Crimea attracts not only fans of swimming and sunbathing, but also those who are obsessed with the idea of treasure hunting. This land has an ancient history, here they traded and fought a lot, made and hid wealth for centuries. Plus, during the Great Patriotic War, valuables from the richest Crimean museums were hidden on the peninsula - and only a few of them returned back. They are still looking for not only archaeologists, but also adventure lovers. There are legends about undiscovered treasures across the peninsula - and almost all of them look very true.
10 thousand coins in the country
Scientists say that thousands of treasures are hidden on land and in the waters of the Crimean Peninsula. Here are just a few of those recently discovered.
In 1967, on the outskirts of Simferopol, during excavation work, a treasure of gold and silver jewelry from the times of the Golden Horde was found - 328 items with a total weight of 2.5 kilograms. The find was transferred to the staff of the State Historical Museum.
On March 20, 2002, employees of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine found a medieval treasure of 4256 silver and 30 gold coins at the entrance to the cave city of Chufut-Kale. It was in a pot of red clay, buried at a depth of about 45 centimeters. The total weight of the hoard's coins was more than 5 kilograms; now they are in the local history museum of Simferopol.
In 2003, during the excavation of the settlement of Mirmekiy (near Kerch), archaeologists of the State Hermitage discovered a treasure of 99 electro coins (made of an alloy of gold and silver) minted in Asia Minor. The treasure was located under the walls of the former sanctuary of Demetra (goddess of fertility), it was transferred to the Kerch museum.
In 2007, on the Tepe-Oba mountain range near Feodosia, summer residents discovered an earthen vessel containing 10,168 coins with a total weight of 6 kilograms. The treasure was transferred for storage to the Feodosia Money Museum, which in 2013 received a certificate of the keeper of the largest coin treasure found in Ukraine.
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Last Khan's Gold
But, of course, treasures that have not yet been found are much more interesting. Among them are gold and jewelry hidden by the last Crimean Tatar Khan Shahin Giray somewhere near the Bakhchisarai Palace. After all, the Crimean peninsula for centuries was the place where the Tatar khans kept money and jewelry, gold and silver, jewelry and utensils.
Shahin Giray dreamed of making the Crimean Khanate a great Black Sea empire, but his radical reforms led to numerous protests and uprisings. In 1783, the khan abdicated power, moved to Russia, and then to Turkey, where he was later executed. After his abdication, Catherine II annexed the Crimean Khanate to Russia with her manifesto.
The Khan's treasure is, first of all, a huge amount of gold and silver coins that were minted in the Cafe (now - Feodosia). The legend about him is periodically reinforced by descendants of people coming from Turkey who helped to hide the treasures.
True, many historians do not share this point of view. In particular, there is information that the treasure was once found by the Zaporozhye Cossacks - but, according to researchers, they took only a small part of the treasures, leaving them for future needs. According to another version, the khan took the treasures with him - it is known that in Voronezh he lived on a grand scale, rode in an ancient carriage of exquisite work that has survived to this day, with a white body and gilded edges. With his money, a public school was opened in the city. There is also an opinion that the treasure was not buried in Bakhchisarai, but in the Cafe, which Shahin Girey chose as the new capital of the khanate. It was there that the mint worked, why did the khan need to transport the treasures to Bakhchisarai?
Another version: the treasure is hidden in Taman (on the Taman Peninsula in the water area of the Kerch Strait). After the abdication, Shahin Girey first moved here, and only in 1784, leaving a retinue of 2,000 soldiers and a harem in Taman, sailed on the frigate "St. Nicholas" through Taganrog to Voronezh.
Did you know that … The largest hoard of gold coins in the USSR (more than 500 pieces) was found in 1981 in Ulyanovsk by two engineers of the flight training center, who were sent to remove garbage from a construction pit.
In any case, the khan's treasure is still being sought. And a few years ago, in the vicinity of the Bakhchisarai Palace, excavations were carried out by employees of the security service of Ukraine, who apparently received some new information through their own channels. True, they also failed to find the treasure.
Treasury of the NKVD and museum values
There is an opinion among Crimeans that in the Ak-Monaysky quarries, located near the village of Kamenskoye, the treasury and the file of the Crimean NKVD are hidden. In November 1941, during the retreat of the Soviet troops, many local residents saw soldiers unloading and hiding some boxes there.
These rumors are confirmed by the fact that in the mid-1950s an inspection of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from Moscow worked in the area of the village of Kamenskoye, which was meticulously interested in what exactly local residents found in the quarries.
Popular rumor says that the NKVD officers hid here not only Soviet money and dossiers on spies and saboteurs, but also the most valuable exhibits from Crimean museums - and the treasure contains tens of kilograms of gold items, as well as the most valuable copies of old books and paintings.
The historian from Alushta V. Devyatkin spent many years searching for the missing collections from the museums of Crimea. It was known that some of them were hidden together with the NVKD archive. Devyatkin says that he interviewed a dozen and a half people, one way or another connected with these events. He managed to collect interesting information. When the Germans took Perekop in the fall of 1941, an order was given to hide the archive and the most valuable relics of the Crimea, among which, for some reason, were counted specimens of rare stuffed animals from the collection of the ornithological museum. This museum sent two of its employees, a man and a woman, to help the workers of the NKVD, who then disappeared without a trace. The woman, according to rumors, died during the occupation, and the man was allegedly seen in the 1970s as part of a delegation from the Federal Republic of Germany that arrived in Crimea.
A curious pattern can be noted in the rescue of museum exhibits hidden during the war: almost all Soviet symbols hidden from enemies were subsequently found from the surviving lists. Busts and bas-reliefs of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, portraits of leaders and paintings on the history of the USSR were taken out of hiding places immediately after the liberation of the Crimea - and the most valuable museum exhibits cannot be found until now.
The secret of the black suitcase with gold jewelry found in the Scythian burial mounds and kept in the Kerch Museum has not yet been revealed. He was transferred to the Krasnodar Territory, to a partisan detachment operating near the village of Spokoinaya. According to one version, the suitcase was hidden, and it still lies somewhere. According to the other, the treasures were plundered and divided into parts by the commanders of the detachment. The latest version is supported not only by the testimony of witnesses, but also by the find of 1946, when local boys handed over to the police a gold Scythian buckle found in the forest from the same suitcase.
Cargo ship "Lenin"
This ship sank off the coast of Sevastopol at a depth of 96 meters. On July 24, 1941, the ship left Odessa, taking refugees away. Among them there were quite a few rich people who captured all their values.
"Lenin" was the last ship that could take out the inhabitants of Odessa. As a result, instead of the required 482 passengers, the ship took on board about 4,000 people.
On July 27, due to inaccurate plotting of the course, the motor ship "Lenin" near Cape Sarych touched the edge of Soviet minefields and blew up. The ship sank in 10 minutes; according to various sources, it was possible to save from 270 to 600 people, who were picked up by neighboring ships and fishermen.
Director of the Black Sea Center for Underwater Research S. Voronov confirms: on board the ship "Lenin" were employees of the regional committee, the NKVD, artists, writers. Naturally, they carried with them all the acquired property. However, despite the fact that the location of the sunken ship is known, the official researchers do not go down there - since the ship is recognized as a mass grave and now the documents are being processed to recognize it as an international naval memorial.
But black underwater archaeologists and divers are not deterred by moral principles, and they regularly visit the ship. It is not known whether any of them managed to get rich, but there is official information that such unauthorized dives have repeatedly ended tragically - divers died, unable to get out of the ship's interior.
Witnesses say that in the early 1990s, a certain Israeli citizen visited Sevastopol, who was interested in finding people ready to go down to the Lenin motor ship. The newcomer assured that his father was sailing on the sunken ship with some mysterious suitcase. My father was miraculously saved, but the suitcase remained at the bottom. According to the newcomer, there were so many diamonds that it would be enough for him, for the city, and for those who dive to the Lenin.
By the way, according to historians, about 2,500 sunken ships rest at the bottom of the Black Sea, including the German ship Laris, which in 1944 tried to take out exhibits and rarities from Stavropol and Krasnodar museums captured by the Germans, but was sunk during the bombing. True, the exact place of the ship's wreck has not yet been established, but, as practice shows, it is a matter of time.