Just 25 years ago, treasure hunters exploring Mount Mittelberg, near the German town of Nebra, found what is now the realistic representation of the oldest celestial vault in the world, dating back to around 1,700 BC.
Next to that golden disk that showed the Sun, the Moon and the Pleiades – that group of stars baptized as the seven sisters in Greek mythology – those imitators of Indiana Jones found two bronze swords, as many axes, a chisel and a game of bracelets.
Lacking archaeological knowledge, they sold part of the objects on the black market for just 30,000 marks, about 16,000 euros today. The anonymous buyer offered the set to museums in Berlin and Munich for one million euros. Finally, the authorities recovered the objects by police, without having to resort to the public treasury, and the Nebra Disk, already considered an archaeological jewel, is exhibited in the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle.
Now, and until next October, original objects from that treasure, such as one of the swords with a gold pommel, along with a faithful reproduction of the Nebra record, stand out among the 482 pieces from twenty museums in Spain, Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Denmark, in the Dynasties exhibition of the Archaeological Museum of Alicante (MARQ).
With its usual didactic effort and scenic brilliance, the Alicante museum directs the visitor towards the pieces, composing in each case a suggestive story, such as the one presented by the Nebra disk and the weapons that were found next to it, or the golden hat of Schifferstadt.
This hat dates back to about 1,400 years BC, comes from the Palatinate History Museum-Speyer (Germany), and was discovered on April 29, 1835, during agricultural work in a field called Reuschlache, one kilometer north of Schifferstadt.
The hat was buried upright, about 60 cm deep. Its top reached just below the surface of the ground. When it was found, it was on a slab of burnt clay. which fell apart and has been completely lost. Three bronze axes were also found.
Three other similar gold objects from Germany and France are preserved in the world, which like this one have been interpreted as ceremonial hats used by priests in a solar cult.
The tour through the three rooms of the museum reveals other sets of enormous value, such as the gold diadem from Quinta da Agua Branca (Portugal), the decorated sword and battle ax from Téglas (Hungary), the trousseau from the Leubingen tumulus ( Germany), the halberds from the Meltz deposit (Germany) or the gold-hilted sword from Guadalajara and the gold diadem from Caravaca de la Cruz, on loan from the National Archaeological Museum.
And it is accompanied by an attractive human-scale recreation of the mining and forging of the Bronze Age, which helps to understand and contextualize the content, a resource that allows archeology to be brought closer to an audience educated in audiovisuals without distorting the value of what was shown, on the contrary, highlighting it with brilliance.
