025 Gold Figures From Oxus Treasure

The Oxus treasure is a collection of about 180 gold and silver objects, including intricate items of jewellery and exquisite models, which were found on the banks of the Oxus River in Central Asia. It is celebrated today as one of the greatest collections of gold and silver from the ancient world. These tiny gold figures were amongst the objects in the group, which is thought to have been found in modern Tajikistan by local inhabitants between around 1877 and 1880. Many of the objects date to the time of the Persian Empire, which reached its height between 500 and 300 BCE. The Persian Empire was the biggest in the world at the time—it was centred on Iran but it stretched from North Africa across the Middle East, reaching as far as modern Pakistan.

The story of how the treasure reached the British Museum is a captivating tale. In 1880 the treasure was bought from local villagers by a group of wealthy merchants. These merchants travelled with the treasure from Kabul on their way to Peshawar. On the way, they were set upon by bandits who kidnapped them and took the treasure. However, one of the merchant’s servants managed to escape. He ran away and informed a British political officer of what had happened. The officer mounted a rescue mission and managed to save the merchants, along with most of the treasure.

A British Museum curator named Augustus Wollaston Franks heard about the treasure, which had begun to emerge in bazaars in Rawalpindi, in modern Pakistan. Mainly through General Sir Alexander Cunningham, then Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, the tiny gold and silver objects were bought up and by the time Franks died in 1897 he had acquired the entire group of objects from Oxus, which have been on display almost continuously since then in the British Museum.