What happened to the golden hen with her chickens?

Chapter

1837 – 1842

The find

Lent 1837, Valea Urgoaiei

The sale

4,000 lei to Anastase

The sentence

29 September 1839

In Lent 1837 two quarrymen, Ion Lemnaru and his father-in-law Stan Avram, were cutting stone on Valea Urgoaiei, under the Via Ardelenilor vineyard near Pietroasa, then in the county of Saac. Between two large slabs, close to the surface, they found gold things – vessels and ornaments, some set with stones – with a black earth stuck to them that researchers read as rotted wrapping that shielded them for 1,400 years.

The finders hid the hoard for a year, then sold it to Anastase Tarpa, an arnaut from Bitola known as the Serb, for 4,000 lei. He smashed the pieces with an axe in a villager's house until the stones fell out; the sweepings went into the yard dust, where children later picked them up. Order no. 2987 of 10 July 1838 sent the Buzau police after every receiver, and the interrogations counted the hoard four different ways: 16, 17, 22 and 26 pieces.

Anastase buried what he had at the Calnau bridge and blamed a flood; made to dig, he produced the figured tray and the rest. On 14 July 1838 the prince ordered the pieces into the National Museum, and in 1839 the court tried the case: the two finders died in prison, two villagers got 30 lashes and a year each, and Anastase – the smasher – was acquitted.

We found some things of gold, thrust between two stones.

Ion Lemnaru's deposition, 1838

Meanwhile Nobody knows the exact spot: in August 1838 the Interior itself wrote that the place was unknown.

Chapter

1842 – 1875

Sfantul Sava

28 March 1842

Paris

1867, 16 pieces

London

1868, 9 months

On 28 March 1842 the Interior announced the Pietroasa gold was going to Sfantul Sava College in Bucharest; the receipt of 7 April listed the pieces – 18.7975 kg of gold – and they became the seed of the National Museum of Antiquities. A jeweller named Bisterfeld had already been hired to mend them: 40 imperial galbeni, finished 13 January 1840.

In 1867 Alexandru Odobescu, General Commissioner of the Romanian display, took the hoard to the Paris Universal Exhibition: 12 inventory entries, 16 pieces, in a special vitrine that sank into an iron box. The Romanian press accused him of selling or pawning the treasure – in truth a proxy war between Cezar Bolliac and Ion Bratianu – and Odobescu answered with a published report in 1869.

From Paris the hoard went to London's South Kensington Museum for 9 months at Henri Cole's invitation, where it was photographed and copied in galvanoplasty; those 1868 photographs are the only record of its post-Paris state. Vienna followed in 1873, then Bucharest again: the west wing of the old University building, with the Senate sitting directly above.

Bring back and set in their place those precious jewels, those jewels that were our national pride.

Cezar Bolliac, Trompeta Carpatilor, January 1868

Meanwhile Odobescu filed his monograph project on 2 May 1874: 500–800 pages, 500 copies, in French.

Chapter

1875 – 1900

The robbery

night of 19–20 November 1875

The sentence

no. 1603, 7 May 1876

Berlin

Telge's report, July 1884

In the night of 19–20 November 1875 the hoard was stolen from the Museum of Antiquities. The thief, 21-year-old Dumitru Pantazescu-Popescu of Titu – a seminary expellee with a record since 1871 – slipped into the Senate Library above, cut the floorboards, let himself down on a rope, diamond-cut the glass, and hauled the treasure up in his trousers tied like a sack. The guarded room below heard nothing.

A 5,000-lei reward was posted on 20 November; the police worked through the rogues' register, where Pantazescu topped the list, and found the library key on him. He had entered after 6 in the evening and left after half past 3 at night; most of the hoard turned up at his home. He escaped the Prefecture on 24–25 November, was recaptured on 26–27 November in a Bucharest brothel with 50 galbeni, and the missing tray quarter and inscribed bracelet surfaced on 12 January 1876 at a silversmith's – part of the bracelet melted down.

Sentence no. 1603 of 7 May 1876 gave Pantazescu 6 years and the silversmith Costache Constantinescu 1 year. In the night of 24–25 March 1884 the University Palace burned and the hasty rescue battered the treasure, so Carol I sent it to Paul Telge in Berlin: his July 1884 report found 53 drilled holes in the dodecagonal vessel, parts swapped with the octagonal one, and tin solder to be separated chemically – the previous mender he called a mere patcher.

An immense stir through the whole town announced that the Treasure had been found again.

Romanul, 22–23 November 1875

Meanwhile Pantazescu was shot at Cozia in August 1884, fleeing in disguise; the prison director was suspended.

Chapter

1916 – 1956

The train

second transport, 3 August 1917

The return

28 July 1956, 39,320 pieces

The museum

MNIR, 8 May 1972

Late in 1916, with Bucharest threatened by the Central Powers, Romania evacuated its treasure to Moscow in two transports. The first train – National Bank ingots and Queen Marie's jewels – arrived on 21 December / 6 January 1917; the second, with archives, paintings and the Pietroasa hoard among the museum pieces, arrived on 3 August 1917. What followed were decades of failed claims: the Genoa memorandum of April 1922, the Vienna talks of March–April 1924, and in 1935 a return of 1,443 crates with no Pietroasa in it.

In June 1956 Khrushchev told Dej the Soviet party would return Romania's historic art values – the same spring it returned Dresden's masterpieces to East Germany. A delegation led by Mihai Ralea, with Tudor Arghezi, Andrei Otetea, George Oprescu, Constantin Prisnea and Marius Bunescu, reached Moscow on 28 July 1956; the Kremlin's General Vedenin put the return at 39,320 pieces, the Pietroasa gold alone weighing 19.736 kg.

On 23 August 1956 the returned treasure opened to the public at the Art Museum in Bucharest; Scanteia had announced it the day before, and Arghezi, Calinescu, Daicoviciu and Oprescu all wrote for the occasion. The hoard has lived at the National Museum of Romanian History since its inauguration on 8 May 1972 – twelve survivors of twenty-two, 19.75533 kg of gold and stones, the paper trail intact.

Our treasures are coming home.

George Oprescu, 1956

Meanwhile The 1956 return held no bank gold – that story lives on the Moscow treasure page.