41 Lost Treasures That Even Indiana Jones Couldn’t Find

Francesco Melzi, a pupil of Da Vinci, received many manuscripts as an inheritance from his master. After Melzi passed away, the documents were lost or scattered. Some got stolen, while others had been given away or misplaced by Melzi. The ones we have today contain just about a fifth of Da Vinci's whole body of work.

The 137-carat yellow Florentine Diamond most likely originated in India and arrived in Europe around the end of the 15th century. Charles I, the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, gave it to Bruno Steiner, an Austrian attorney, to assist the exiled royal family in selling it. What transpired after it is unknown and the diamond is considered lost.

While on a voyage to Mount Everest, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared, and with them — a camera. The body of George Mallory was found in 1999, while Irvine's body is still missing (allegedly). It is still a mystery if both explorers were able to reach the summit before passing away. If the camera is found, perhaps we could get the answers we seek.

The gold-plated Amber Room, built in the 18th century, was located at the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, not too far from St. Petersburg. The room's panels and artwork were torn apart and transported to Germany during 1941. Since then, the room was never put together with original parts, only with replicas.

A fresco by Leonardo da Vinci from 1505 shows Milan defeating the Italian League under Florence at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. When architect and painter Giorgio Vasari remodeled the hall in 1563, it was gone. Numerous scientists think that Vasari's artwork covers up the Da Vinci mural. Some historians state, that Da Vinci never got around to create the Battle of Anghiari mural.

The smallest of the three pyramids built at Giza around 4,500 years ago is the Menkaure pyramid, named after the Egyptian king. When exploring the pyramid in the 1830s, the Sarcophagus Of Menkaure was uncovered, but when it was transported to Britain, the ship was supposedly destroyed by a severe storm.

Amelia Earhart made history by being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and the first person to travel from continental United States to Hawaii. While trying to circumnavigate the whole globe, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. It is still unknown what happened to her and where her body is.

The name "Jack the Ripper" came from a letter written by someone claiming to be the infamous serial killer. However, the letter addressed "From Hell" is genuine. The letter arrived with half of a kidney when it was sent to George Lusk on October 15, 1888. The letters were misplaced, thus extinguishing one more lead that could have helped solve the mystery.

Alexander's library might have had the biggest collection of works in the world. It included more than 500,000 ancient texts from Assyria, Egypt, Greece, India, and Persia. Although the blame for destroying the Library falls on fire, the actual cause is unknown. Some claim the Romans destroyed it, while others attribute it to religious motives.

These jewels were created in 1783 with a total of 394 stones. The origins of the stones varied, with some coming from Turkey and Mughal rulers. They were stolen from Dublin castle in 1907. It is unknown who stole them, but some believe it was Francis Shackleton, brother of Ernest Shackleton.

Polish Princess Izabela Czartoryska assembled the "royal casket," or collection of items from the former ruling royal dynasties, in 1800. It contained jewels of the royal family and other riches. The royal coffin was taken by Nazi Germany after it invaded Poland in September 1939. The contents of the coffin are now gone.

Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who worked from 1571 to 1610, produced the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence in 1609. The picture got stolen from a chapel in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, in 1969, and it's still unknown who took it. A replica was created and unveiled in 2015.

The trophy was initially given out at the first World Cup in 1930 and was handed from one champion to another every four years. After Brazil won the competition for the third time in 1970, they were given the trophy and allowed to keep it. Unfortunately, the cup was stolen in 1983 and disappeared from the public eye.

The 1906 Australian movie Story of the Kelly Gang was the first full-length motion picture ever made. The movie gained considerable prominence due to rising crimes. More criminal activity increased in the neighborhood as a result. Sadly, it was never correctly saved. A portion of it was made public thanks to fragment discoveries.

Chaucer only completed writing roughly a fourth of the stories (24 of the 100, to be exact) he intended to include before passing away. Some of those stories were still in pieces when he passed away. Since there are a lot of variations of the stories, it is not clear how the original narrative should go.

This magnificent tapestry, 230 feet long and 165 feet tall, was created in the 11th century. The Norman conquest of England was displayed on it. The tapestry was split up in 1792 and used as a military resource to cover up wagons. When historians tried to put it together, parts were missing, thus a narrative couldn’t be completely assembled.

Nazi authorities seized the Portrait of a Young Man artwork from a gallery, wanting to display it in the planned Linz Art Gallery. The picture was last spotted in Hans Frank's cottage in Neuhaus on the shore of Lake Schliersee, Germany, in January 1945. No one knows the whereabouts of this artwork.

The Italian artist Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni created the marble sculpture "Mask of a Faun," which has half-human and half-goat characteristics. When German forces took it from Castello di Poppi, a fortress in Tuscany, in 1944, it was misplaced and disappeared. The mask's current location is unclear.

The old mythological event where the god Jupiter seduces Leda, the queen of Sparta, is shown in Michaelangelo's work Leda and the Swan. Although it is unknown precisely how Michelangelo's picture disappeared, one theory is that at some point in the last 500 years, some people found its sexual content too much and destroyed it.

The Hebrew Bible describes the Ark of the Covenant as a chest with tablets bearing the 10 Commandments. The chest was stored in a Jerusalem temple that was allegedly constructed by King Solomon. The fate of the Ark of the Covenant is unknown (unless you saw Indiana Jones), and information about its whereabouts have long been lost.