Many pages of scientific and popular literature have been devoted to the Oxus Treasure, a unique, world-famous collection of 170 gold and silver items from the Achaemenid period, which were found by the Oxus River.  Only very recently the new archeological discoveries in the south of Tajikistan have confirmed that the Oxus treasure, most of which items are located at the British Museum in London, contains none other than the contents of the treasury of Oxus (the Greek name of the Amu Darya) of the ancient town of Takhti-Sangin .

Had the local residents known how valuable were the ancient items, they probably wouldn’t have sold the gold bracelets, rings, rings, vessels, and coins in 1877; then the items wouldn’t have ended up so far from home, in England.

For a whole century, the Oxus treasure was not available to anyone in our country; only in 1977, the unique beauty and virtuosic workmanship of the items could finally be seen by the guests and residents of Leningrad and Moscow, during the Jewelry of 4th-2nd century BC exhibits at the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.
We must note that the amount of gold items that is contained in the Treasure of Oxus is quite unusual for the territory of Central Asia. Overall, two hundred and twenty objects and thirteen hundred of gold coins dating back to the 5th-3rd century BC were found. The coins were made in “Greece and Asia Minor, in Achaemenid Iran and in the Seleukid Empire.”

The history of the treasure resembles a mystery novel. The first found items were acquired from local farmers by Bukharian merchants Vazi-al-Din, Ghulam Muhammad Ali and Shuker. The merchants planned on selling the gold at an Indian antique market in the city of Rawalpindi, but were robbed by the Afghani Gilyaz tribe. The treasure was briefly returned to the merchant, but then has been forever lost to Central Asia, with a great deal of assistance by a British officer F. Burton.

Most of the items were purchased from the merchants by O. Franks, curator of the department of British and Medieval Antiquities of the British Museum, who was at the time traveling in India (he subsequently transferred his collection to the Museum as a gift).

In the last century, the initial press reports caused great interest to this unique discovery, not only in England but also in Russia, where the first hypothesis was published regarding the origin of the treasure, its utilitarian purpose, and the significance of the jewelry.

The full description of the Treasure of Oxus was published by O. Dalton, the keeper of the collection in the British Museum in London. This valuable work has been published three times in 1905, 1926 and 1964. Only 15 years after the exhibit was held the former USSR, a catalog comparable to the London edition of the directory was published in Leningrad, compiled by well-known researcher E. Zeymal, a member of the Hermitage staff.

The hypothesis of the professor of historical sciences B. Stavisky that states that the Treasure of Oxus originally belonged to the Takhti-Sangin dwelling has been proven by archeological excavations in the south of Tajikistan, managed by I. Pichikyan, as well as expeditions to the new sites. The assortment of the items indicates that they were to be used as sacrificial accessories at the temple. One of the examples of temple treasury was temple Ai-Khanum in Afghanistan, where the treasures of the temple came in a variety of donations from the public and not just local residents.

We know that the Temple of Oxus was built no later than the 3rd century BC and had been rebuilt and reconstructed up until the 3rd-4th centuries.

Gifts and the dilapidated decorations of the temple itself were dumped on the floor in separate rooms and later were immured. The total number of discoveries has already exceeded five thousand. Exhibitions held in Switzerland and Germany joined together the Takhti-Sangin findings of the British Museum and discoveries from the funds of the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of Tajikistan, but unfortunately, not for long. Some of the treasures are going back to London, the others -- to Dushanbe.

O. Dalton separated the findings into seven groups, including circular items, vessels, coins, various small objects, plates, and finally, jewelry, rings, bracelets, hryvnas, items with relief images, many of which astonish us with their skill, technical perfection and exquisite taste.

In the distant past, when these objects were created, the south of Tajikistan was a part of the remarkable country of Bactria - unique and quite mysterious. An ancient highly-developed country, as one of satrapies, or provinces, was part of the Achaemenid Empire (middle of the 1st millennium BC. In the 4th century BC, Bactria was conquered by Alexander the Great, and soon after his death, captured by the Seleucids. By middle of the 3rd century BC Diodotus’ revolt led to the creation of an independent Greco-Bactrian kingdom, called “the country of a thousands of cities.” Over time the limits of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom spread to the North-Eastern part of India. A century later, Bactria was invaded by semi-nomadic tribes – Scythian-Saki, and later yuedzhi, who pushed out the Scythians and settled there in the second half of the 2nd century BC.

The Oxus Temple survived through all these historical events; this explains why its treasury contains articles dating back to 4th-2nd centuries BC, so dissimilar and distant from each other.

Bactria was rich with gold and silver; we suggest that the Temple employed its own jewelers to make sacrificial items out of precious metals, mostly gold and silver.