Dead Sea Scrolls:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/edu...erscroll.shtml
"In the fortress which is in the Vale of Achor, forty cubits under the steps entering to the east: a money chest and it [sic] contents, of a weight of seventeen talents." So begins the first column of the Copper Scroll, one of the most intriguing, and baffling, scrolls to be found among the collection known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Sounding like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, the text of the Copper Scroll (3Q15) describes vast amounts of buried treasure.
It was found in 1952 in Cave 3 at Khirbet Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea, one of the few scrolls to be discovered in the place where it had lain for nearly 2,000 years."
United Kingdom; 1978-1982:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/r...8/may/list.htm
"
Mildenhall (Cunetio) Treasure Trove: implications of Court of Appeal's ruling on gold and silver content of treasure trove objects In October 1978, two treasure hunters unearthed over 56,000 Roman coins from underneath Mildenhall monument. The two were originally charged with defacing an ancient monument, but were acquitted. As the hoard was discovered within the liberties of the Duchy of Lancaster, they were claimed as "treasure" and therefore property of the Crown. However, this file discussed the implications of a Court of Appeal ruling which stated that hoards must be of a high percentage of gold or silver in order to be considered "treasure". The Mildenhall hoard was sent to the British Museum for examination and this file outlines the various twists and turns in this case."
There are more English court cases revealed about this exact problem at the link.
This type of thing is highly amusing to me. People have been making the same error over and over for thousands of years - the error seems obvious to me, yet current correspondents continue to support the error.
The error is insisting that only precious metal coinage are valid forms of money. The coins get buried somewhere and certificates of title circulate instead of the actual coin.
These certificates of title are (in my opinion) the actual money that serves as medium of exchange, but then the error gets compounded when the warehouseman insist that the coins be left in the warehouse and a clearance mechanism be set up to clear Accounts Receivable against Accounts Payable (standard bookkeeping mechanisms today).
My point is that if you can write a warehouse receipt against coin, you can write a warehouse receipt against grain or lumber or pork bellies or human labor, and you can stop worrying about the cache of coin. Things really don't work that way anyway so why continue doing the same thing over and over?
Levi Philos