Masterpiece in the Aegina puzzle
In the end, the pendant’s origin remains unclear. If the pendant is Minoan or Levantine in origin, it could have been made in a local workshop on Crete, or in the Levant, and then exported to Aegina. In the case of a Minoan origin it is also possible that it was made by and/or for Cretans living on Aegina, as there is quite some evidence of Cretan presence on the island.
Because there are a lot of differences between objects within the Aegina treasure, there are also many scholars who think that the objects can not originally have belonged together and might originate from a robber’s cache, accumulated over a long time.
In his book, Reynold Higgins proposes the following reconstruction of the life of our pendant: a group of Mycenaean tomb robbers find the Aegina treasure on Crete, or in a Cretan’s tomb on Aegina. One of the robbers then hid his share in a Mycenaean tomb on Aegina, in which it would later be discovered. The robber probably planned to come back later to retrieve it and/or melt the gold, but died before he could. The treasure remained buried in a Mycenaean grave, and was only rediscovered more than 2000 years later.
Of course, even within this reconstruction, the actual origin of the treasure could lie anywhere. Most sources, like the website of the British Museum, seem to tentatively conclude that the treasure is Minoan. But we know now that this is far from certain.