Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• A Tunisian national looted coins that were over 2,200 years old and attempted to sell them to an antiques dealer in Oslo, Norway.
• The dealer teamed up with local police to organize a sting and recover the 30 bronze coins, which had been minted in ancient Carthage.
• While the coins were returned to the Tunisian government, tens of thousands from the same hoard are still unaccounted for, including many that are likely for sale right now.

When a Tunisian national smuggled more than two dozen 2,200-year-old bronze coins into Oslo with the intention of selling them to an antique coin dealer, the local police were waiting. The success of sting led not only to the return of the 30 coins to the Tunisian government, but to the discovery of their history by experts at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History. But though this is a happy ending for the small collection, thousands of similar coins—many from the very same hoard as those recovered in Oslo—remain for sale across the world.

“Combating looting and illicit trade in cultural heritage artifacts requires coordinated efforts and cooperation,” the authors of a recent report published in Libyan Studies wrote. “The restitution of illegal artifacts plays an important role in diminishing the harm done to such communities. Tunisia has suffered, and continues to suffer, serious consequences from looting and trafficking in cultural materials.”

The story of the recovered coins starts in 2022, when a Tunisian citizen contacted a coin dealer in Oslo via email claiming to have over 440 pounds of ancient bronze Punic coins that originated from an underwater find off the Tunisian coast. Pictures appeared to back the story. Instead of engaging in the illegal exchange, the dealer contacted the police, who tracked the seller on his way to Oslo via Paris and arrested him with a sample of the smuggled hoard—a total of 30 coins.

That’s when the University of Oslo got involved, researching and documenting the coins before they were returned to Tunisia’s government in March of 2023. The experts confirmed that the coins were indeed Punic bronzes, minted in Carthage during the Second Punic War sometime between 215 and 205 B.C.E. Each of the 30 pieces showed similar wear, indicating that they were likely all minted at the same time, and were traded and stored together. The alloy contained silver content, likely making them more valuable to hoard, rather than spend.

The batch of 30 contained two denominations. Twenty-four are large coins, weighing between 14 and 18 grams, known as “trishekels.” The six smaller pieces, about six to nine grams each, are “shekels.” Each one had the head of the goddess Tanit on one side and a horse standing in front of a palm tree on the other.

“The similar depiction of the horse’s body and its front legs on the reverse of each denomination indicates that the dies with which they were struck were cut by engravers working in the same workshop of the Carthage mint,” the authors wrote, “and that these coins were issued concurrently.”

Inspection confirmed that the coins spent centuries underwater, likely in a shipwreck or harbor ruins. Photos of the original find discovered on the phone of the smuggler geotagged it to a coastal area of Tunisia, allowing investigators to conclude that the full hoard likely contains tens of thousands of coins.

Researchers praised the coin dealer, the police, the museum, and the governmental bodies who worked together on the case, but noted that the recovery of 30 coins represents a minute fraction of the full hoard. The study highlighted at least three examples of coins for sale—likely from the same exact hoard—in antique catalogs, and noted that more than 500 examples of the same types of coins have appeared in online auction catalogues over the past decade. Charges against the smuggler were eventually dropped, and the man returned to Tunisia.

Antique coins are the most trafficked illicit archaeological item in the world thanks to the high demand for the coins and the portability of the pieces. “It is hoped,” the authors wrote, “that this contribution will foster greater awareness of the dispersal of unprovenanced coins and other items into the private market.”