Photo Credit: Tourism Melaka

According to the Historic Study and Patriotism Institute (Iskep) chairman Datuk Dr Mohd Jamil Mukmin, treasures, part of the riches belonging to the then Malacca Sultanate, are believed to be buried in secret sites in Pulau Besar and St Paul’s Hill in Malacca.

The Professor, who is also the director of the Malacca Museum Corporation (Perzim), said that during the days of the Malacca Sultanate, vessels making their way to the Malacca port would pay taxes in the forms of gifts such as gold ingots, statues, coins and jewellery, to the Sultan.

“The gifts could have been transferred to these sites (Pulau Besar and St Paul’s Hill). However, only a small number of porcelain dating back to the Malacca Sultanate have been found in Pulau Besar and St Paul’s Hill,” he said.

Currently, there is an ongoing excavation for treasures on Pulau Nangka. On May 1, two copper medallions, believed to be part of the billion ringgit wealth buried in Pulau Nangka, Malacca, were discovered by workers employed by a salvaging company to detect and salvage the treasure. Talk of buried treasure on the island have been ongoing for years and in January, a local company, Smart Partnership International, was hired on a four-month contract to carry out excavation work. The workers made the discovery as they were drilling a hole in the cavern to search for the bounty, believed to be stored in 20 chambers inside the cave. One medallion had an Arabic or Jawi inscription while the other had a Sanskrit or ancient Pallava Tamil inscription, indicating that it could be dated back to the Majapahit Kingdom era. According to the Professor, it is believed that the Malacca Sultan, one of the richest rulers in the Malay Archipelago, had hidden the treasures on Pulau Nangka, when the Portuguese attacked Malacca in 1511.