While walking in Spandau, a western neighborhood of Berlin, a 13-year-old uncovered a small bronze coin that specialists have dated to roughly 2,300 years ago, originating from the ancient Greek city of Troy in what is now Turkey.
Jens Henker of the Berlin Heritage Authority, who studied the object, said the case stood out in his career. The boy had taken part in a winter school visit to the Archaeology Lab PETRI Berlin and, together with his teacher, asked staff to examine the find. A colleague immediately recognized its potential importance.
The coin moved through several hands before a specialist at the Münzkabinett Berlin, the city’s renowned numismatic collection, confirmed it came from ancient Troy. For Berlin this is the first documented find from Greek antiquity; comparable discoveries in Germany are very rare.
Researchers point out that while Roman-era trade with northern Europe is well attested, contacts between ancient Greeks and the Germanic regions of the Iron Age remain poorly understood. Greeks rarely wrote about these northern peoples, and local populations left no written records, so physical finds like this coin are crucial for reconstructing possible connections.
The piece dates to the Hellenistic period, around 281–261 BCE. Its imagery is clearly Greek: one face shows the goddess Athena wearing a Corinthian helmet; the reverse depicts Athena with a headdress, a spear and a spindle. The small bronze coin weighs about 7 grams and measures roughly 12 millimeters across. It is now exhibited at PETRI under the museum’s current finds display.
After the coin was identified, Henker traced the findspot when the boy accurately indicated the location on a map. The agricultural site has been monitored by the Museum for Pre- and Early History since the 1950s. Earlier surveys conducted in the 1950s, 1970s and later turned up ceramic fragments, Slavonic-era knives, a bronze button and burned human bones, suggesting the area served as a burial ground from the early Iron Age and was used repeatedly over centuries.
Henker notes that metal objects are uncommon on settlement sites because they were often melted down and reused, though metal was sometimes placed in graves as a gift. He suggested the coin may have served as a keepsake or souvenir, perhaps tied to a memorable journey or experience.
Scholars point to several possible routes by which Greek objects could reach northern Europe. The Greek geographer Pytheas, around 330 BCE, is known to have traveled from the Mediterranean to the British Isles and possibly the Baltic region, following amber trade routes. Alternatively, large Hellenistic armies recruited men from diverse areas, and northerners might have served and returned with foreign objects. The coin could also have been a personal memento brought north and later buried.
The precise story of how a Troy coin came to be buried near Berlin remains unknown. As Henker put it, if the coin could tell its tale, it would probably be a remarkable one full of unexpected twists.
Edited by Elizabeth Grenier