00:00If there is such a thing as, beginner's luck, then surely 3-year-old James Hyatt has it.
00:05The little boy went metal detecting for the first time and found a buried treasure worth $4 million.
00:11It's every kid's dream to find buried treasure, and that's exactly what happened to little James Hyatt one afternoon,
00:17when his father took him metal detecting for the first time.
00:20However, it wasn't the first time for James Grandad, who had been searching for 15 years.
00:25James got a buzz after just 5 minutes, said Jason Hyatt, who is the father of the little boy.
00:31We saw a glint 8 inches down and gently pulled the object out.
00:35Dad was blown away. He never found anything like it in 15 years doing his hobby.
00:41James was so excited to find treasure, though he's too young to realize its significance.
00:46It went beep, beep, beep. Little James recalled the event. His father started to dig.
00:51When he had dug to about 6-8 inches, he struck gold, literally.
00:55Then we dug into the mud. There was gold there.
00:58We didn't have a map. Only pirates have treasure maps.
01:023-year-old James explained to the media.
01:04According to the Guardian, James discovered a 500-year-old gold reliquary,
01:09beautifully engraved with the names of the magi and images of Christ and St. Helena.
01:14It would once have been brilliantly colored, with enamel work filling in the letters and decoration,
01:19and may once have contained a relic of the cross.
01:21It probably dropped from the neck of some wealthy and pious person
01:25and lay undiscovered in the field for half a millennium.
01:28The little locket was jammed, shut when found.
01:31After conservation work by Marilyn Hockey at the British Museum,
01:35the back panel slid open again for the first time in centuries.
01:38But there was nothing inside except some fibers of flax, probably once grown locally.
01:43A coroner's inquest declared to find a treasure.
01:46And it has a permanent place in the British Museum's medieval gallery.
01:50According to CBS, while the estimated worth of the pendant was $4 million,
01:55the family received only P.S. $70,000 for their find.
01:58The money was paid with grants from the art fund charity and the friends of the museum.
02:03The money was to be shared between the Hyatt's and the landowner.
02:06Given the imagery on the pendant, the contents were probably originally thought to be a piece of the
02:11true cross, which St. Helena found on her trip to the Holy Land from 326 to 328 A.D., according
02:19to legend.
02:20Helena is often depicted holding the cross.
02:22On the backside is a veritable shower of blood droplets falling out of and over four incisions,
02:28and a cut heart symbolizing the five wounds of Christ.
02:30On three sides of the pendant are inscribed the names of the three wise men—Iaspar, Caspar, Melser, Melchir,
02:39Baltasar, Balthasar—in a lovely Lombardic script.
02:42The fourth side has a floral tendril similar to the ones on either side of Helena.
02:47The pendant is 1 inch wide and 1.3 inches long, which makes its rich decoration even more unusual and
02:54difficult to produce.
02:55Experts believe the engravings were likely enameled when the piece was new.
02:59That would have given the object a rich combination of colors on top of the precious metal,
03:04a popular style in late medieval jewelry.
03:06Only a very wealthy person could have afforded to buy such an expensive symbol of their pious dedication
03:12to the blood and wounds of Christ.
03:14The legend of St. Helena is widely accepted by archaeologists and historians.
03:19Even though Little James' discovery did not hold a piece of the true cross,
03:23the pendant was designed for a noble woman to hold such a relic.
03:27In 327 ad, Helena's son, Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome,
03:33wrote to Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, ordering him to tear down the temple of Venus
03:38that stood on the site of Calvary and the holy sepulcher and bill of basilica.
03:43According to historians, Helena traveled to the site to begin excavating,
03:47which led to the recovery of three different crosses.
03:50However, with nothing to distinguish the cross of Jesus from the crosses of the two thieves
03:54who were crucified with him,
03:56Helena had a dying woman carried to the site so she could touch each cross in turn.
04:01After touching one of the crosses, the sick woman was instantly healed,
04:04which was taken as a sign that it was the cross upon which our Lord had died.
04:09For the Hyatt family to have discovered this pendant,
04:11which was designed to hold such a relic and is only one of four known,
04:15is indeed a rare find.
