Check your toy box for Achaemenid gold cups

Pictures at the cite



Childhood 'toy' revealed as ancient Persian relic

Wed May 28, 8:26 AM ET

An ancient gold cup mysteriously acquired by a Taunton scrap metal
dealer is expected to fetch some 500,000 pounds at auction after
languishing for years in a shoe box under its current owner's bed.

Owner John Webber says his grandfather gave him the 5.5-inch (14-
centimetre) high mug to play with when he was a child, back in 1945.

He assumed the golden cup, which is decorated with the heads of two
women facing in opposite directions, their foreheads garlanded with
two knotted snakes, was made from brass.

But he decided to get it valued when he was moving house last year and
was told it was actually a rare piece of ancient Persian treasure,
beaten out of a single *** of gold hundreds of years before the
birth of Jesus Christ.

Experts said the method of manufacture and the composition of the gold
was "consistent with Achaemenid gold and gold smithing" dating back to
the third or fourth century BC.

The Achaemenid empire, the first of the Persian empires to rule over
significant portions of Greater Iran, was wiped out by Alexander the
Great in 330 BC.

Auction house Duke's, in Dorchester, south-west England, will put the
cup under the hammer on June 5, with an estimate of 500,000 pounds.

Webber, 70, told The Guardian newspaper that his grandfather had a
"good eye" for antiques and picked up "all sorts" as he plied his
trade in the town of Taunton in south-west England.

"Heaven knows where he got this, he never said," he added, revealing
that as a child, he used the cup for target practice with his air gun.





http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080528/wl_uk_afp/lifestylebritainauctionhistory
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