A hand holds a coin with Cardinal Clemens XI at the State Library in Passau, Germany, Dec. 7, 2011.
Library janitor or Indiana Jones?
Tanja Höls, a custodian at the Passau state library in Germany, stumbled upon a box full of coins while on the job last week. Turns out, those coins are thousands of years old and could be worth millions.
“The box itself was fairly unspectacular, it looked like a big jewlery box, with lots of little drawers inside,” she told The Local.
When she told her bosses at the library, they were stunned. The library believes that the collection likely belonged to local prince-bishops, who hid the treasure in the library in the early 19th century to avoid paying taxes.
The gold and silver coins can be traced to ancient Rome, Greece and the Byzantine empire, according to the German Herald.
Höls, who had walked by the unassuming box many times before daring to open up, will be rewarded for her curiosity. A spokesman for the library told Der Spiegel that "she was very honest, a brilliant historian and a great detective. We are certainly going to promote her to the curating side of the museum and we're discussing a suitable reward for her."
