Along the way, they also introduced the museum's director, Jock Reynolds, to Canadian collectors Hunter and Valerie Thompson, who in 2007 donated about 500 Javanese gold sculptures andornaments.
The glittering burial hoard from Mycenae gold cups, jewellery, bronze swords with gold-plated hilts and hundreds of ornaments is still a crowd-puller at the Athens archaeological museum.
One is struck by the correspondence between the ornate gold bullion that ornaments Spanish statues of the Virgin Mary and the same bullion that adorns the matador's traje de luces ("suit of lights").