Fantastic treasures from various cultures have been stolen. During times of war or disaster, when they can't be protected, or when a military force decides to take those treasures as a trophy, their theft or disappearance can happen. Many treasures are still missing.
Live Science looked at some of the lost treasures that may never be found. Some of these treasures may still exist and be recovered one day.
The Catherine Palace was the location of the amber room. The room contained gold-gilded mosaics, mirrors and carvings, along with panels constructed out of about 1,000 pounds of amber. During World War II, the panels and artwork of the room were taken to Germany, and they haven't been seen since. The Catherine Palace hosts a re-creation of the amber room.
The smallest of the three pyramids was built around 4,500 years ago. In the 1830s, English military officer Howard Vyse explored the Giza pyramids using destructive techniques and explosives.
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An ornate sarcophagus was found in Menkaure's pyramid. The sarcophagus was taken down with the ship that sank after Vyse tried to ship it to England. It is possible to retrieve the ancient sarcophagus if the Beatrice is ever found.
The Ark of the Covenant was a chest with tablets engraved with the 10 Commandments, according to the Hebrew Bible. King Solomon is said to have built a temple in Jerusalem where the chest was kept. The most sacred site on Earth for the Jewish people was destroyed in 587 B.C. when an army from ancient Babylon led by King Nebuchadnezzar II. The location of theArk of the Covenant has long been a source of speculation.
The Honjo Masamune is a sword that is said to have been created by Masamune, who lived from 1264 to 1343. Honjo Shigenaga took the sword as a prize after a battle in the 16th century. Tokugawa Ieyasu became the first shogun of Japan after winning a series of wars in the 16th century.
The sword was passed down through the Tokugawa family until the end of World War II, when American authorities were concerned that the sword and others like it could be used against them. The sword never came back. It is possible that the sword was destroyed by the U.S. soldiers or that they brought it to America.
There was a large collection of ancient Greek texts in the Library of the Moscow Tsars. The library was built by the rulers of the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1518.
Ivan IV, better known as Ivan the Terrible, lived from 1530 to 1584 and is said to have hid the library's texts. Over the centuries, there have been many attempts to find this hidden library. There are a number of ancient texts written in Greek and other languages located in archives in Moscow and St.
The crown jewels of Ireland were stolen in 1907 and were not connected to any ceremony. Tom O'Riordan, a historian and project manager at University College Cork, wrote that they included a jewelled star of the Order of St. Patrick and a diamond brooch and five gold collars of that order.
The crown jewels were created in 1783 and Britain was in control of Ireland at that time. The jewelry was made from stones taken from Queen Charlotte's jewelry. King George III's wife was Queen Charlotte. The jewels were given by a sultan of Turkey and may have held rupees from a Mughal emperor.
The jewels were kept in a library and it was blamed for the robbery. What happened to the jewels after they were stolen remains a mystery. The brother of the famous explorer Ernest Shackleton was suspected of pulling off the robbery, but nothing was ever proven.
The Shakespeare of her day was the Greek poet Sappho. The ancient Greeks considered her to be one of the best poets. Unfortunately, most of her poems are no longer alive. The University of Oxford was able to reveal sections of two never-before-seen poems by Sappho. One poem talks about her brothers, while the other talks about love.
Their provenance is not known. Brill withdrew an article written by Obbink that detailed its provenance in 2021.
The São Vicente set sail from Lisbon in Portugal to Avignon in France, carrying the treasures of the bishop of Lisbon who had recently died. The treasures included gold, silver, rings, tapestries, jewels, fine plates and even portable altars. The crew of two pirate vessels seized the treasure from the São Vicente while it was sailing near the town of Cartagena in modern-day Spain.
One pirate ship commanded by a man named Antonio Botafoc was captured after it ran aground. The other pirate ship, commanded by MartinYanes, appears to have made a clean escape. What happened to the pirate crew and the treasure?
The Just Judges panel is part of the Ghent Altarpiece, a 15th-century work of art painted by the van Eycks. A number of characters are on horseback. The duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, is likely to be one of the characters.
The panel has never been found after being stolen in 1934. The case file is still active, despite the passage of time, and new tips continue to come in, according to an article published in The Guardian. The Just Judges panel and other parts of the Ghent Altarpiece were stolen in 1934.
The Florentine Diamond is thought to have arrived in Europe by the end of the 15th century. It is a question of when and how it got to Europe. One story says that the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, was so enamored with the Florentine Diamond that he even carried it with him into battle and was killed with it.
After World War I, the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, Charles I, fled with it to Switzerland where he put it in a bank vault and gave it to an Austrian lawyer who was supposed to help the deposed royal family sell it and other royal jewels. It is not clear what happened next. According to a news report in 1924, Steiner was charged with fraud and acquitted. The Florentine Diamond could be a series of smaller diamonds.
Leonardo da Vinci painted a mural in 1505 depicting the Italian League's victory over Milan in the Battle of Anghiari. The town hall in Florence had a mural created by Giorgio Vasari, but it disappeared in 1563.
In 2012 a team of art experts announced that they had discovered evidence that the mural was not destroyed and that Vasari had painted his own mural over it. The team had been doing scientific tests on the mural for years and had published a few of their studies.
The research was put on hold after the results were never confirmed. A different team of researchers claimed in 2020 that da Vinci never painted the mural. What happened to the mural is a subject of debate.
Between 66 and 74, Jewish rebels fought against the Roman army in an attempt to free Israel from the Roman Empire. Jerusalem was captured by a Roman force in A.D. 70 and later became a Roman emperor. The Second Temple, the most important religious site for Jewish people, was destroyed by the Roman army. The temple has a menorah with six branches.
The menorah being carried to Rome in a scene at the Arch of Titus is almost as big as the soldiers carrying it. The fate of the menorah after it arrived in Rome is unknown.
There is a sheet of copper engraved with a text that discusses the location of a lot of hidden treasure in the Qumran caves. The copper scroll is in a museum in Jordan. Whether the ancient writer of the scroll was describing a real or legendary treasure is a source of debate among scholars. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Roman army, who were in the process of defeating Jewish groups that were rebelling against Roman rule.
Some scholars think that the treasures in the copper scroll are real treasures that were hidden before the Roman army destroyed the temple. The amount of treasure discussed in the Copper Scroll is so vast that it must be legend according to other scholars.
On March 18, 1990, two thieves dressed as police officers broke into the museum and stole 13 works of art. The works included were by the Dutch painter Rembrandt and the French artist Degas. The artwork has never been recovered despite the fact that the identity of the thieves is still unknown. It is possible that the thieves who stole the art are dead and the paintings are damaged or destroyed. Despite the high value of the art, it would be difficult to sell as it is well known, and any buyer could easily determine that it was stolen and face criminal charges themselves.
The fossils of a hominid called Peking Man, who lived between 200,000 and 750,000 years ago, were discovered in a cave near the village of Zhoukoudian in 1923. The location of the fossils is unknown because they disappeared during the Japanese invasion of China in 1941. Some scholars think that the fossils were lost at sea while being transported to the United States in order to save them from the invasion, while others think they may be located under a parking lot in China.
Q Source is a hypothetical first-century A.D. text that contains a number of sayings attributed to Jesus. Q source is believed to have been used by ancient writers to help craft Matthew and Luke. The existence of Q Source is based on the fact that several passages in Matthew are the same.
Some passages in Matthew andluke are not in Mark, which is believed to be a source for both Matthew andluke. Some scholars believe that the passages are from another source, which is called Q Source. No copy of Q Source is known to survive. Some recent scholarship suggests that the second-century non-canonical text may contain parts of this Q source.
According to legend, at the end of the World War II, a Nazi force led by officer Kaltenbrunner sank a huge amount of gold into Lake Toplitz in Austria to keep it from being captured by the Allied forces. No gold has been found since that time.
It is possible that the story is a myth and that no gold was sunk into the lake, however, some researchers have noted that the lake has poor visibility and a lot of logs and debris that make it difficult and dangerous to find gold. Divers have been killed trying to find gold.
The identity of the person in the painting and the exact date when Raphael painted it are important to know. The painting was owned by the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, Poland, when the German army invaded Poland in 1939. According to the Monuments Men Foundation, the painting was taken from the museum and was going to be put in the Führermuseum in Linz, Austria.
The painting was last seen in Hans Frank's chalet in Neuhaus on lake Schliersee, Germany, in January 1945. Frank oversaw numerous war crimes and the murder of Poland's Jews while he was in charge of occupied Poland. He was sentenced to death and executed after World War II, but his painting has never been found.
The so-called royal casket was created by Princess Izabela Czartoryska and was a collection of artifacts from the royal families who ruled the country. The jewels worn by the kings of Poland were among the artifacts. Poland ceased to be an independent state in 1795, having been divided up among other powers in the region. The royal casket was seized by Nazi Germany after it invaded Poland in September 1939. The contents of the casket have been lost.
William Shakespeare is known to have written the play Love's Labour's Won, though no copies survive today. Shakespeare wrote a comedy called "Love's Labour's Lost" in the 1590s. According to documents from the 1590s and 1600s, Love's Labour's Won was published in 1598 and was still being sold in 1603, although no surviving copies have been found.
Some scholars believe that records of Love Labour's Won refer to a play by Shakespeare called "Much Ado About Nothing", which is still performed today. The Royal Shakespeare Company re-titled a performance of Much Ado about Nothing to "Love Labour" based on this theory.
The oldest surviving copies of the Christian scriptures are from the second century A.D. How could we determine their date?
In 2015, scholars reported that they had found a fragment of the Gospel of Mark within the remains of a mummy mask. The text that was published in the journal was from the second or third century.
This marble is a mask of a Faun, a half-human, half-goat mythical creature. The Bargello Museum in Florence, Italy, owned the mask that was stolen from a castle in Tuscany in 1944.
The thieves? The Monuments Men Foundation said that soldiers from the German army's 305th division were attached to the German 10th Army. The mask was placed in a truck after the soldiers stole it. This appears to be the last time it was seen, and the mask's location is unknown.
Theativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence was created by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It shows the birth of Christ, with the infant Jesus lying on a haystack in poverty, according to scholars. The painting was stolen in 1969 from a chapel in Palermo, Italy. It is not clear who stole the painting. The Sicilian Mafia is suspected of carrying out the robbery. A replica of the painting was unveiled in the chapel where the original was taken.
Easter eggs were made ornately decorated by the Russian jeweler Peter Carl Faberg for the Russian imperial family between 1885 and 1916.
The last great commission of objects d'art, these eggs were the ultimate achievement of the renowned Russian jewelry house.
Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, was executed in 1917 as a result of the Russian Revolution. Some of the eggs went missing after their deaths and are still missing today, but some of them are rumored to be in private collections around the world. It is possible that some of the antiques and artifacts that were shipped from the Soviet Union to the U.S. at the end of the Cold War could now be in the United States.
The Jules Rimet trophy was given to the team that won the soccer World Cup. The Jules Rimet trophy was sculpted by Lafleur and had a depiction of the goddess of victory holding an octagonal vessel above her head.
The trophy was first awarded in 1930 at the inaugural World Cup and was passed from winner to winner every four years, but in 1970 Brazil won the competition for the third time. The Jules Rimet trophy would be given to the first team to win the World Cup three times. A new World Cup trophy was created after the cup was sent to Brazil.
The cup has not been seen since 1983, when it was stolen in Rio. The cup was made mostly of gold and weighed about 13 pounds.
The Jules Rimet trophy had been stolen before. The trophy was taken from a Methodist hall. The trophy was found by a dog and its owner in a street in south London, wrapped in newspaper and string, and recovered a week later. The thief or thieves of this robbery were never found.
During the reign of Ashurnasirpal II, the capital of the Assyrian empire was located in Iraq and he built a new palace there. Recent history has not been kind to him. The ancient city was captured by the Islamic State group in June of 2014, but it wasn't regained until November of last year.
The city was destroyed by IS and they used bulldozers to dig up other parts. When the ancient city was retaken, little security could be provided. Many treasures at Nimrud have been destroyed, but others can be reconstructed, and still others may be found on the black market.
On June 8, 1924, British explorers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine went missing while on their way to the top of Mount Everest. A storm may have stopped them from climbing the mountain. Edmund Hillary and his team became the first to summit Mount Everest in 1953. It is not known if Mallory and Irvine reached the top before they died.
Evidence suggests that he was killed by a fall. Irvine's body has never been found. It is possible that the camera they took with them will be found if Irvine is found dead. It is possible that the film in the camera is still valid, and that the question of whether the two men made it to the top of Everest before dying can be solved.
Michaelangelo's painting depicts a scene from ancient mythology where the god Jupiter seduces Leda, the queen of Sparta. Helen of Troy was one of their children. Only a small number of copies made by other people survive, and the original painting by Michaelangelo is lost.
There are copies of Michelangelo's painting that show a fully nude Leda having sex with Jupiter, who is in the form of a swan. It is not known how Michelangelo's painting became lost, but one possibility is that it was destroyed because some viewers found its erotic nature too much.
The Life of General Villa is a lost film that depicts the Mexican revolutionary general Francisco "Pancho" Villa, who fought a series of battles against Mexico's leaders. The film featured footage of real-life battles fought by Villa's forces. Villa signed a contract with the maker of the movie that allowed filmmakers to film him and the real-life battles fought by his troops in exchange for a share of the movie's earnings. The film was released and shown publicly, but is now lost.
Villa became an enemy of the United States after his troops crossed into New Mexico and killed several Americans. Although he was assassinated in 1923, a U.S. military expedition into Mexico in 1916 failed to find him.
The Story of the Kelly Gang, which was released in Australia in 1906, is considered to be the world's first feature-length film. The movie told the story of the outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang. The film was a huge success, film historians Sally Jackson and Graham Shirley wrote in an article on the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia's website.
The film opened in Australia on Boxing Day 1906 and went on to be a huge hit.
Reports of crime and censorship followed screenings of the film. The film inspired five children in the Victorian town of Ballarat to break into a photographic studio to steal money, and in April the Chief Secretary banned the film.
The film was never properly preserved, and by the 1970s, only some publicity material and a few photographs remained. A quarter of the film has been revealed, but much of it is still missing.
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