While walking through Berlin’s western neighborhood of Spandau, a 13-year-old made a discovery hailed as highly significant in Germany’s archaeological history. He found a small bronze coin experts have dated to about 2,300 years ago — from the ancient Greek city of Troy in present-day Turkey.
For archaeologist Jens Henker of the Berlin Heritage Authority, who analyzed the find, it was unlike any case in his career. “This young boy realized he had found something interesting and he wanted to know more about it,” Henker told DW. During a school visit to the Archaeology Lab PETRI Berlin in winter, the boy and his teacher asked staff to examine the coin. “My colleague looked at it and said ‘oh, this is quite interesting!'” Henker recalls.
The coin passed from expert to expert. Eventually a specialist at the Münzkabinett Berlin (Numismatic Collection), which holds one of the world’s most significant coin collections, identified the piece as definitely originating from ancient Troy. “For Berlin it’s the first find from Greek antiquity; although there are some other finds in Germany from this period, they are very rare,” Henker noted.
Trade networks between northern Europe and the ancient Romans are well documented, but connections between ancient Greeks and Germanic tribes in the Iron Age are poorly understood. “The Greeks don’t write about us in Germany; they considered us barbarians. And the people here [in present-day Germany] didn’t write at all, so we really depend on these finds to learn more about potential connections,” Henker said.
The coin dates to the Hellenistic period, about 281–261 BC. Its Greek references are clear: one side depicts the warrior goddess Athena wearing a Corinthian helmet; the other shows Athena with a headdress, a spear and a spindle. The small bronze coin weighs about 7 grams and measures 12 millimeters; it is now on display at Berlin’s PETRI museum in the “current finds” exhibition.
After establishing the coin’s origin, Henker located the findspot: the boy accurately showed where he had found it on a map. That agricultural site has been monitored by the Museum for Pre- and Early History since the 1950s. Surveys in the 1950s, 1970s and later produced fragments of ceramics, Slavonic-era knives, a bronze button and burned human bones, leading researchers to conclude the area served as a burial ground from the early Iron Age and was used across centuries.
Henker notes metal objects are rarely found on settlements because they were often melted down and reused, but metal was sometimes placed in graves as grave gifts. “This appears to be like a souvenir, used to remember something — perhaps even an experience in one’s life,” he said.
One of the few Greeks known to have traveled north was Pytheas, who around 330 BC journeyed from present-day Marseille to northern Europe, describing the British Isles and possibly reaching the Baltic Sea. He pursued amber — fossilized resin used in remedies and traded along the so-called “amber road” between the Mediterranean and northern Europe.
Henker suggests other possibilities: large Greek and Macedonian forces of the era recruited soldiers from various regions, so people from the north might have served and returned, bringing objects like this coin back with them. Could the coin have been someone’s souvenir from Greece later buried with them? The true story of how the coin reached Berlin remains a mystery. “All of these potential explanations of how the Greek coin came here are just guesses. If this coin could tell its story, it would probably be a crazy one with a lot in it,” Henker said.
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier