For nearly 600 years, a small ceramic jug buried near Moscow held a secret fortune in silver. When archaeologists unearthed it in the historic Russian city of Kolomna, they found more than 2,600 medieval coins, including more than 350 previously unknown varieties that are expanding researchers’ understanding of the region’s money supply in the 1420s.
Archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences uncovered the jug in a shallow natural pit in Kolomna’s medieval settlement, near the city’s Kremlin. The vessel itself is an intriguing artifact, described by researchers as a small, elegant ceramic jug decorated with engobe, a colored clay coating applied to its surface.
Inside were more than 2,600 silver dengi, the principal coin denomination circulating in the region at the time. Each coin was worth half a kopek. The word dengi, the plural of denga, eventually became the modern Russian word for money.
The coins date primarily to the reigns of two Moscow grand princes: Vasily I Dmitrievich, who ruled from 1389 to 1425, and his son Vasily II Vasilyevich, known as "the Blind," who ruled from 1425 to 1462. The latest coins were minted during the second half of the 1420s, helping researchers establish when the treasure was probably buried.
What makes the discovery especially exciting is its remarkable variety. More than 350 previously unknown types of Kolomna coins have already been identified. Many were minted locally during the final years of Vasily I’s reign and feature an unusual image of a bird in flight. Such coins are exceptionally rare in hoards discovered elsewhere, and some specimens are so rare that they are absent from the collections of Russia’s largest museums.
Tiny differences in coin designs can reveal which dies — the engraved tools used to strike coins — produced them. By examining these variations and connections between dies, specialists hope to reconstruct the sequence of coin production in Kolomna over at least 15 years. The hoard may also help identify the final issues of the city’s distinctive bird-design coins.
For archaeologists, the coins are more than a buried fortune. Preserved together in their original grouping, they provide an unusually detailed picture of the money changing hands in medieval Kolomna — and a remarkable opportunity to recover a lost chapter of Russia’s economic history.
The collection’s composition offers a glimpse into Kolomna’s economic importance. A major center of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the city was second only to Moscow itself in significance within the principality. The predominance of grand-princely coins reflects the region’s distinctive monetary system.
So, who owned the treasure? Its considerable size suggests a wealthy individual, perhaps a high-ranking official serving the grand prince, a local administrator or a successful merchant. Yet the owner apparently never returned to retrieve it.
Researchers believe the jug was buried in the late 1420s, a period when epidemics swept through the cities of medieval Rus’. They suggest its owner may have died during an outbreak between 1425 and 1427, leaving the fortune hidden underground. This remains a theory, however. No evidence has identified the owner or established exactly what happened.
Credits: Photos courtesy of The Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.