Massive Hoard of 500 Antiquity Coins Found at Eastern Gate of Ancient Philipopolis in Bulgaria’s Plovdiv

A massive hoard of some 500 Antiquity coins from different time periods, some of them going back 2,500 years, has been discovered by archaeologists doing rescue excavations close to the eastern gate of the ancient city of Thracian and Roman city of Philipopolis in Bulgaria’s Plovdiv.

Besides the ancient coin hoard, the archaeologists from the Plovdiv Museum of Archaeology have discovered about 60 other ancient artifacts, including a gold metal billet for the production of jewelry.

The sited excavated by the archaeologists is located in the history zone called “Philipopolis-Trimontium-Plovdiv” – Philipopolis being the city’s pre-Roman name, after King Philip II of Macedon, while the city was known as Trimontium during the Roman period.

The excavation site is located about 100 meters away from the Eastern Gate of Philippopolis in the Old Town of Bulgaria’s Plovdiv.

According to lead archaeologist Desislava Davidova, her team has stumbled upon a small Antiquity metal workshop, which was likely similar to the later craftsmen’s stores known from Bulgarian Revival period (18^th-19^th century AD)

Davidova told Radio Plovdiv that the excavations reached a depth of 6-6.5 meters, which was not unusual for Plovdiv where the cultural layers are usually about 7 meters thick.

The scholars from the Plovdiv Museum Archaeology found restructuring from different Antiquity periods, including the Hellenistic Period in the 3^rd-1^st century BC, and the Roman period in 1^st-4^th century BC.

The lead archaeologist points out that the spot excavated by her team includes part of the same street that has already been exhibited in situ at the ruins of the Eastern Gate of Philipopolis.

It contains Antiquity buildings adjacent to the ancient street such as workshops and stores.

“The site has exposed parts of two chain rooms connected with the street of the Eastern Gate. There are also earlier lawyers and finds from the Romans’ arrival in the Balkans and the establishment of their Thrace province,” Davidova said.

The treasure, or hoard, of Antiquity coins that her team has discovered features mostly bronze coins and is construed as evidence that the site in question has been inhabited for over 2,500 years.

“The coins that we have found are due to undergo restoration, and I cannot say yet if there are only bronze ones since silver coins sometimes have a thick patina, and it is hard to identify them on the spot,” the lead archaeologist explained.

The gold metal billet found by her team was discovered in what she described as a secondary excavation pit. It is yet to be analyzed because of the multiple layers there.

“The gold billet was definitely not meant for the production of coins. It was probably intended for the adornment or manufacturing of some type of jewels,” Davidova hypothesizes.

She also noted her team’s multiple pottery finds, and other artifacts.

“We’ve [found] ceramic vessels from the end of the 3^rd century and the beginning of the 4^th century. We have also discovered an iron lamp, which surprised me since iron is not a very durable material and rarely survives [for too long],” the archaeologist says.

In her words, most of the Antiquity reconstructions of the newly exposed archaeological structures date back to the period between the 2^nd and 6^th centuries AD.

“There were multiple reconstructions, and revamping working, restructuring of the spaces. There were also two burials here in the later ages. The space was used based on whatever fate historically befell the city in the different ages, because there were quite a lot of invasions,” Davidova articulates.

She further stresses that an Antiquity inscription was found at the start of her team’s archaeological excavations close to the Eastern Gate of Ancient Philipopolis in Bulgaria’s Plovdiv.

The text was probably part of an honorary inscription from the time of Roman Emperor Septimus Severus (r. 193-211 AD), and was part of a statue pedestal, according to Prof. Nikolay Sharankov, an expert in Antiquity epigraphy from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski.”

“The excavated site is interesting because this route has been known since the Prehistory Era. Such routes are used constantly [by people] and the closer you get to them [in your research], the bigger the opportunities,” lead archaeologist Davidova concludes.

“What we had here [before the Roman period] were small workshops that were different from those in the southeastern part of the city, which had another type of manufacturing. This [site] was one of the main spots were the settlement developed before the Romans’ arrival, and that is why it is of particular interest [to us],” she elaborates, cited by Plovdiv Online.

The report notes that her team’s rescue excavations lasted for 25 days, and were made more difficult by the unstable terrain, and the fact that the archaeologists had to be careful not to undermine the foundations of the neighboring Old Town houses.

The modern-day layers that had to penetrated turned out to have been supported by Roman walls going down about seven meters in depth, once again showcasing the durability of Ancient Roman structures.

Though its title of being Europe’s oldest city has been disputed in recent years, Bulgaria’s Plovdiv, known for its seven historic hills, still remains one of the oldest cities in the world, as it was inhabited as early as the 6^th millennium BC.

Started as a prehistoric settlement, it was later taken over by the Ancient Thracians, and was known as Eumoplia or Pulpudeva. It was named Philipopolis after it was conquered by King Philip II of Macedon in the 4^th century BC.

Over the ages, Bulgaria’s Plovdiv is known to have been conquered by Persians, Ancient Greeks, Celts, Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Slavs, Vikings, Crusaders, and Ottomans.

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Background Infonotes:

The Early Christian Great Basilica (or Bishop’s Basilica) is located in the center of the ancient city of Philipopolis, which is itself in the downtown of today’s Plovdiv in Southern Bulgaria. It was discovered in 1982 by a team of archaeologists led by Elena Kisyakova. The excavated remains of the Great Basilica were fenced off as part of conservation efforts but have not been excavated further ever since.

Back in 2002, Plovdiv Municipality sold the property to a private firm even though it contained a formally recognized monument of culture. As a result, once the scandalous deal unraveled, it took the municipality and the central government seven years of court trials to regain the ownership of the Great Basilica site. The Philipopolis Bishop’s Basilica is impressive in size – its length totals 86.3 meters (the combined length of its naos with the apse is 56.5 meters), and its width is estimated to be 38.5 meters.

The entire floor of the three-nave basilica is paved with unique Early Christian mosaics covering a total area of 700 square meters. The mosaic floors were created in two construction stages. The color mosaics feature primarily geometric motifs and images of birds typical of the second quarter of the 5^th century. About 70 different species of birds have been identified, some of which appear to be unknown to contemporary ornithology. Based on the mosaics, the Early Christian Bishop’s Basilica in the ancient city of Philipopolis is dated back to the first half of the 5^th century BC, the Late Roman – Early Byzantine period. It was destroyed in the middle of the 6^th century, possibly during a barbarian invasions. It was built on the foundations of an earlier building of similar size and potentially with similar functions.

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According to the pre-1980 excavations, the history of the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv – often dubbed the oldest city in Europe – began with the human settlement on the ancient hill of Nebet Tepe (“tepe” is the Turkishword for “hill”), one of the seven historic hills where Plovdiv was founded and developed in prehistoric and ancient times.

Thanks to the prehistoric, ancient, and medieval settlement and fortress of Nebet Tepe, Plovdiv hold the title of “Europe’s oldest city” (and that of the world’s six oldest city, according to a Daily Telegraph ranking). Recent excavations, however, have disputed that title.

The hills, or “tepeta”, are still known today by their Turkish names from the Ottoman period. Out of all of them, Nebet Tepe has the earliest traces of civilized life dating back to the 6^th millennium BC, which makes Plovdiv 8,000 years old, and allegedly the oldest city in Europe. Around 1200 BC, the prehistoric settlement on Nebet Tepe was transformed into the Ancient Thracian city of Eumolpia, also known as Pulpudeva, inhabited by the powerful Ancient Thracian tribe Bessi.

During the Early Antiquity period Eumolpia / Pulpudeva grew to encompass the two nearby hills (Dzhambaz Tepe and Taxim Tepe known together with Nebet Tepe as “The Three Hills”) as well, with the oldest settlement on Nebet Tepe becoming the citadel of the city acropolis.

In 342 BC, the Thracian city of Eumolpia / Pulpudeva was conquered by King Philip II of Macedon renaming the city to Philippopolis. Philippopolis developed further as a major urban center during the Hellenistic period after the collapse of Alexander the Great’s Empire.

In the 1^st century AD, more precisely in 46 AD, Ancient Thrace was annexed by the Roman Empire making Philippopolis the major city in the Ancient Roman province of Thrace. This is the period when the city expanded further into the plain around The Three Hills which is why it was also known as Trimontium (“the three hills”).

Because of the large scale public construction works during the period of Ancient Rome’s Flavian Dynasty (69-96 AD, including Emperor Vespasian (r. 69-79 AD), Emperor Titus (r. 79-81 AD), Emperor Domitian (r. 81-96 AD)), Plovdiv was also known as Flavia Philippopolis.

Later emerging as a major Early Byzantine city, Plovdiv was conquered for the First Bulgarian Empire (632/680 – 1018 AD) by Khan (or Kanas) Krum (r. 803-814 AD) in 812 AD but was permanently incorporated into Bulgaria under Khan (or Kanas) Malamir (r. 831-836 AD) in 834 AD.

In Old Bulgarian (also known today as Church Slavonic), the city’s name was recorded as Papaldin, Paldin, and Pladin, and later Plavdiv from which today’s name Plovdiv originated. The Nebet Tepe fortress continued to be an important part of the city’s fortifications until the 14^th century when the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD) was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. During the period the Ottoman yoke (1396-1878/1912) when Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire, Plovdiv was called Filibe in Turkish.

Today the prehistoric, ancient, and medieval settlement on Nebet Tepe has been recognized as the Nebet Tepe Archaeological Preserve. Some of the unique archaeological finds from Nebet Tepe include an ancient secret tunnel which, according to legends, was used by Apostle Paul (even though it has been dated to the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I the Great (r. 527-565 AD)) and large scale water storage reservoirs used during sieges, one of them with an impressive volume of 300,000 liters. Still preserved today are parts of the western fortress wall with a rectangular tower from the Antiquity period.