For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also

There was a short article on the BBC News online today about a recent archelogical find in the UK. They found 840 gold coins dating back to somewhere between 40BC and 15AD. The approximate value of the coins at the time: £500,000 t0 £1m or $746,000 to $1.5m. It's worth considerably less now.

They are thought to have belonged to Boudica, the Queen of the Iceni tribe of Wales. She's actually quite an interesting woman. Her husband had been a client king of the Roman empire, and when he died, he left his kingdom to be split according to his will between his daughters and Nero (our favorite emperor). Needless to say, the Romans scoffed at the idea of a woman inheriting a kingdom, so they sent troops to claim it. Boudica was flogged, her daughters raped, and the kingdom was taken from them. She led an uprising against the Romans and did a pretty decent job, all in all. But ultimately, she lost. She put up a good fight though.

History has a way of circling back and tripping us up all over again. Buried treasure, in particular, has a way of bending back on itself and smacking us in the face with our weakness and greed. Things so seemingly precious at the time lose their value and lose their meaning. The people that sought after it, that died for it, that buried it far away from some enemy are long since dead, worm food eaten by worms eaten by worms. The treasures of the past are now quaint little tokens that we put in museums and nod at.

But we continue to do the same thing, century after century . Scrambling to collect things, to hoard them, to polish them up and set them in precious metals, to adorn ourselves, to fatten ourselves. Like squirrels who instinctively bury nuts without any hope of remembering where they are or why they're burying them.