Silver Cache of 21 Hongaarse Deniers (pennys) van King Béla II (1131-1141)

[woody50]

I have finally started to photography my silver coins today, could not finish because the sun disappeared. These tiny silver coins were found in Germany close to the border with Holland, they were quite deep, and only found because they were together in a bunch. If they had been scattered they would have not been found. The dime is shown for sizing.

Here is
1) a description of the coins,
2) a description of what a Denier is,
3) a short history of the Hungarian Kings including the blind King Béla II follows.

1) 21 Hongaarse deniers from King Béla II (1131-1141)
Material: silver
Diameter: between 9.8 mm to 12.0 mm
Mass: between 0.2 and 0.55 grams

Reverse: A smooth inner concentric circle containing a type of Maltese Cross, in each quadrant a triangle symbol.
A smooth outer circle has one plus (+) symbol, one equal (=) symbol and 6 minus (-) symbols

Obverse: A outer circle with many radial bars, in the inside of the circle a Cross, the legs of which are created with pebbled symbols. In each quadrant of the Cross are three pellets, two joined by a curved moon like slice, and another pellet located at the highest point of the curve. In the concave part of the slice, are 4 different small Cross symbols, 1x Maltese Cross, 1x Greek Cross, 1x another type of Maltese Cross, 1x maybe a Formee Patte Cross.

(Since I am not sure about the crosses and description above. If you can help determine the correct description I would appreciate
any additional information or corrections.)

2) A Denier
What is a denier? The denier was a French coin created in the Early Middle Ages. It was introduced together with an accounting system in which twelve deniers equaled one sou and twenty sous equalled one livre.

This system and the denier itself served as the model for many of Europe's currencies, including the British pound, Italian lira, Spanish dinero and the Portuguese dinheiro.

The name denier was derived from the name of the Roman coin the denarius.

The British equivalent of the denier was the penny, 240 of which (prior to decimalisation) made up one British pound or 20 shillings. The symbol for both the old denier and, until recently, the penny used in the United Kingdom and elsewhere was "d".

3) Hungarian History and some of it's Kings
Hungary is one of the oldest countries in Europe. It was settled in 896, before France and Germany became separate countries, and before the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms unified. Medieval Hungary controlled more territory than medieval France, and the population of medieval Hungary was the third largest of any country in Europe.

The history of the Kingdom of Hungry had many Kings, who did much to try to insure their own son would ascend the crown after them.

King Béla II was a blind King, he and his father were intentionally blinded by his Uncle King Colman to keep them off the thrown. Want to know more? How did the Blind Béla II gain the thrown?

Then read this summary of the Kings of Hungary in the Arpad dynasty. It is quite long but interesting. Mostly condensed out information from the internet. See also the 'family tree' to better understand all the Kings relationships.

Kingdom of Hungary the Árpád dynasty

11th Century
In the 11th century the Grand Prince Stephen was crowned King in 1001, the first King of Hungary (1000–1038) and he was the founder of the state. When his son died he had his sisters son Peter Orseolo named as his heir which resulted in a conspiracy lead by his cousin, Vazul, who had been living imprisoned outside Hungary. But Vazul was blinded on King Stephen's orders and his three sons (Levente, Andrew and Béla) were exiled to insure that Orselo was king after his death.

When King Stephen I died in 1038, King Peter Orseolo ascended the throne but he had
to struggle with King Stephen's brother-in-law, Samuel Aba who was later named King Aba (1041-1044). King Peter ruled again from 1044 to 1046 but ended when an extensive revolt of the pagan Hungarians broke out and he was captured by them. King Aba (1046-1049) then ruled for just 3 years.

Then Duke Vazul's son, Andrew, who had been living in exile seized the power and he was crowned, King Andrew I (1046-1060). He restored the position of Christianity in the kingdom. In 1048, King Andrew invited his younger brother, Béla to the kingdom and conceded one-third of the counties of the kingdom rightfully to him (Duke Béla).

King Andrew I was the first king who had his son, Solomon (1063-1074) crowned during his life in order to ensure his son's succession to the throne. But he was not able to overcome the tradition of seniority of Kings, and his blind brother, King Béla I (1060-1063) acquired the throne instead of the young Solomon. After King Béla I, King Solomon (1057-1080) and his cousins, Géza, Ladislaus and Lampert governed the land. Then Duke Géza rebelled against his cousin Solomon and in 1074 and was proclaimed King (1074-1077). When King Géza I died in 1077 his partisans, disregarding his young sons, proclaimed his brother, Ladislaus king.

King Ladislaus I (1077-1095) managed to persuade King Solomon, who had been ruling in some western counties,
to abdicate the throne. During his reign, the Kingdom of Hungary expanded and ruled the Kingdom of Croatia (1091). He entrusted the government of the newly occupied kingdom to his younger nephew, Álmos.

When King Ladislaus I died, his elder nephew, King Coloman was proclaimed king (1095-1116). King Coloman defeated Petar Svačić who had been proclaimed king of Croatia in 1097 and thus he annexed the neighboring kingdom to the
Kingdom of Hungary; henceforward, the kings of Hungary were also kings of Croatia and the two kingdoms formed a political union.

12th Century
In the 12th century King Coloman deprived his brother, Álmos of his duchy in 1107. He caught his second wife, Eufemia of Kiev in adultery; therefore, she was divorced and sent back to Kiev around 1114. Eufemia bore a son, named Boris in Kiev, but King Coloman refused to accept him as his son.

At around 1115 King Coloman had Duke Álmos and his son (Duke Béla) blinded in order to ensure the succession of his own son, King Stephen II (1116-1131). Because King Stephen II did not father any son, his sister's son, Saul was proclaimed heir to his throne instead of the blind Duke Béla.

Nevertheless, when King Stephen II died (March 1, 1131), his blind cousin Béla managed to acquire the throne. King Béla II (1131-1141) strengthened his rule by defeating King Coloman's alleged son, Boris who endeavoured to deprive him of the throne with foreign military assistance. King Béla II occupied some territories in Bosnia and he conceded the new territory to his younger son, Ladislaus. Henceforward, members of the Árpád dynasty governed Slavonia, Croatia and Transylvania.

After King Béla II and King Géza II (1141-1162), King Geza's son Stephen III (1162-1172) had to struggle for his throne with his uncles, Kings Ladislaus II (1162-1163) and color=purple] Stephen IV[/color] (1163-1165) who rebelled against him with the assistance of the Byzantine Empire.

 

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WOW! What a day you must of had! 3 short of 2 Sous. I would rather find your 21 deniers than 2 sous! I think I'm doing well for detecting until I see someone from Europe post their finds. Unbelievable! Thanks for sharing and thanks for all the good info. Very informative.
Dave.

 

[woody50]

WOW! What a day you must of had! 3 short of 2 Sous. I would rather find your 21 deniers than 2 sous! I think I'm doing well for detecting until I see someone from Europe post their finds. Unbelievable! Thanks for sharing and thanks for all the good info. Very informative.
Dave.

Yes it was great! And I agree, 24 of these coins would be much more desired than 2 Sous. Here in Europe (I am an American) you can find very old things, but most of the time they are not so old, you just find modern stuff. But it is here, so you have to be selective in your sites, and do at least some research.

With these small coins you can search, search and search some more. Because if a single unit gets outside the mass in the deep hole you can not really hear it, its just so darn small. So I think I could have missed some, but not those brought to the surface. I dug a pretty big and deep hole. But the best is in such a situation is take the ground home and study it there! But this was too far from my car, way too far.

Taking the ground home, that is what we do here in Holland when we find a "bear pit". I am guessing you know what that is... Anyway, everything thrown into the pit in the past, well the heavy things like ceramic dishes and metal things sink to the bottom. So we dig it out for the first two or two and a half meters, the rest we dig, put into large plastic pails, let people pull the pails out from the depth of 3 meters, dump it in a 'big bag' (do you know what those are?) and take the big bag home and wash the soil and gunk away, leaving things like non-metal jewelry and many other things... If you don't know what a "bear pit" or "big bag" is let me know I will explain. You can find very nice (expensive) things in "bear pits".

 

[[email protected]]

What I think you would be talking about is a refuse pit, which I have dug up before. Why would silver coins be thrown out so I think a "Bear pit" is a cache pit where people hid their personal effects from invading enemies You'll have to fill me in. As for the bag is it a body bag? The only time I took soil home was when I had just discovered a cache of fur trade seed beads and also noticed a violent storm approaching fast so filled a few bags with dirt and high tailed it out of there. (I ended up getting hailed on anyway) at home I sifted over 500 blue seed beads from the late 1700's. Please fill me in on these things, as I am extremely interested in how our European friends treasure hunt and what your version of a "privey pit", refuse pit, midden or cache is.
Dave.

 

[CRUSADER]

wow, I have no idea how you worked out what they were
Good day is an understatement.

 

[woody50]

What I think you would be talking about is a refuse pit, which I have dug up before. Why would silver coins be thrown out so I think a "Bear pit" is a cache pit where people hid their personal effects from invading enemies You'll have to fill me in. As for the bag is it a body bag? The only time I took soil home was when I had just discovered a cache of fur trade seed beads and also noticed a violent storm approaching fast so filled a few bags with dirt and high tailed it out of there. (I ended up getting hailed on anyway) at home I sifted over 500 blue seed beads from the late 1700's. Please fill me in on these things, as I am extremely interested in how our European friends treasure hunt and what your version of a "privey pit", refuse pit, midden or cache is.
Dave.

Will get back to you tomorrow if I get the time, explain the pits here...

 

[woody50]

wow, I have no idea how you worked out what they were
Good day is an understatement.

Yea, well I didn't find them yesterday, it was a quite a number of years ago. Because you can't see anything on the coins to determine which country they were from I didn't know where to look. I though I would just wait until I saw something that looks like it. I asked around also but no one in my circle knew. Then once I was looking for a coin, can't remember which one, but it was a denier. Used google photos and while looking some of the photos I saw a coin that had one of the crosses on it, the other side had some other stuff. It was a Denier from Hungary with the same sort of back side cross and pellets. Well by messing around I found somebody who told me what they were, that was a coin dealer. I lost most of the information a while back on who and where that was and the other photo in a computer crash. Tried to restore from the backup and that failed. Was not too important stuff so just didn't try harder. I looked the past week to see if I could find the coins, but no luck. Maybe its in someones coin catalog, but I don't have any. Should be some better information sometplace but I don't know where to look. Maybe I should try Hungary...

 

[woody50]

What I think you would be talking about is a refuse pit, which I have dug up before. Why would silver coins be thrown out so I think a "Bear pit" is a cache pit where people hid their personal effects from invading enemies You'll have to fill me in. As for the bag is it a body bag? The only time I took soil home was when I had just discovered a cache of fur trade seed beads and also noticed a violent storm approaching fast so filled a few bags with dirt and high tailed it out of there. (I ended up getting hailed on anyway) at home I sifted over 500 blue seed beads from the late 1700's. Please fill me in on these things, as I am extremely interested in how our European friends treasure hunt and what your version of a "privey pit", refuse pit, midden or cache is.
Dave.

Hi MuddyHands, glad to know where you got your hands muddy... (pit). I hope this post is not too long, but I want to explain what a beerput and a big bag is, and show some photos.

These coins were not found in a refuse pit, just in normal soil. Not on a plowed field either, but near some trees on unused ground. How did they get into the soil, I can only think that someone hid them there, say in a leather pouch, or just lost it. But I think myself they were hidden because of the depth they were in the soil, otherwise they would have been so deep in the ground. I did not see any leather remains though.

A beerput....Well not exactly a refuse pit, but I guess you could call it that in some way. Back in the years when cities were formed here in Holland there were no sewer lines. People (or hired hands) just dug a deep pit in their back yard, tiled it with wood or bricks, and ran all the stuff into it. Most of them had a wooden slide where the stuff would travel down to the pit. For the lining of the beerputs wooden barrels were used, because it was easy to form the sides of the pit, barrels were not so expensive and available in any size you wanted. They started with a hole and when it was deep enough put the first barrel into the hole, then dug lower so that the barrel went lower, and when low enough they just put another barrel into the hole and continued. These were the normal pits. There were also a lot of beerputs made with brick, but it was more expensive, but they could be cleaned out much easier and reused.

These are typical beerputs:

This one can be dug out pretty easy, its sides are brick, firm and not too much water at all.

This one is somewhat deeper, also brick lined

But beerputs could be very large also, depending upon how many households would be using it. Some large ones were say 9 feet across, but the smaller ones were most common 6 foot across. There was of course a limit to how small a beerput could be dug. They dug by hand and had to be able to move around a bit and fill a bucket, the soil was then lifted out of the hole. The shovel had to be short also, otherwise it would be impossible to dig. I guess the guys who created them were poor people. The depth varies, can be a few feet but most are about 10 feet deep. That is hard to achieve here in the part of Holland where I live because the water level is reached at about 3 to 4 feet. So not only earth had to be lifted out, but also water.

This is one pretty large beerput and not so deep when you get the top soil off.

A beerput is about the same as a septic tank, although where a septic tank has two chambers the beerput has only one and where the septic tank has a inlet and outlet, the beerput does not have an outlet. The output effluent water just escapes through the normalslits between the wood, or between the bricks, which are not fastened together with cement. It works however on the same principles as the septic tanks.

When they became full they were either dug out or disused and a new beerput created. The best finds are in the disused beerputs. That is because they were not dug out the things in the beerput were not broken. If they were dug out, digging would mostly stop at the bottom when the guys came across hard ceramic and other material. It would most of the time just be left in.

One of the big disadvantages of a beerput is that back then there was no piped water either, so people also dug a water well (bricked sides). Well after a time if they were not careful where each was located, the water would become contaminated.

See the distance between the two pits! No wonder people were sick back then!

The best finds are in the disused beerputs. That is because they were not dug out the things in the beerput were not broken.

Now the beerput is explained what do you find in there? Well since the people did not have trucks coming to pick up stuff that was broken or spoiled (later there was a horse and wagon) if something broke it was thrown away most of the time, either in an ash pit (a hole dug for dumping wood ash into) or in the beerput. So a lot of ceramic stuff like dishes, tiles and such would be thrown in the beerput, but also stuff where someone thought "I want to throw this away where no one will ever find it". So a lot of things disappeared in it.

When we dig one out sometimes we put all the stuff in a "big bag", this is one of these:

Typical finds:

These have just been removed from the muck.

These have been cleaned up

Finds that are washed off look like this

The arrow shows a night bowl, used for night trips to the can... This I guess fell in to the pit when it was being emptied.

As LAST : FORGOT to say, its D A M N hard work!!!!

 

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Hard work but obviously worth it! I'd be happy just to dig one clay pipe never mind all that early glass and pottery! Thank you so much for all that interesting info, I wouldn't have guessed any of that. That's one big bag! The only thing that I have dug that comes close is outhouse remains which were often filled up with garbage. These however, were only from the late 1800's not like your pits!
I hope other people respond here, acknowledging this remarkable find and the wealth of information you have provided! Thanks again.
Dave.

 

[Dabeel]

Wow! what a great explanation of the beerput!......and that a "Big Bag" seems like quite a cost involved with it?
Are these used by recreational diggers or strictly by archaeologists?

Being in the U.S our privies(outhouses) and old filled in wells are where we find our artifacts such as ceramics and bottles and occasionally coins.

Very interesting to see how things are done in the N.L

Great post!
Doug

 

[woody50]

Thanks Dave and Doug. I like to explain stuff about how we do things here, I think its quite unique here. The big bags have been here for a few years now. They were introduced by the building supply stores, they put sand, bricks, cement and that sort of stuff in them. Then they sale the contents and you pay a little for the bag. The bag does not have to be returned either. Its yours to keep. I sometimes buy scraps of hard wood for my wood burning stove from a factory that makes wooden stairs and that sort of thing. The wood comes in a big bag, which you keep. I pay about 30 euros for a big bag of the scraps, including the bag. Its expensive here, wood, because we don't have any forests really for wood production.

The archaeologists do use big bags nowadays, they dig out the pit entirely and everything goes in big bags (by the way they are made from reinforced nylon). The bags are then taken back to their workplaces, and the soil is sifted and washed away. So then they find all things in the pit. It used to be that we just looked at the stuff when it came out and missed much. A advantage of the bag is also that any water just drains away.

The archaeologists can do that. Most of the digs are not close to a road, but they hire in a crane for instance to take the bags and load them on a truck. We guys don't have the time for that or the money, we usually just clean it out as best we can and miss many things. If the pit is not too far from a road and there are things like broken glass(es) in the pit, sometimes we take many large pails of soil out for later. But its very heavy, and we don't have trucks. A big bag would be impossible for us, just too heavy. The last years we can get less and less in the pits, the builders don't like to have big holes in their building pit, sometimes tractors tires fall in to a hole, because even if it's been filled up and stamped down, all the water can make the loose soil very loose, and they don't give permission to dig. Metal detect OK, but no digging (yea a few inches is OK).

 

[Silver Searcher]

Wow....great post and coins Woody, I was lucky enough to have a denier recently, Eric of Pomerania

 

[eggbag]

Thanks for the super informative post on your history and techniques I was riveted to the screen. Keep up the hard work and please keep posting I need more.

 

[woody50]

Wow....great post and coins Woody, I was lucky enough to have a denier recently, Eric of Pomerania

Nice find Eric, this coin is just in great condition. Have you determined what it is, and how old yet?

 

[woody50]

Thanks for the super informative post on your history and techniques I was riveted to the screen. Keep up the hard work and please keep posting I need more.

Thanks for your gracious comments about my post(ings). I always try to tell not only what has been found, but also how, if it is different than the normal way. Why? Well I guess because I am getting up there in age and I don't have so many more detecting years left, the older you get you get troubles with this and that, and have now had some problems with my feet, which are good now but for instance when I search I search from 9 to 5, and when we are outside our country and have limited time we do that for two or three weeks without stopping. It seems like that older feet seem to have a problem with that....don't know why.....

Anyway I have always believed that knowledge is one of the most important things to have and especially to share. Although the subject of what I write about (like the above) does not have an exact bearing on say detecting on the desert, you never really know in your life what you will come up against. Just the idea of saving the soil could be important if you are somewhere were tiny non-metal objects are in the soil and you want to get them out. Best could be to dig the soil out if possible and wash it out and sift it at home, if you can do that of course. Knowing that its possible or can be done is very important, the first step is known.

 

[woody50]

Was just looking around and saw a message to read the TERMS of TNet. Read it and saw this:

STATUS OF MATERIALS POSTED

By posting your information at TreasureNet, you grant TreasureNet full publishing and redistribution rights to it. Please do not post copyrighted materials, unless you are the author.


I don't want to grant someone to publish my information without my permission. Can't understand why THEY think that they can do that.

The Result is that I don't think I will write any more interesting articles for TNet posts, and might even delete the posts I have already made.

Pity, I like to share information and such but don't agree to them saying that I am GRANTING permission. I did offer years ago to write a series of articles describing metal detecting in European lands called 'A letter from Europe' for Western and Eastern treasures, but was turned down because they said their American readers would NOT be interested in reading anything found in Europe. I like to help but to be treated in such a fashion, no I don't agree. Maybe some of you do agree, but everyone has their rights to do so of course.

 

[Silver Searcher]

Wow....great post and coins Woody, I was lucky enough to have a denier recently, Eric of Pomerania

Nice find Eric, this coin is just in great condition. Have you determined what it is, and how old yet?

Denomination Sterling(ENGELSK in Billion) (MINT Naestved South Zealand) Circa 1403-1412/13

 

[robfinds]

Hello Woody, What a find well done !!!!!.

HH Robert.

 

[woody50]

Wow....great post and coins Woody, I was lucky enough to have a denier recently, Eric of Pomerania

Nice find Eric, this coin is just in great condition. Have you determined what it is, and how old yet?

Denomination Sterling(ENGELSK in Billion) (MINT Naestved South Zealand) Circa 1403-1412/13

WOW Eric, that is then a great find, a silver hammered from Denmark! I have never ever seen one from there, thanks for showing it!

 

[Trond]

Very nice collection of coins, and other relics.