The Russian imperial family commissioned dozens of elaborate jeweled Easter eggs from the House of Fabergé between 1885 and 1917, each containing an intricate hidden surprise inside. Following the Russian Revolution, several of these priceless eggs vanished entirely from historical record during the chaos of the imperial collection's seizure and dispersal by the new Soviet government. Art historians and collectors have spent decades trying to track down the missing pieces, occasionally rediscovering one in an unlikely place, such as a flea market purchase later identified as an authentic imperial egg worth millions. A handful of the eggs remain completely unaccounted for to this day, and any one of them would be worth a staggering sum if it were ever rediscovered and authenticated. Following the death of the founder of the largest contiguous land empire in history in 1227, his followers deliberately concealed the exact location of his burial site as part of Mongol funerary custom, reportedly killing anyone who witnessed the funeral procession to keep the site secret forever. The tomb is widely believed to contain an enormous accumulated treasure from decades of conquest stretching across Asia and Eastern Europe. Despite extensive modern archaeological surveys using satellite imagery and ground-penetrating technology across the Mongolian steppe, its exact location has never been definitively found or confirmed by researchers. It remains one of the most actively sought-after undiscovered burial sites anywhere in the world today. Originally gifted to Russia by a Prussian king in 1716 as a diplomatic gesture, this entire palace chamber was covered floor to ceiling in ornately carved amber panels backed with gold leaf, prized as one of the most opulent rooms ever constructed in Europe. German forces dismantled and removed the room from its Russian palace during the Second World War, and it disappeared entirely after being crated up for shipment near the end of the conflict in 1945. Despite decades of dedicated searching by professional treasure hunters, historians, and government investigators using declassified wartime records, its ultimate fate and final resting place have never been conclusively determined. Described in medieval Christian legend as the vessel used by Jesus at the Last Supper, the Holy Grail became the object of countless quests by knights, pilgrims, and religious scholars throughout the Middle Ages and well into the modern era, with its supposed powers ranging from miraculous healing to granting eternal life. Numerous cups, chalices, and religious relics scattered across Europe have been individually claimed as the true Grail at various points over the centuries, though no single artifact has ever been widely or conclusively accepted by mainstream historians as authentic. Its purely legendary status has not stopped it from remaining one of the most enduring and widely referenced "lost" treasures in all of Western culture and popular fiction. And described in ancient religious texts as a sacred gold-covered wooden chest containing the original stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Ark of the Covenant was said to have been kept in the innermost chamber of the Temple in Jerusalem before vanishing entirely from historical record, likely sometime during the temple's eventual destruction. Its mysterious disappearance has fueled centuries of competing theories, expeditions, and archaeological searches across multiple continents attempting to locate its final resting place, none of which have ever produced conclusive physical evidence accepted by the wider archaeological community. It remains one of the most famous and most actively searched-for lost artifacts in the entire history of religious archaeology. #History #archaeology #mystery #mongolia #holygrail - @slideshowhistorian