This is the infamous "looting bug", brought about by incompatability between ToEE and directx9.0c, which is included in windows Service Pack 2. There are a couple of things you can do. The most complicated is getting a "less" advanced version of directx, like 9.0b. You can force install this, or uninstall 9.0c first and then install 9.0b.
The easier thing to do is just download the .zip mod by Moebius from here:
http://www.jadri.com/temple.zip
Replace the temple.dll file in your TOEE folder with the temple.dll file in the .zip, then put the folders in the .zip's "data" folder into the data folder in the TOEE folder. This contains several changes, but most are corrections. You will also avoid crashes on exiting TOEE, and crashes at a certain point in the water node. Rules are corrected as well, so the game just runs better. Only real rule change is the removal of the level cap. You don't have to level up beyond level 10, however, if you don't want to.
Hope this helps. The readme file in the zip has a list of all changes.
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