In 1982, an amateur treasure hunter, Russell E. Burrows, found a remote cave near his hometown of Olney in southern Illinois. After advancing through a 500-foot-long tunnel lined with oil lamps, he discovered several chambers filled with ancient weapons, gold sarcophagi, jewels, and stone tablets depicting Roman soldiers, Jews, early Christians, and West African Soldiers. He removed more than 7,000 artifacts from the cave and then sealed the entrance using dynamite, following the controversy over his discovery. The case for the treasure’s origin is argued in Frank Joseph’s controversial book, The Lost Treasure of King Juba: The Evidence of Africans in America before Columbus.
Juba’s father was king of Numidia (modern day northeast Libya) on the North African coast. He fought with Pomsey against Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire in 46 B.C. After they were defeated, Juba’s father committed suicide rather than allow himself to be taken alive, and Caesar as a trophy took his baby son, Juba II, back to Rome.
Juba was brought up as a Roman by Caesar’s nephew Octavian. He was well educated and became one of the learned men of his day. When Octavian became emperor, he installed Juba as ruler of Mauritania on the West Coast of Africa. He later married Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra, and together they ruled from 25 B.C. to around 19 A.D.
They turned their kingdom into a cultural and prosperous land and introduced Greek architecture and art to North Africa. Juba continued with his academic and field studies, writing histories of Africa and Arabia and even corresponding with Pliny the Elder about Botany and Zoology. He is credited with discovering a succulent plant, which he named
Euphorbia in honor of his family physician, Euphorbus.
According to Frank Joseph, Juba was persecuted by the Emperor Caligula and his son Ptolemy was executed, causing a Mauritian rebellion against the Romans. They moved southeast into present day Ghana, built a fleet of ships, and set sail to establish their kingdom on another continent. They made off with Cleopatra’s treasure and King Juba’s library.
Russell E. Burrows is the only person who knows where the treasure was found and yet Frank Joseph claims that the hoard is proof that Africans reached America long before Columbus.
Unfortunately the book doesn’t argue a convincing case. According to Sarah Meador, some of the book is laughably melodramatic and poorly researched” and “every scrap of obscure artistic knowledge possible is brought to bear on numerous illustrations of the surviving artifacts…the research is brief and repetitive. Most of Joseph’s historic information is based on extremely outdated history texts.
She says she hopes that the book is a hoax, if it really is the lost treasure of juba, most of the artifacts have been melted down and sold, representing “the greatest loss to archaeology since the days of using mummies as engine fuel.
But there’s an even more obvious problem: Why Illinois? Why didn’t Juba settle further east in North Carolina or Virginia? Why did he travel so far inland? And why do so many people still believe that Juba II and Cleopatra Selene are buried in Kubr-er-Rumia (Tombeau de la Chretiennel in Algeria?
The gold artifacts look crude, and archaeologists and linguists have disputed the authenticity of the stone inscriptions. Nevertheless there is evidence that Burrows may have found an archaeological site of great importance and taken drastic steps to preserve his claim to it.
In the decades since he announced his discovery, the bitter arguments over Burrow’s cave have not abated. Critics who dismiss it as a hoax are still debated vigorously by those who believe the gold Burrows recovered is proof that Africans visited the shores of North America more than fifteen centuries before Columbus. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that the controversy surrounding King Juba’s gold will only add to its mystery.
