Erfurt Treasure

Erfurt Treasure

Some of the coins on display.
Material	Gold, silver, bronze, iron, and organic material
Created	14th century
Period/culture	Middle ages
Discovered	Erfurt excavations in the city centre, 1998
Present location	Old Synagogue (Erfurt)

The Erfurt Treasure is a hoard of coins, goldsmiths' work and jewelry that is assumed to have belonged to Jews who hid them in 1349 at the time of the Black Death pogroms. The pieces were found in 1998 in the wall of a house in a medieval Jewish neighborhood in Erfurt, Germany.

The treasure was discovered in 1998 by archeologists in the Michaelisstrasse under the wall of a cellar entry. It consists of silver coins and ingots as well as over 700 extraordinary works of gold smith work dating to the 13th and 14th centuries. The majority of the treasure is made up of 24 kilograms of silver coins and ingots. The 3141 coins are all Tornesel, from the late 13th and early 14th century, thus making up the largest single find of this type of coin. in addition, there are 14 ingots of various sizes, with all of them except one stamp marked.

There are also 11 pieces of silver tableware including a Doppelkopf ( a common form of cup in the 14th and 15th century), a shallow drinking bowl, a jug and 8 goblets that fit into each other. The latter are adorned with gothic arcades that have been gilded, these date to the first half of the 14th century.

The jewelry includes 8 brooches of various sizes set with ornamental stones, the largest brooch measuring 7 cm across. Among the 8 finger rings, one is a Jewish wedding ring. This outstanding piece is made of gold with a bezel composed of openwork Gothic tracery, capped by a facetted steeple. Made in the early fourteenth century, it is one of few existing medieval Ashkenazi wedding rings. The ring features a beautifully crafted, ornate, miniature version of a gothic tower and six engraved Hebrew letters that spell out mazal tov, meaning "good fate" or "good luck", on the tower's roof. In accord with Jewish tradition, the magnificent wedding ring is made entirely of gold without the addition of stones. Only two other Jewish wedding rings from the first half of the 14th century have so far been found in Central Europe (Colmar and Weissenfels). The jewellery in particular has drawn the attention of scholars, since little fourteenth-century jewelry survives, as jewelry was often melted down when it was deemed out of style and its value as bullion outweighed other considerations.

Besides the coins, the majority of individual pieces is accounted for by garment appliques and belt adornments (totaling 600 pieces). Dozens of garment appliques are an extremely unusual find. These are small, silver sequins in various shapes, intended to be sewn onto garments. They were at the height of fashion in the fourteenth century, but, because they were made of solid silver, when the fashion changed all were melted down. The few surviving examples are almost all part of ecclesiastical textiles owned by churches. Erfurt provides rare evidence of the use of such ornaments in secular clothing.