New finds or a lost collection? Unique items from the new Jerusalem monastery (preliminary publication)

The paper publishes three unusual finds discovered in the Resurrection (New Jerusalem) Monastery (town of Istra, Moscow region) by the expedition of the Institute of Archaeology, RAS, in 2009-2017. The finds include a bottom of a stone urn with a Latin inscription dating to the first half of I mill. AD, a fragment of a steatite icon of the 11th-12th centuries; and a gold florin of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus from the second half of the 15th century. The question is raised concerning the reasons of their presence in the occupation layer of the monastery founded in the mid-17th century. There is no logical explanation of these finds. One of the suggestions is that they belonged to a large museum which functioned in the monastery buildings after the 1917 revolution and which was heavily damaged during the World war II.