A couple of months ago I wrote an article in the form of a study on the topic of how treasures were looked for before the advent of metal detectors. The article, written in the ironic style of historical research, aroused keen interest among readers of our site, so I decided to continue researching the culture and traditions of treasure hunting in the history of our country. And in this article I’ll tell you about how, before the advent of special technical means, people in Russia not only fruitlessly searched, but actually found treasures. After all, despite the fact that the discovery of a treasure is always associated with an incredible coefficient of luck and coincidence of random factors. There have always been successful treasure hunters who put a certain algorithm or well-developed technique at the forefront of their success. And today we will talk about such methods and methods for discovering treasures hidden in the earth.
In the course of studying diverse material, I happened to read one funny story about the search for a treasure with the participation of imperial persons. The treasure was ultimately not found, but what is indicative here is not the fact of the search itself, but a detailed description of how the state already in the 18th century persecuted and punished its subjects for insanity in searching for the treasure.
On July 27, 1756, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna was informed that in the city of Mikhailov (now the Ryazan region), the Cossack Terekhov saw with his own eyes untold treasures: 36 barrels of silver money, and two barrels each of gold and small pearls, “The Cross of the Lord is before them – protect yourself from evil spirits.” Empress Elizabeth accepted the report and ordered a search for the said treasure. Major Alsufev was sent to Mikhailov, and together with representatives of the Mikhailovsky Voivodeship Commission, they searched for the treasure at the indicated addresses. Cossack Terekhov reported that he saw a treasure in the basement of the house of soldier Bogatyreva. Naturally, the commission did not find the treasure there, then they checked a couple more basements of neighboring houses, but naturally they could not find such a significant treasure there either. The report compiled by the commission stated “the informer Cossack Terekhov did not prove the location of the ancient luggage, for false denunciation and trouble to the Highest Imperial Person, for the fear of others, he is subject to severe punishment with a whip, tearing out his nostrils and exile to Orenburg for hard work.” And how can one not remember , on occasion, lines from V. Vysotsky’s poetry “You can’t joke with princes, and for a long time the squad trampled the wise men with their bay horses”
But, despite this “out of fear of others” story with the Mikhailovsky “treasure” continued. Because the Cossack Terekhov had an accomplice – the coachman Malyshev, who, according to the results of the commission’s report, also got a little. He was ordered to “inflict punishment with whips and if he is fit for service, send him to a military college.” Apparently, the coachman Malyshev turned out to be unfit for military service, since a year later he again informed Count Alexander Borisovich Baturin about the existence of “three treasures.” The Count reports this information to the Empress, who again orders the Senate to conduct an investigation. This time, the investigators do not go to Mikhailov, but order “Rastunov, Belov and the coachman Malyshev to be sent to Moscow to the senator’s office along with the senator’s executor Evlashev.” And here we can immediately understand how the interrogation should have taken place with the participation of a regular executor. The miner Tikhonov was sent to Mikhailov himself with a brigade. The miner and his team again walked through the basements of soldier Bogatyreva and through the basements of neighboring houses, dug through everything they could, and also carried out excavation work in other indicated places, but they never found the treasure. The result of this investigation was summed up on December 7, 1759. “Rastunov and Belov should be sent to different places, the coachman Malyshev should be mercilessly beaten with whips, and then sent to the nearest military office to be assigned as a soldier, and if Malyshev is unfit, then punish him with whips (again) and send him to a settlement in Orenburg.
But the story of the Mikhailovsky “treasure” did not end there. After the death of Elizabeth, information about “hidden ancient riches” came to Peter III for consideration. Soldier of the Ingerman Infantry Regiment Nikifor Podnorov and peasant Pyotr Chugunov reported that in Mikhailov “there is a treasure trove.” Peter III also ordered an investigation. As we can understand, the commission also did not find the treasure; only the basements of the soldier Bogatyreva and her neighbors were again dug up and inspected. Therefore, by decree of April 20, 1762, it was ordered “For incorrect denunciation and vain daring…. Inflict public punishment on the informers with a whip and exile them to Nerchinsk for eternal work.”
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Small clarification: Nerchinsk is a city in the Trans-Baikal Territory. Founded in 1653, in 1677 silver ore deposits were discovered in the Nerchinsk region. A smelter is being built in Nerchinsk. At the beginning of the 19th century, the city was seen as an outpost on the border with China. The average annual temperature is 8.3 C. During the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov, the Russian kingdom included the lands from the Yenisei River to the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. These are the largest territorial acquisitions during the reign of one sovereign in the history of Russia. |
And yet, treasures and fabulous riches took place not only in the fantasy and imagination of individual unstable individuals, but also in real life. And the most common, most productive, in terms of success, methods of searching for treasures in Russia for more than three centuries was the method known as mounding. As we can understand, this method got its name from the word “hillock”. This is how the mounds were called in the time of Alexei Mikhailovich. And the people who called themselves mound diggers were the diggers of ancient burial mounds.
| Small clarification:The word kurgan comes from the Turkic word “korgan”, which means fortification or fortress. Burials of the mound type are one of the most common types of cult or rich burials. On the territory of Russia, burial mounds with traces of archaeological cultures from the Neolithic to the 14th century have been studied. I mistakenly believe that burial mounds on the territory of the Russian Federation are found exclusively in the southern regions and in Siberia. In the 20th century, Soviet archaeologists discovered and thoroughly studied burial mounds in the basin of the Western Dvina, Dnieper, Volga, Lovat and Velikaya rivers. Krivichi burials in the form of elongated ramparts were discovered in the Pskov region. Mound burials have many varieties, depending on historical periods and burial cultures of different peoples. For example, representatives of the same clan were buried in rampart-shaped mounds, gradually filling the mound in one direction over time. One of the largest archaeological sites is the Gnezdovo burial mound complex (Smolensk region), it has more than 5,000 individual burial mounds. |
Among many ancient peoples of Siberia and the Urals, mounds were used for the ceremonial burning of the body of a deceased person and the burial of ashes. It was with this fact that the first recorded cases of finding rich burials were associated. In the middle of the 17th century, in the developed territories of the southern Urals, by order of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, two plants for the production of saltpeter were built. Saltpeter is an integral part of gunpowder, so production is of strategic importance for the Russian kingdom. It turns out that the highest quality raw material for the production of saltpeter is soil from Tatar mounds, where, according to legend, ancient settlements once stood. Therefore, by a separate decree of the king, it was allowed to tear up these mounds and take away the land from them. The Tatras were not delighted with such actions of the Russians since the mounds for them were places of worship of the memory of their ancestors, sanctuaries or simply sacred territories. However, as historical practice has shown more than once, in such disputes the one who had the guns won. I was unable to find accurate data, or in general any reliable information about the clashes between the Tatars and Russians during that period. However, we can judge and assume the presence of such on the basis of more recent historical data. It is also necessary to note that the Russians in those days called all eastern foreigners, and even all the diverse peoples of the Caucasus, Tatars.
| Small clarification:According to legends that have survived to this day, blue lights on the mounds are lit by mermaids. This is how they lure curious and brave men to their witchcraft sabbaths. And no one alive from those Sabbaths has ever returned to the human world. |
In general, during excavations of mounds, factory workers began to find burials with very rich luggage. Silver and gold dishes, figurines made of precious metals, weapons inlaid with stones, jewelry, elements of horse harness, all kinds of overlays and elements of clothing. These findings were immediately reported to Alexei Mikhailovich, to which the Tsar and the Sovereign of All Rus’ ordered an investigation. To catch the Tatars and ask where there is so much precious metal in these graves? The interest was purely practical. The Russian kingdom did not have its own silver deposits until 1676, when deposits of silver ores were discovered in the area of the aforementioned city of Nerchinsk. Industrial gold mining began in 1732, Zmeinogorodskoye deposit in Altai.
| Small clarification: The production of money from metals, and subsequently from paper, is one of the most important sources of state income. The cost of making money is always lower than the face value of metal coins or paper tickets. The lack of their own deposits of gold and silver on the territory of the Russian principalities was the main reason for the start of minting their own coins so late, in historical terms. Silver and gold coins of the Kievan Rus period had more of a status role rather than being a real monetary unit in widespread circulation. Before the discovery and start of development of their own deposits of copper and silver in the territories controlled by the Russian Tsardom, the material for minting their own money (scales) was the melted down coins of neighboring states, which ended up in the grand ducal treasury through customs duties and taxation. The first attempts to find deposits of precious metals in the territories controlled by the Russian Empire were made under Tsar Ivan III. The king understood that in order to search for ore deposits, specialists with mining skills were needed. So Ivan made a request to the King of Hungary Matthias I Corvinus through his ambassador with a request to send a master “who knows gold and silver ore, and who would be able to divide the ore with the land, since there is gold and silver ore in mine, but they don’t know how to share with the earth.” Also, Russian ambassadors leaving for Europe were punished to look for mining craftsmen and hire them to work in the Moscow principality. |
It was the period of the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich that became the golden age in the history of the Siberian hillock workers. The business of excavating burial mounds and searching for gold and silver objects was the main income for entire settlements. People united in artels of up to five hundred people. All winter there was careful preparation for going out to the hillock. Supplies were prepared, the necessary tools were purchased, and the composition of the teams was determined. And in the spring, after the last winter snowfalls, they left on sleighs for the steppe. There, at an appointed place, they were divided into smaller groups and dispersed in pre-planned directions. Communication between groups was maintained regularly, since in the event of a threat of attack it was necessary to quickly unite. And in the fall, after the first frost, they gathered again and returned to their village with the treasures they had obtained.
In order for us to be able to imagine the volumes and, in general, what the Bug excavators could find in such excavations, I will give one interesting and illustrative example from the history of Soviet archeology. In 1986, members of an archaeological expedition led by Vladimir Ivanovich Matyushenko made a unique archaeological discovery near the village of Sidorovka in the Omsk Irtysh region. Archaeologists inspected burial mound complexes plundered by the Bugrov workers back in the 17th century. Such inspections are common, often the burghers missed small items made of gold or silver, they were also absolutely not interested in items made of iron or bronze, and all ceramic items remained in place. And so, during the inspection of one looted female burial in mound No. 1, several small objects were found, and it was accidentally discovered that the floor of the burial was the roof of another Scythian burial, untouched by robbers.
Students excavate «gold» graves on mound No. 1 Sidorovka. Source: Bulletin of Omsk University. Series “Historical 16 Sciences”. 2018. No. 3 (19). pp. 9–22.
A male skeleton was discovered in the grave with all the characteristic objects typical of rich Scythian burials: a pottery vessel (flask), next to it a small bronze cauldron on a pallet, a large bronze cauldron on a pallet, 2 silver phalars with images of griffins were located along with iron armor plates, 6 silver buckles, 4 stripes and 4 rivets, also made of silver, a silver bowl, and next to it the collapse of a clay vessel, 2 gold cloisonné buckles inlaid with turquoise, an iron sword without a pommel 1.4 m long, the remains of an iron knife with traces of a wooden handle . with the remains of a wooden scabbard covered with red leather, the scabbard was decorated with 6 gold stripes, an iron eye ax and silver fragments with remains of leather, a gold earring inlaid with turquoise and jasper, a silver chibouk of a Kuriteot pipe, a silver bottle, an iron socketed spear tip, a gold bell, 2 belt plates made of gold inlaid with turquoise, coral and amber, an original gold overlay on the belt with an image of a lying feline predator.
And this is an example of, so to speak, an ordinary average burial mound in the territory of Transbaikalia. It is interesting to note that scrupulous excavations of this “golden” grave were carried out over several weeks and, according to the recollections of one of the expedition members, during the excavations Matyushenko introduced the strictest secrecy. In order to prevent the local residents of the village of Sidorovka from finding out about the gold in the Scythian grave, archaeologists in conversations among themselves had to replace the words “gold” and “silver” with the word “dung”. Let’s imagine such an ordinary conversation between two archaeologists in a rural store. “Yesterday we sent the first batch of manure to the museum under guard”
Source: Bulletin of Tyumen State University 2013 No. 2
| Small clarification:Where did the Scythians take gold? In general, this question has not yet been answered by scientists, there are only assumptions, but a generalized and certified version has not yet been put forward. Naturally, the initial assumption was that all the jewelry for the Scythian barbarians was made by enlightened and highly skilled craftsmen of ancient Greece. However, as subsequent studies and numerous analyzes of archaeological objects showed, the Scythians made their own jewelry from silver and gold. This nomadic people had their own wonderful craftsmen. But the question of where they got the gold from remains open, and judging by the composition of the products, it was mostly native. The gold and silver deposits discovered by Russian geologists in Little Russia, the Urals and Siberia bore traces of horse-digged excavations. But these deposits could only partially satisfy the demand for gold that existed among the Scythian nobility. There is a simple logic here: if the Scythians used gold mined in the territories they controlled for their jewelry, then why after them the indigenous peoples could not continue the same pace of mining? Moreover, when Russian settlers came to these peoples, none of them knew nothing about silver or gold mining. It turns out that the main source of gold for the Scythians was foreign trade. |
Without a doubt, mounding turned out to be one of the most productive types of treasure hunting. As the first historian of Siberia, Miller, noted, in the middle of the 17th century, the number of hill hunters in Siberia was not inferior in number to sable hunters. The artistic value of the excavated objects was of little interest not only to the treasure hunters themselves, but also to the buyers of gold and silver items. The sale of found items was carried out exclusively at the price of the weight of the precious metal. And as usually happened in the history of our country, foreigners pointed out to us the historical and cultural value of Siberian jewelry.
And it was like this. In 1697, Peter I, as part of the Great Embassy, reached Holland, where he stayed in the house of a Dutch diplomat named Nicholas Witzen. This diplomat lived and worked in Moscow for a long time, and they carried on a long correspondence with the sovereign. At the meeting, Witzen showed Peter the collection of decorations from Siberian burial mounds that he had collected through his agents. At the same time, he complained that some of the items did not reach him, since the ship carrying them was captured by northern pirates. Peter realized that such jewelry and other ancient objects aroused great interest among enlightened and noble Europeans. Indeed, at that time in Europe there was a real boom in fascination with all kinds of ancient objects. The culture of the peoples of the South American continent, African tribes, all sorts of things brought from colonial countries, items made of silver and gold were eagerly bought by noble and rich people, after which they liked to grab the most outlandish collections and put them on public display.
Tsar Peter, upon returning home, after restoring order and carrying out the «morning of the Streltsy execution», in between, the war and cutting a window to Europe, begins to ask his subjects about stories about the Siberian treasures found by the Bugmen. Akinfiy Demidov was the first to react to Peter’s interest, so to speak. And upon the birth of the imperial couple’s son, Peter Petrovich, he presented as a gift a whole collection of gold objects from Siberian burial mounds. The emperor liked this gift, and therefore the Siberian governor Matvey Gagarin soon followed Demidov’s example. In 1715, as an original present, Gagarin brought Peter a dozen objects found in the Siberian hillocks. It was these gifts that became the basis for the creation of the famous Siberian collection of Peter I.
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Small clarification:Siberian collection of Peter I. On February 15, 1721, a decree of Peter I was issued, which ordered: «Curious things that are in Siberia should be bought to the Siberian governor, or to whomever is appropriate, at the present price and, without melting them down, sent to the Berg and Manufactory Collegium, and in there, without melting it down, report them to His Majesty» It was planned to allocate very substantial funds for the implementation of this decree. But apparently, difficulties arose with the allocation of the latter for the purchase of curious items. Since in just twenty years it was possible to collect no more than 250 gold and silver items into a special collection. In 1859, items from the Siberian collection were transferred from the Kunstkamera to the Hermitage, where they are kept to this day; in total, approximately 250 items related to the Scythian-Siberian animal style were transferred. The study and classification of objects caused difficulty for archaeologists and researchers at the Hermitage. As noted by archaeologist S.I. Rudenko in his work “The Siberian Collection of Peter I”/SAI D3-9. M.-L.: 1962. The study of objects from the Siberian collection is difficult due to the lack of information about where and under what conditions they were obtained. And only thanks to the available archaeological objects seized during official archaeological work in the territory of Altai and Transbaikalia in the 19th-20th centuries, it is possible to presumably identify and describe part of the objects of Peter’s Siberian collection. |
Naturally, such active activity in the destruction of ancient graves, some of which were considered sacred and sacred places by local peoples, could not but cause conflicts with the aborigines. Thus, the German physician and botanist Doniel Gottlieb Messerschmitt, sent by Peter to Siberia to collect memorable objects, noted in his diary: “With the last sled they set off for 20-30 days of driving in the steppe; They gather from all surrounding villages in the number of 200-300 or more people and are divided into detachments according to the areas where they expect to find something. Then these detachments disperse in different directions, but only so much as to always have communication with each other and, in the event of the arrival of Kalmyks or Kazakhs, to be able to defend themselves; they often have to fight with them, and others even pay with their lives.”
I believe that in most cases, conflict situations were resolved without bloodshed, but the facts of the murder and capture of the Bugrovitsa artel entirely by the Dzungars were repeatedly described. So, back in 1682, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich issued a decree prohibiting his subjects in Siberia from “going to the steppe and digging graves.” And this was connected not so much with the desire to protect Russian settlers from the business of digging coffins, but rather with the fear that such border skirmishes could become the basis for a full-scale war with the steppes. But the Russian settlers were not ready for this war. However, this decree on the ground did not have any effect at all. Since later Peter I had to issue a decree with a similar ban, but this time they were threatened with death for disobeying the Tsar’s order. But this also did not stop the diggers, only the corrupt dependence of the diggers on the official officials and governors increased manifold. More than half of the treasures found ended up in the pockets of patrons, and it didn’t matter who they were, officials, military men or industrialists. So the same Messerschmitt notes that “the local governor D.B. Zubov had several thousand rubles worth of grave gold purified by him.” The Krasnoyarsk governor of the city of Saltykov ordered a saber to be cast for himself from the grave gold. When Count Gagarin, appointed governor of Siberia, arrived in Novosibirsk, the local residents presented him with a lot of Tatar gold jewelry.
| Small clarification: Prince Matvey Petrovich Gagarin (c. 1659 – March 16 (27), 1721) a prominent political and statesman during the reign of Peter I. The first governor of Siberia. The person of Prince Gagarin has gone down in Russian history as an edifying example of the fight against corruption. In 1709, the Siberian province was established and Count Gagarin became its first governor, almost immediately complaints began to be received against him. including about concealing the income of the province, that Gagarin allows only his relatives to trade with China, and that he intends to separate from Russia by creating his own kingdom, for which he allegedly secretly ordered the construction of a gunpowder production plant. In January 1719, Gagarin was fired from all positions, taken into custody and brought for interrogation to St. Petersburg. The investigation lasted for two years, during which both the prince himself and his henchmen were tortured. Tsar Peter promised that if the count admits his guilt, then all his property will be left to his wife and children. But Gagarin refused and was hanged from the windows of the Justice College in St. Petersburg. His body was on the gallows for a long time, according to some sources, almost two years, and was transported from one place to another as an edification. So that officials can see what can happen to them for embezzlement. The prince’s body was buried in the family estate of Senitsa, Zaraisk district. According to one of the Siberian legends, before his arrest, Gagarin ordered to hide all his Tatar gold in a treasured place and no one knows this place to this day. But that’s a completely different story. |
According to scientific thought, the main property of any good is its limitation. This is what happened with the hillock fishery. Active mining lasted less than a hundred years, and Messerschmitt, sent by Peter to Siberia, upon returning to St. Petersburg, brought no more than a dozen items. In a report to the king, he indicated that these items were purchased by him from the owners. Messerschmitt himself failed to find untouched mounds for excavation. Most likely, the scientist was disingenuous, since reports about the mound workers and their activities were received by the Siberian orders even before the middle of the 18th century. But the scale was no longer the same and for the most part gold was found in the mounds by accident. Although legends about the untold riches of untouched mounds circulated then, as now.
The futility of searching for gold in the Siberian hills is very well and in detail described in the diary of one digger from the mid-17th century. “At first, as soon as spring passed, I excavated maras (grave mounds). In them, according to fairy tales, one could find money and various expensive things, such as silver cups, bowls, plates, rings, earrings and the like. These treasures are not dangerous, there is no devilry around them, and if there is, then only a little, one Sunday prayer is enough to defend yourself. I was young then, the wind was in my head, I thought I could easily get rich.
I took on this task very diligently. I dug and dug quite a lot of Mars, but didn’t find anything worthwhile. In addition to the mars, Marinkin Gorodok, which is near the Kulagina fortress, also excavated. There I found either a stove, or a forge made of unbaked bricks, and a wooden tub – all rotten, with iron hoops, and the hoops were all eaten up by rust, they were useless for any purpose. Moreover, I found a clay pot – this damned one is intact, but empty. I immediately broke it out of frustration.
And he dug under Duvanny Yar, which is higher than Marinkin Gorodok. There I found either human or ivory bone, hard as stone, which I threw into the water. Yes, he dug another huge brick, not like our ordinary bricks: ours are long and narrow, but this one is completely different, flat, as long as it is wide.”
I read these memoirs and thought how similar this is to my efforts in the pit of one village of the 19th century. just bricks and iron hoops. This is where I will stop my story about the history of treasure hunting in Rus’ for now, but I assure you that during the preparation of this article we managed to find a large amount of interesting material, which can naturally be expressed in new interesting notes on our website. If you liked it, we are waiting for your comments, reposts and I will definitely write a continuation.