At the Money Museum, we believe that, if we attach importance to money, talk about it, and think about it, it does not show materiality, greed, or superficiality; on the contrary: it refers to the fact that, we aim to understand how the world works, and have a responsible approach towards our future.
If we are curious about how to create companies that transcend nation-states, organise the economy of an entire country, or even just run our own webshop sensibly, we will always encounter money-related issues at each stage. These questions always deal with money in a different spotlight, so it is easy to see that the coin has more than two sides, and money is actually a much more nuanced, versatile phenomenon than we previously thought.
The Hungarian Money Museum and Visitor Centre, established by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, was created to help you find your way around the world of money. We do not deny that this world hides many dead ends, sometimes complete labyrinths, which is why we consider it important to experience the greater excitement within the walls of the museum, and not in our own real lives. The exhibition space contains many experiences and adventures, all of which help the visitor to get to know new aspects of the circulation and use of money.
Our mission is to prove that anyone can understand how the money works. This knowledge is essential in individual, family and community life, which is why we believe that knowledge about the use of currencies can make our whole society richer, both literally and metaphorically.
“I hunt for the golden stag.
You may smile, my friends,
but I pursue the vision that eludes me.”
Rabindranath Tagore
The Gardener
Hungarian translation by Margit Kopácsy
Európa Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1979
Under the spell of the Miraculous Deer
In most of the mythic tales of the Eastern Steppes, a magical deer appears, leading brothers and sisters, peoples, calling them into a new home, having magical skills, and sometimes flourishing in the variety of colours. The legendary ancestors of the Huns and Hungarians, Hunor and Magor, the mythical brothers, also became addicted to a beautiful deer, which they started to chase, and therefore wandered into the swamps of Meotisi. However, this landscape, which according to historians used to lie mainly on the coast of the Azov Sea, is “full of grass, trees, birds, fish and wildlife”, as we can read in the work of Simon of Kéza entitled Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum, therefore it was perfectly suitable for settlement. The new home brought prosperity to the descendants of Hunor and Magor. So much so that the people already begun to grow enormous—as the Chronicron Pictum of Márk Kálti puts it. So we had to set off again, and the next stop of the migration, according to the Chronicron Pictum, was already Scythia, the land of the Scythians.
But the miraculous deer is well-known in Hungary not only in our medieval sources, but also as the artifacts of archaeological excavations. It is enough to think of the Scythian golden deer found in Mezőkeresztes-Zöldhalompuszta or the similar treasure of Tápiószentmárton made of a gold-silver alloy. The golden deer of Mezőkeresztes rushes with his head turned back and lures the hunters to him, and the one in Tápiószentmárton pulls his legs under himself, almost flying in the air, and folds his wonderfully ruffled antlers tightly on his back. Both findings, according to the vast majority of expert opinion, date from the heyday of Scythian gold art and depict deer in mythic tales that adorned shields on the eastern steppes and were symbols of princely ranks and power.
It is no coincidence that these oriental golden deer occupied such a prestigious and prominent place. In the legends, like the princes, their mission was to lead the peoples and nations that followed them to the land of productive abundance. It is not a coincidence that we chose the miraculous deer as a symbol of the Money Museum and Visitor Centre. We would also like to contribute, according to our own strength and possibilities, to helping the Hungarians and Hungary, who are building their new homeland, and finding themselves. We sincerely hope that our institution, like the miraculous deer in the legend, can make a significant contribution to take the community of the nation forward with ingenuity, talent, and the ability to win competitions here in the middle of the Carpathian Basin, can find a home for a long time, together in a land of abundance and diligence.