HORSE GORROWS

On Sunday 22.5.2022 I met by chance the chronicler of the village where I come from and introduced a discussion with him on the topic: Coin finds of our region. He is a very well-read and energetic gentleman who, even at the age of eighty-two, can speak fluently at length about the history of the village and its surrounding area, and so the less than two hours of our meeting passed like water. I learnt incredible information about my bractate find, but the talk turned to other, much older finds from the area around my birthplace.

One of the stories caught my attention quite a bit so I'll take the liberty of sharing it with you. It is the middle of July 1951 and during the electrification of the village of Zhoř near Milevsko, while digging a trench for the grounding of the power lines, an earthenware container with a lid is found in the garden of Mr. K., at a depth of about 40 cm. Unfortunately, the container was not spared a blow with a hoe and the digger carrying out the excavation work broke it. When coins began to appear in the soil, the work was stopped and the coins, including the shards, were carefully collected by the owner of the garden. It was reported in the press that a hoard of silver coins had been found in the village and the next day the conscious owner took all the coins and shards to the museum in Milev. True, the bitch is often misrepresented, however, and in every regime and time. In reality, it was quite different.

The landowner took the coins to his house and started cleaning them with kerosene. Although he was doing a pretty good job, there were quite a lot of coins, so he interrupted the cleaning to do more important work in the fields. However, before he could store the find, the Public Security officers were standing outside the gate and the entire depot was taken away from him and taken to the service station, where it went to the Milevsky Museum. The digger who was carrying out the work let his mouth drop in the pub and people, as it is usual, envied their neighbour the find. Thus, not only the already cleaned silver coins were obtained, but also all the shards of the clay vessel including the lid. However, no one knew that the finest coins had long been missing from the depot, and unfortunately neither did the owner of the land in whose garden the discovery was made.

The whole truth did not come out until the early 1970s, more than twenty years after the discovery. A close relative of the then owner of the property, a man from the upper classes, simply stole some of the most valuable coins. It was discovered only after his testimony in his weakest moment and it was found that this person had sold his stolen part to the Museum of Brzeg. The analysis of the coins confirmed the traces of kerosene and the parts of the depot were merged years later.
The whole was lent to the numismatic department of the National Museum in Prague, where all the coins were cleaned again and the container was glued together. The whole unique and beautiful depot contained about 600 coins and was composed entirely of Prague groschen from the period of Charles IV and Wenceslas IV.

Later, when Mr. K. searched around the area where the first discovery was made, he found another clay jar with a lid in close proximity, containing another 600 Prague groschen. This time, after a bad experience with the neighbours and the Security Service, he left the find to the Milev museum of his own free will. The second find contained the coins of John of Luxembourg, Charles IV., Wenceslas IV and the Meissen pennies. With a total of 1,192 coins, the Zhora find is one of the largest groschen finds from the Hussite period on our territory.
Hordes of Hussite armies were evidently in the vicinity of Milevsko. The Hussites came to our region from the east of Mladá Vožice and not only the Milevský klábut also the surrounding village population, which was essentially the Hussites' supply base. Here, therefore, we can look for an answer as to why the entire sum was stored in this way.

Thank you to our dear chronicler for the engaging narrative and know that this site is the firstthat has published the whole story for the first time since the discovery of the "Zhora" groschen.

Yours sincerely Roman