 | Recently two Roman ballista balls from Gamla were returned. The 2,000-year-old stones were left in a bag at the courtyard of the Museum of Islamic and Near Eastern Cultures. |  |
 | In 1993, a retired Red Army officer dropped off 101 drawings by masters like Goya, Manet, and Delacroix at the German embassy in Moscow. They had been looted from the Bremen museum in 1945 by Soviet soldiers. |  |
 | The looting of the Baghdad Museum as Saddam Hussein’s government crumbled was devastating for antiquities lovers. In 2003, three men anonymously returned one of Iraq’s most precious treasures in the back of a car. The Sacred Vase of Warka, a massive limestone bowl, dates to around 3200 B.C. |  |
 | In 2001, London dealer James Ede received an anonymous phone call that led him to his doorstep, where he found six fragments of Roman frescoes taken from Pompeii during excavations. They had been stolen 16 years earlier from the walls of a villa near the ancient city, and were estimated to be worth around £100,000. |  |
 | In 2006, just a year after a 1,500-year-old stone box from the Mayan civilization was found in Guatemala, it mysteriously vanished. After a national investigation, it returned through an anonymous delivery at the country’s Ministry of Culture. |  |
 | In 1950 a group of 11 small ancient clay figurines were found in a Utah canyon. They belonged to a long-vanished people called the Fremont Culture, who had lived in the region from 700 to 1300 A.D. For two decades, these pieces, which came to be known as the Pilling Collection, toured around Utah museums. In the early 1970s, one of the figures mysteriously failed to show up. In 2011, an anthropologist at Utah State University received a box with the missing piece. |  |
 | In 2007 the J Paul Getty Museum returned disputed antiquities, including a prized statue of the goddess Aphrodite. Italian authorities believe the 7ft statue, bought by the Getty for $18 million in 1988, was looted from an ancient Greek settlement in Sicily. |  |
| In April 2015 some 123 artefacts were seized by US customs as part of a five year investigation into international smuggling networks dubbed Operation Mummy's Curse. One item, a 2,300 year-old sarcophagus was found in a garage in Brooklyn. 
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 A gold chalice from the Margarita was the top selling lot, fetching $413,000. | A collection of shipwrecked 17th and 18th century Spanish treasure discovered off the coast of Florida has sold in New York for about $2m. US treasure hunter Mel Fisher was most famous for discovering the shipwrecked Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which went down in a hurricane in 1622, laden with new world riches.  |
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 A gold crucifix with inlaid Colombian emerald jewels went for $119,000. | After searching for some 16 years, treasure hunter Mel Fisher unearthed the treasures of Atocha near the Florida Keys in 1985. 40 items from the impressive cache will go up for auction in New York City on August 5, 2015. A gold bar from the Atocha made $93,750.  |  The golden spoon was thought to be used by priests during Communion to convert South American natives. $62,000. |
 $75,000 | The haul includes two spectacular gold chains, one called a 'money chain'. Fisher wore it on the 'Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson' soon after the ship's discovery. In the Colonial era, the Spanish king placed a 20 percent tariff on gold bullion called the Royal Fifth. But if the gold was turned into jewelry, the tax was forgiven. Each link of the 'money chain' is of equal size and weight and could be twisted off and used as formal currency.  |
 | Also up for auction is the Bezoar Stone, which was believed to remove poisons and toxins from liquids. The pendant, about the size of an egg, is encased in a gold mounting with four arms grasping the stone. A magnificent emerald jewel from the lost Atocha. It made $ 410,000 in 2013 |  The Guernsey's sale also will offer about 100 silver coins from the Atocha sister ship, the Santa Margarita, ranging from $1,000 and up. |
 | On July 31, 1715 eleven of the twelve Spanish ships sailing from Havana to Spain with royal treasure were wrecked by a violent hurricane on the east coast of Florida from St. Lucie to Cape Canaveral. Seven days after departing from Havana, Cuba, the ships were lost in a hurricane near present day Vero Beach, Florida. |
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 | Seven Spanish treasure laden ships were scattered over the reefs from south of Fort Pierce to the Sebastian Inlet. Spanish coins of all types (gold and silver) started to be found on the beaches in the 1950s after strong nor'easters or a violent hurricane. This part of Florida's Atlantic east coast quickly became known as the Treasure Coast. |  |
 | The (El Senor) San Miguel - was a 22 gun NAO Class (Fast Carrack). It very likely contained a significant portion of the treasure. It is believed the ship separated from the fleet the day before the storm struck and the wreck has never been found. It is believed only a small fraction of the treasure of the lost 1715 Treasure Fleet has been recovered. |   |
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| 1715 Fleet ships believed to have been found are: 1 - Nuestra Senora de la Regla 2 - Santo Cristo de San Roman 3 - Nuestra Senora del Carmen 4 - Nuestra Señora de La Popa 5 - Nuestra Senora del Rosario 6 - Urca de Lima 7 - Nuestra Senora de las Nieves | - | Ships of the 1715 Fleet never located are the: 8 - Maria Galante 9 - El Senor San Miguel 10 - El Cievro 11 - Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion 12 - Griffon made it safely and went on to France |  |
 | “I remember asking myself, ‘Is this real?’” Schubert recalled Wednesday as the 5.5-inch-tall statue she found Aug. 15 was revealed to the public at her home in the Vero Shores neighborhood of Vero Beach.“The Bird,” as it’s come to be known, is real all right. So is it’s $885,000 appraised value. The statue was aboard one of 11 Spanish ships laden with treasures from the New World that were bound from Havana to the court of King Phillip V before encountering a hurricane July 31, 1715, and sinking off the Treasure Coast. |  |
 | Urcas were flat-bottomed, round-bellied Dutch storage ships designed to go in shallow waters. Due to their capacity for carrying cargo, they were adopted for the Spanish-American trade route between Europe and the New World. The Urca de Lima was one of 10 treasure ships on their way back to Spain from Havana in 1715. |  |
 | All were lost in a hurricane off the Atlantic coast. More than 700 seamen, including the Spanish commander, drowned from the 10 ships.  |  |
  | While there was no great royal treasure on board, the Urca De Lima did contain private chests of silver and some gold. After it was grounded by the storm, the Urca De Lima was one of the first vessels to be salvaged by the Spanish, who subsequently burned the hull down to the waterline to hide its location from the English. The Urca De Lima was rediscovered in 1928. For the next half century the wreck was heavily salvaged. In the 1980s, the state of Florida stopped issuing salvage permits on the Urca De Lima and opened the wreck to the public as the state’s first Underwater Archaeological Preserve. |  |
 | A trove of ancient jewellery has been found in the grave of a woman dating to the first century AD. She was a Sarmatian - a group of people who worshipped fire and whose prominent role in warfare was seen as an inspiration for the Amazons of Greek mythology. And the discovery of the intact burial mound in Russia has been described as 'priceless' by archaeologists. |
 Sarmatian cataphracts during Dacian Wars as depicted on Trajan's Column. |
The Sarmatians were nomadic people who migrated from central Asia to the Ural mountains between the 6th and 4th century BC. They were fierce warriors who fought on horseback and sacrificed horses to their fire god. As well as gold and silver jewellery, the experts found more than 100 iron arrowheads in the grave, as well as a horse harness.  |
 Next to the skull were gold earrings. | The noblewoman's grave and treasures are in a group of at least 29 burial mounds that came to light during the construction of a new airport serving Rostov-on-Don. Archaeologist Roman Mimokhod said: 'Most of the burials on this site are plundered and, of course, it is great luck to find an intact one.  |  Gold vial |
 At her feet there were fragments of a bronze bucket with floral ornaments and the image of the Gorgon's head on a stick. | A small 'hiding place' in the grave contained a collection of knives and an unfinished sword with brooches on its handle. 'One of the most unusual things about these finds is that items in the burial were dated from the first century BC to the first century AD. |  A Sarmatian diadem, found at the Khokhlach kurgan near Novocherkassk (1st century AD, Hermitage Museum). |
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3196696/Treasure-trove-warrior-jewellery-unearthed-Russia-Ancient-grave-belongs-woman-worshipped-fire-2-000-years-ago.html
