguing it was but a section of the full treasure, of which most of the significant objects were unearthed by Schliemann. Other artifacts were discovered at an earlier date. Once the treasure had been found, Ottoman authorities were keen to get their hands on it. However, Schliemann was against this and devised a strategy to get the artifacts out of Ottoman territory. A mystery still surrounds the manner in which Schliemann managed to do this, and many posited suggestions and theories have tried to explain it. One tale has it that Schliemann’s wife, Sophia, smuggled bits of the treasure through Ottoman customs by hiding them in her knickers. Schliemann was eventually sued by the Ottoman government. (Read more.)