Antiquities traffickers are caught in police sting in Basel

On 23 February 2002, Basel police sprang a trap on a group seeking to sell a round metal plate dating from the Bronze Age. Metal detectorists had unearthed the bronze disc near Nebra in Saxony-Anhalt. With a diameter of 32 cm, weighing some 2 kg and sporting golden symbols representing celestial bodies, it appeared old and probably valuable to its finders. Instead of surrendering their find to the authorities, the treasure hunters decided to sell it on the black market.

Scientific analysis soon came to a sensational conclusion: made between 2100 and 1700 BC and buried around 1600 BC, the Nebra Sky Disc, as the piece became known, was the oldest known depiction of the heavens. Experts believe it had been commissioned by a powerful chieftain for use in rituals and had been altered several times. During the Bronze Age, the people who lived in the area of present-day southern Saxony-Anhalt probably communicated in a pre-Germanic dialect.