Emily Chan
Three Roman-era silver ingots were almost illegally sold online, but Ukrainian museum officials intervened before a sale could be made.
An investigation revealed that the culprit, a man who has remained anonymous, inherited the ingots from his great-grandmother, who had found the rare artifacts buried in the family’s backyard in Transcarpathia, a region located in western Ukraine.
The man allegedly tried to sell one of the silver bars online. Officials from the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv reported the attempted sale to local law enforcement. Two more ingots were discovered when officers searched the man’s home.
Since the artifacts have “special cultural value,” they were confiscated from the home, and the case has been taken over by Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General.
The metal bars are made almost entirely of pure silver. They weigh over 12 ounces and feature a coin-shaped impression of Emperor Constantine the Great printed on each side.
Constantine ruled from A.D. 306 to 337. He was known for introducing Christianity to the Roman Empire and relocating his capital to “New Rome,” which became Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) later on.
The ingots would have been used during the minting process to produce coins with Constantine’s likeness on them.
These coins were called siliquae. They would have been issued in a Roman city known as Augusta Treverorum (modern-day Trier, Germany) between A.D. 310 and 313. The pieces were once held together with a thin, silver ribbon, which has been lost.
“Three ingots fastened together were supposed to be a gift for a very high-ranking person,” said Maksym Levada, a curator at the museum. “The fact that they were found outside the Roman Empire on the territory of modern Ukraine makes them an invaluable source of our past.”
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