Greek, Roman, Egyptian & Other Antiquities

The number of items deemed to be Treasure and found by the UK public has hit a record high, according to new figures from the British Museum.

A well-preserved 3000-year-old Bronze age gold sun pendant, known as a bulla, has been bought by the British Museum after it was found by a metal detectorist in Shropshire in 2018.

Dominic Winter in South Cerney, Cirencester is anticipating a bidding battle next week for a finely modelled Hellenistic white marble figure of Aphrodite.

A marble bust, probably depicting Alexander the Great, sold for £320,000 at Adam Partridge in Macclesfield today.

An Afghan limestone sculpture believed to have been stolen during the Afghan civil war (1992-94), when Kabul was besieged, surfaced at an auction house in the UK last year.

A rare Saxon walrus ivory seal matrix will go back on display in the British Museum – after the institution missed out on buying the object twice before.

Sculptures of Buddha dating from the 4th-6th centuries smuggled out of Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago have finally been returned to the country’s national museum.

A rare Umayyad gold dinar dated 105AH (723AD) equalled the auction record for an Islamic coin when it was hammered down at £3.1m at Morton & Eden.

A rare Roman gold coin of the Emperor Constantine I found by a metal detectorist in a field in Somerset was hammered down at £16,000 (plus 24% buyer’s premium) at Dix Noonan Webb.

A Hellenistic marble stele that was received as a wedding present in the 1950s has been returned to a museum in Germany after an investigation by antiquities dealers and an Oxford scholar.

A Bath museum hopes to acquire a rare hoard of coins found in a Chew Valley field that could be valued at £4m.