'The archaeologists hope that the coins remain in their original state and reappear again at some point,' he said, adding that they are well documented and would be hard to sell. Gebhard estimated the value of the treasure at about 1.6 million euros ($1.65 million). The bowl-shaped coins, dating back to about 100 B.C., were made from Bohemian river gold and show how the Celtic settlement at Manching had links across Europe, he said. High magnification microscopic analysis performed there, following the research on the coin at The Hunterian, has revealed similar evidence of authenticity.Gebhard said the hoard was of great value both for the local community in Manching and for archaeologists across Europe. Another is in Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania. Nly four coins featuring Sponsian are known to have survived to the present day, all apparently originally from the 1713 hoard.

Surrounded by enemies, Sponsian may have been a local army officer forced to assume supreme command during a period of chaos and civil war, protecting the military and civilian population of Dacia until order was restored, and the province evacuated between 271 and 275 CE. Archaeological studies have established that the area was cut off from the rest of the Roman empire in around 260 CE. The Roman province of Dacia, a territory overlapping with modern-day Romania, was a region prized for its gold mines. They believe that this was a needy military commander who declared himself emperor of Dacia.

Now researchers must find out who Sponsian was. Our evidence suggests he ruled Roman Dacia, an isolated gold mining outpost, at a time when the empire was beset by civil wars and the borderlands were overrun by plundering invaders.” Pearson (UCL Earth Sciences) said: “ Scientific analysis of these ultra-rare coins rescues the emperor Sponsian from obscurity. A chemical analysis also showed that the coins had been buried in the ground for hundreds of years, says Jesper Ericsson, curator at the Hunterian Museum. He examined the coin, along with 3 others, under a powerful microscope and confirmed that there were indeed scratches and the coins appeared to have been kept with others in money pouches. He contacted the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow, where the coin was located. He saw scratches on the surface of the coin and thought they might have come from the fact that the coin had been in circulation. However, Pearson had doubts about this theory after seeing photographs of the coin while doing research for a book on the history of the Roman Empire. Other specialists held the same opinion, and Sponsian was considered a “false” emperor.

In 1863, when Henry Cohen, the greatest coin expert of the time, emphasized this point when he compiled his great catalog of Roman coins. Then, due to the rather rudimentary design, researchers suspected that the coin might have been produced by counterfeiters of the time. Until the middle of the 19th century, it was believed that the coin was original. The coin is part of a small hoard discovered in 1713. Now scientists say the scratch marks visible under a microscope prove that the coin was in circulation 2,000 years ago. It was believed to be a fake, and the coin remained locked away in a museum cabinet. The coin bearing Sponsian’s name and engraved with the emperor’s portrait was found more than 300 years ago in Transylvania, which was an outpost of the Roman Empire. The story was told by the University College London and published in the PLOS ONE magazine. An ancient gold coin proves that a 3rd-century Roman emperor who ruled Dacia, until now considered a fictional character, really existed, scientists say, quoted by the BBC.

Ancient gold coins