The Lost Gold Coins of the Old Singapore Library

In the mid-19th century, two ancient gold coins were uncovered near present-day Keppel Harbour. Unfortunately, the Acehnese coins vanished before they could be studied carefully. Their Jawi inscriptions were recorded, though they didn’t make sense. More than 180 years later, Foo Shu Tieng tries to solve the case.

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What Shu Talked About

02:11 – When and where the coins were found
04:35 – Whether the coins were stolen
05:48 – How common artefact theft is
06:30 – What coins can tell us about Singapore’s history
08:53 – Why and how Shu reexamined the Jawi transcription on the coins
10:43 – Response to Shu's research on the coins
11:57 – Other ancient coins found in Singapore
12:49 – A common misconception of archaeology
13:21 — An archaeological mystery that Shu would like to solve
15:26 – Shu’s favourite archaeological pop-culture moment
16:00 – Archaeology is…

About the Guest

Foo Shu Tieng is Associate Librarian with the National Library, Singapore, and works with the Singapore and Southeast Asia collections. She has written about stone age in Singapore and Ancient Gold in Southeast Asiain BiblioAsia.

Resources

Foo Shu Tieng, "Revisiting the Mystery of the Missing Gold Coins," BiblioAsia 19, no. 3 (2023).

Louise Tythacott and Panggah Ardiyansyah, eds., Returning Southeast Asia's Past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution (Singapore: NUS Press, 2021)

Credits

This episode of BiblioAsia+ was hosted by Jimmy Yap. Sound engineering was done by One Dash. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Osman Ahmad and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Shu for coming on the show.

BiblioAsia+ is a podcast about Singapore history by the National Library of Singapore.