Pereshchepina Treasure


Pereshchepina Treasure

 

a treasure found in 1912 near the village of Malaia Pereshchepina in what is now Novye Sanzhary Raion, Poltava Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. The Pereshchepina treasure includes gold and silver dinnerware of Sassa-nid and Byzantine make, horse gear, an iron saber with a gold sheath, a gold torque, bracelets, buckles, rings, a decorative plate for a belt, glass vessels, and Byzantine coins from the time of Emperor Maurice (582–602) to that of Emperor Constans II (641–668). Particularly noteworthy are a Sassanid dish with a portrait of King Shapur II (310–363) and a Byzantine dish with an inscription by Paternus, the bishop of Tomis (now Constanta in the Socialist Republic of Rumania), who had the dish restored at the beginning of the sixth century.

Some archaeologists believe that the Pereshchepina treasure was the inventory of a rich nomadic burial of the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century. Others believe that it was the war booty of a Slavic chieftain seized during one of the campaigns against Byzantium and buried at the end of the seventh century. The total weight of the gold objects of the Pereshchepina treasure is about 25 kg, and of the silver objects about 50 kg. The Pereshchepina treasure is kept at the Hermitage in Leningrad.

REFERENCE

Bobrinskii, A. A. “Pereshchepinskii klad.” In the collection Materialypo arkheologii Rossii, no. 34. Petrograd, 1914.