4,000-Year-Old Pot
Spent Years as
a Toothbrush Holder
G'day folks,
Now, here is an ancient find. And, it was purely acci-dental.
During the Bronze Age,
around 4,000
years ago, in what is now Afghanistan, an artisan from the Indus Valley (or
Harappan) civilization made a ceramic pot. The four-inch-tall vessel was
distinguished by a doe-eyed antelope painted across its flank. We’ll never know
who used it, or for what—at least before 2013.
That’s
when Karl Martin, a valuer at Hansons Auctioneers in Derbyshire, England,
purchased the pot at a car boot sale, a kind of English flea market. And why
not? He got it and another pot for a total of £4—or, £1 for every thousand
years since it had been made.
Of
course Martin didn’t know at the time that he was buying an authentic artifact
from one of the cradles of civilization. All he knew, he said in a Hansons release, was that he “liked it
straight away,” so he gave it a place of honor in his household where he would
see it every day. It was in the bathroom, where it held his toothbrush and
toothpaste. There it sat for years.
And there it would
have stayed, if not for the fact that Martin often encounters antiquities in
his line of work. One day, he was helping a Hansons colleague unload some items
headed for the block when he spotted some familiar-looking pottery, coated with
patterns and animals like those on his toothbrush-holder. He brought his holder
to the colleague, James-Seymour Brenchley, Hansons’ Head of Ancient Art,
Antiquities & Classical Coins.
Brenchley was able to link the pot’s
painting style to that of other Indus Valley artifacts. He speculates that the
pot had arrived in the United Kingdom via British tourists. Martin decided to
put it up for auction at Hansons, where it sold this week for £80—“not a
fortune,” Martin admits, but still a 1,900 percent profit, not adjusting for
inflation.
The Indus Valley Civilization flourished in the northwestern
part of South Asia between 2600 and 1900 BC, across parts of modern-day India,
Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Its most distinctive artifacts are probably carved
seals used to mark trade goods with symbols that may or may not represent one
of mankind’s earliest written languages. (The Indus script is the subject of
much heated scholarly debate.)
Clancy's comment: Extraordinary, eh? I wonder what else they will find?
I'm ...
this artifact makes a very interesting story Clancy. I an surprised Martin was so willing to sell it, as it obviously meant something of value to him, John.
ReplyDeleteThought it was going to be worth a mint. Nice story though. Do you guys have Antiques Roadshow where you live. People bring in their junk and, not uncommonly, it turns out to be worth a mint. It is a bit like a lottery. Watching to see who wins becomes addictive.
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