Alabaster Urns

Each of them carved from single blocks of marble, alabaster urns date from Hellenistic times. Found by a peasant as he was ploughing his field in Pergamon, the marble jars were full of gold. The peasant came to Sultan Murat III to tell him he found three marble jars in his field. Sultan brought two of them to Hagia Sophia and granted him the third jar and the field in which he found them. He is also said to have required the soldiers to empty the jars because Sultan wanted only the jars not the golds. After adding a tap and a lid on them, the urns were used to take ritual ablutions in the Hagia Sophia.