Kolomna Hoard Plagued by Mystery

A sizable hoard of over 2,600 silver denga coins was discovered in Kolomna on the outskirts of Moscow. The coins were hidden in a small ceramic jug decorated with engobe, a clay-based coating, that had been buried in a shallow pit near the city’s trading district. The cache is the largest hoard of silver coins struck in the second and third decades of the 15th century ever found. 

The plural form of denga, “dengi,” has become the modern Russian word for “money.” Many of the coins are dengi of the Grand Princes Vasily I Dmitriyevich (r. 1389-1425) and Vasily II Vasilyevich “the Blind” (r. 1425-62). A significant number of the coins from Dmitriyevich’s reign were minted in Kolomna and depict a flying bird, a motif rarely found on such coins from other regions of Russia. The hoard made it possible for historians to identify the final Kolomna coins issued with the bird’s likeness, dating to the end of Dmitriyevich’s reign.

Researchers also discovered over 350 previously unknown varieties of Kolomna coins, as well as other coin types absent from the collections of many Russian museums. The large sum has led archaeologists to conclude that its owner had been wealthy, likely upper class. As the latest coins in the hoard date to the second half of the 1420s, researchers theorize that the owner may have fallen victim to one of the epidemics that swept through Russia between 1425 and 1427.