ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF THE CROWN ORNAMENfS OF CYRUS THE UREAT.

North Otago Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2081, 3 January 1879, Page 3 (Supplement)

ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF THE CROWN ORNAMENfS OF CYRUS THE UREAT.

The London Standard says : — Dr Schliem»u is not alone in his discoveries. In Galicia — unless the report is to be discredited — no less a treasure has been unearthed than the crown ornaments of Cyrus the Great. About three weeks a'^o, it is said, a peasant woman, while working in the fields in the neighboord of Michalkov, on the Dueioter, dug up »*veral strange pieces of metal. She took from them the accumulated dirt of centuries, poised them, and, with a genuine i feminine instinct, came to the conclusion that they were pure gold. It turned out that she was right. There were goblets, brooches or pins, adorned with the heads of dragons, a massive crown, and — most important of all — a huge staff or sceptre. So entirely free from any alloy of baser kind is the precious metal that the intrinsic value of this treasure-trove— for the purposes of the crucible and melting-pot alone — is estimated at no leas than one hundred thousand florins, or ten thousand pounds of English money. Its market v.ilue as bullion, however, is its least claim. Dr Praylovski, of Lemburg, an archaeologist, whose fame is European* has, we are told, come to the conclusion that the treasure thus unexpectedly unearthed it none other than n portion — the chief portion it may be — of the regalia of Cyrus the Great, who, now, as neai Iy as I may be, 2500 years ago, fell in battle against the Massageta, a barbarous tribe on the shores of the Caspian, after he had taken Babylon, the great city of the East, and Sardis, the great city of the West, and made himself an emperor, ruling from the rising of the sun to its going dovn.