Hunt for Entente Cordiale casket could build new unity, says artist

Solid gold treasure that marked historic pact of friendship is the prize for cross-Channel puzzlers

SOMEWHERE in Britain and France lie the two halves of a key to a £650,000 golden casket which ended almost a thousand years of conflict between the two old foes.

That, at least, is the claim of the co-author of the world’s longestrunning treasure hunt.

Artist Michel Becker says he bought the solid gold casket, pictured below, celebrating the 1904 Entente Cordiale between the UK and France at auction and has had it authenticated by the jewellers who made it.

The Frenchman is famed for the riddle of La Chouette d’Or (The Golden Owl), for which he sculpted a golden and silver owl in flight and buried it in mainland France in 1993.

He then illustrated the book required to find it. More than a quarter of a century later, the riddle remains unsolved.

But while the quest for the Chouette continues, he is about to launch a fresh hunt, this time on both sides of the Channel, for the Golden Treasure of the Entente Cordiale.

Two books, one in English, one in French, contain nine puzzles, which once solved lead to the richly decorated casket that King Edward VII gave to Emile Loubet, , the French p president, , to seal the Entente ente Cordiale.

The Entente nte was a series of agreements on subjects ranging from colonialism olonialism in Africa to fishing hing rights in Newfoundland. nd.

While the e text covered “rather r unpleasant colonial territory”, it was a hugely ely symbolic step marking arking “the fact that Britain and nd France were e now allies so there couldn’t n’t be war between them”, says Stephen Clarke, author of 1,000 Years of Annoying the French, who wrote the historical account of the Entente Cordiale in the treasure hunt books. Mr Becker, who will launch the hunt in France and the UK on the April 8 anniversary of the agreement, said: “I came across this casket by coincidence. It had long remained in the Loubet family and his heirs sold it to a family who sold it to me two years ago.”

The Entente Cordiale, which came at a time of high Anglo-French tension, is a testament to Edward VII, said Mr Clarke, describing the monarch as a “very underrated diplomat”.

He explained: “He spent his whole reign trying to rein in the Kaiser, his mad nephew who wanted war and was trying to get Edward and the Tsar (Nicolas II of Russia) into an Anglo-RussoGerman alliance against France. France may owe its survival as a modern nation to the Entente Cordiale.”

Some would-be hunters may be put off by the fact that the other hunt for the Chouette d’Or has still not been solved.

But Mr Becker says the new one will be eminently solvable as it was created by a professional escape game designer, and the riddles are more based on spotthe-difference-style enigmas than some of the mathematically complex codes of the former hunt. He added: “The casket is in a transparent chest with a rather complicated lock. Half of the key is buried in France and half in the UK.”

He said that differences between the two books meant that the hunt might require a new Entente Cordiale between an English g speaker p and a French speaker to solve. solve

Mr Clarke added: “A “Anything that can unite our cou countries at the moment is great. grea

“The thing about Brexit is that it is very v political. A treasure hunt is completely th the opposite and is in a way in the spirit o of the Entente Cordia Cordiale as Edward VI VII was trying t to ignore o ongoing politic tics and just say: ‘We’re friend friends.’”