Gintong Pamana - Philippine Gold Treasure

Here are a few images of the gold treasure found in the Philippines. There were belts of pure gold, gold masks, gold daggers, gold ornaments, bowls, bracelets, rings, pectorals, earrings, and a pure gold rope that turned out to be a sacred thread and weighs 400 kilos, so intricately designed that one could just stare at it in wonder. I got the few images but not all.

Dagger Handle

A dagger handle from the Surigao Treasure. The swirling lines and the asymmetric form suggest raging flames surrounding a bird's head with a disk at the tip of its long beak. In Indonesia, the garuda or sun-bird was the god Vishnu's vehicle. In old Philippine languages, the sun was also called hari, or king. The symbolism here, then, is that the Butuan kings were vehicles of the divine.

Facial Covers

Scribed swirls and waves on headbands and facial covers from Butuan inspired by waves or the niaga, the snake or dragon motif, which symbolized the sea, which the ancient Filipinos mastered. The abstract pattern expresses the dynamism of ancient Philippine civilization. Those patterns and motifs survive in the southern Philippine okir design tradition. Artisans used a stylus -- perhaps just a pointed bamboo stick -- to scribe the patterns on the hammered sheet.

Gold bowl from the Surigao treasure

Ear ornament discovered in Arasasan in Mindanao.

Below are the other pictures of the gold ornament discover in Surigao. The man who allegedly found these valuable pieces of treasure sold some of them and left most of the treasure to a priest in their parish. Eventually, these gold pieces found their way to the Ayala Museum and the Central Bank of the Philippines.

 

The gold treasure in Surigao Sur