Gold jewelry in Ancient Near East

Course Description: This course looks at jewelry throughout history and from around the world. We will explore aesthetics, design, materials, and production techniques across cultures. We will investigate the role of adornment in conveying gender and identity, and also consider cultural perspectives of jewelry as sacred and magical. Prerequisite(s): N/A Co-requisite(s): N/A Learning Goals: Students who successfully complete this course will develop the visual skills and critical vocabulary for identifying, describing, and contextualizing works of jewelry representative of diverse world cultures. Students will develop a critical, interdisciplinary approach to jewelry, incorporating art historical, anthropological, fashion, and identity theory. We will study jewelry, itself, as a primary resource, considering individual elements of jewelry and their incorporation into dress ensembles. In addition, we will consider the representation of jewelry elements and ensembles in art, literature, and contemporary media to better understand its roles in various culture.

The present surface of an ancient gold object, typically matt and often purer than the underlying metal, will not always reflect the originally intended appearance. The two variables are colour and texture. Colour could be controlled by choice of alloy (extreme varieties such as red copper/gold alloys are less common after the
Bronze Age) or by surface treatments including etching to enrich the surface. Texture ranged from a bright shiny surface - naturally resulting from the soldering and other processes used or deliberately produced by abrasive polishing or burnishing - to a matt surface caused by chemical etching or, in theory, coarser abrasion. The processes used were often limited by the nature
of the object, for example a granulated Etruscan ornament could not be burnished. This chapter considers the evidence, which although limited so far, tends to suggest that ancient gold jewellery was more often intended to be bright and shiny than its present appearance might suggest.

This study of items of adornment articles excavated between 1988 and 1990 from the Nimrud tombs in Iraq illuminates the multicultural aspects and imperial implications of Neo-Assyrian royal dress during the eight and ninth centuries BCE. These spectacular finds also attest to the significance of royal women as embodiments of imperial fashion and, in turn, of the empire itself. The adornment ensembles incorporated elements of different styles, which I categorize as “Royal Assyrian,” “Near Eastern,” “Intercultural,” and “Composite. Just as the Neo-Assyrian palace asserted imperialism through quotations of and allusions to foreign culture, these categories of royal fashion would have contributed to the rhetoric of imperialism as they, too, materialized imperial networks of power and diplomacy.

This paper aims to present a preliminary and synthetic overview
of the manufacture of gold jewellery in Syria during the
Bronze Age. Although the topic also gives opportunities to
discuss socio-cultural questions from multidisciplinary perspectives,
I have mainly focused the attention on Syrian
craftsmanship innovation of gold technology. Techniques of
production, decoration, and soldering will be described
mostly thanks to experimental reconstructions of processes
and objects, microscopic investigation of archaeological
gold objects I was able to examine before the beginning of
the Syrian Revolution, and the documentation I am describing
in my PhD dissertation.

Through an analysis of the ninth- to eighth-century B.C.E. mortuary assemblages from the Queens’ Tombs of Nimrud’s Northwest Palace in Iraq, this paper interprets dress elements and ensembles in terms of identity and ideology. The Queens’ Tombs offer the only in situ evidence for royal Neo-Assyrian female dress. The finds, which have never before been studied as comprehensive ensembles, correspond to the few surviving images of Neo-Assyrian queens and greatly expand our evidence for the manner in which a queen’s ideal appearance was constructed and embodied. Considering dress in death, as well as in life and the afterlife, this paper proposes a standard, but flexible, queenly ensemble. To facilitate analyses, I present a figural model, based on an aggregation of archaeological, art historical, and literary evidence for ideal royal women. I then analyze the dress elements and ensembles as expressions of courtly, queenly, and individual identity. Finally, I interpret queenly dress as an ideological mechanism that manifested imperial power through its materials, style, and iconography. Overall, this article aims to provide a new foundation for more thoroughly integrating the visual and material presence of queens into interpretations of the Neo-Assyrian court and its eternally conceived universe.

Dante Alighieri is praised as both a poet and a theologian for the poignant imagery evoked by his use of
metaphors; in particular, during the Pilgrim’s ascent towards God in Paradiso, his use of symbolism,
figurative language, and metaphorical imagery are indispensable tools in his difficult task as a Poet of
articulating an experience that transcended his human vision, memory, and language. A particularly
striking and largely unexplored recurrence of thematic imagery lies in his use of precious metals and
gemstones throughout the Commedia.
Having sifted through the Commedia and curated and synthesized a selection of passages that make
reference to precious metals and gemstones, certain patterns of Dante’s use of gemstone imagery
have become discernible: concentrations of rubies in Paradiso, especially when describing angels and
blessed souls, a stronger presence of emeralds in Purgatorio, and a notable absence of precious gems
as a descriptor of beauty in Inferno. Dante’s choice and placement of gemstones and metals was
evidently not arbitrary, and was likely informed by the writings of scholars and saints whom he
respected and emulated, many of whom wrote of the medicinal and spiritual properties of various
metals and precious stones.
The Commedia has had a lasting impact on artists, poets, and thinkers throughout the ages, and this
paper will consider a couple of contemporary jewelry makers and the influence Dante had on their art.
Through the analysis of Dante’s texts, with emphasis on the Commedia, historical context, and the
earlier works of literature, scripture, and mythology that influenced the Poet, including Albertus
Magnus, Gregory the Great, and Hildegard von Bingen, we aim to better understand the theological
and literary significance of this striking imagery and symbolism, and formulate connections between
Dante and his relevance in modern goldsmithing, theology, and art.

Donna Distefano Thomas
Master Goldsmith
Independent Scholar

Surely, ‘money is one of the most timeless, all-pervading, and arbitrary inventionsin human history’ (Haselgrove and Krmnicek 2012, 235), yet it is possible to differentiate three different stages of monetary use and the estimation of value. Exchange is considered as the key to assessing the precise value of commodities. Hence it is of primary importance to understand how exchange was conducted. During the first stage, which began at an uncertain date within the Stone Age, various substances were considered as valuables and could have functioned as some form of currency, yet their range was limited by many factors, not least by social constraints. This was still very much the case during the Copper Age, even if metals now offered new and fantastic possibilities for defining value and creating money. On present evidence it cannot
be established whether objects standardised by size (aes formatum) existed on a large scale at this period. A relationship between value and mass was apparently not yet established. Only in the Bronze Age did the invention of weights and scales enable such a nexus, marking the second stage. This step created a highly precise medium for exchange, as a method of payment and a standard of value. Metal was clearly now a currency. These innovations were more revolutionary than the appearance of coins in the Iron Age, the threshold of the third stage of fundamental monetary developments.

"The Phoenician tomb discovered in Kition in 1998 yielded some of the most impressive gold jewellery items recovered by archaeological excavations in Cyprus. Seal finger-rings, lunate earrings, necklace pendants, bracelets and a richly decorated elbow fibula exemplify the goldsmith’s skill in the 8th-7th century BC. The aim of this work is to describe and illustrate the goldsmith’s techniques with low magnification micrographs and to determine the variety in composition of the gold alloys used in the manufacture of 25 items.  The study, integrated in the European project AUTHENTICO, was carried out at the National Museum of Archaeology of Nicosia with a portable video camera equipped with a zoom and a handheld XRF spectrometer.
"

In the works of the last decades, a whole range of categories of the burial inventory of nomads of Asian Sarmatia of the 2nd–1st centuries BC is considered, which had no prototypes in the material culture of the preceding time and which are regarded as Eastern innovations and are associated with the movement of a number of nomadic groups from the north-western borders of China to the west, first to Central Asia, where the Greco-Bactrian kingdom fell under their blows, and then further west up to the Lower Volga region.
The analysis of archaeological materials conducted in this paper does not give grounds to speak about the distribution of items of South Siberian (Transbaikalian) origin in the burials of the nomads of Asian Sarmatia. At the same time, it is obvious that in some burials of the Lower Volga region, dating in frames of the late 2nd – 1st centuries BC, there are certain artefacts, as a rule, of status appearance (massive gold jewelry: torcs and bracelets, belt plates), mostly with losses and traces of primitive ancient repair, which can be considered as items brought by nomads from Central Asia. One cannot, however, exclude the role of intertribal marriages of the elite nomads in the distribution of such things, especially since at least some of them in the Volga region were found precisely in the female burial no. 8 of the Burial-mound No. 55/1954 near the village of Kalinovka.
In some cases, it is possible to speak about certain Eastern influences in the execution of belt buckles, similar to certain extent to the remote prototypes from Mongolia and Transbaikalia.
In general, there is every reason to suggest the migration of some group (groups) of nomads from Central Asia to the steppes of the Lower Volga region and their possible participation in the events connected with the fall of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom.
Judging by the number of items examined in this article, the number of migrants was not significant, which is consistent with the observations of other researchers, based on an analysis of the burial rite. I will note that for the time in question there are only rare examples of artefacts, which moved from west to east (probably also through the Eurasian steppes). However, there are no grounds to consider the movement of the above mentioned objects from east to west and from west to east as a reflection of economic relations along the Silk Road, as I have already stated elsewhere.

В работах последних десятилетий рассматривается целый ряд категорий инвентаря погребений кочевников Азиатской Сарматии II–I вв. до н.э., не имеющих прототипов в материальной культуре предшествующего времени, которые рассматриваются как восточные инновации и связываются с уходом ряда кочевых группировок от северо-западных границ Китая на запад вначале в Среднюю Азии, где под их ударами пало Греко-Бактрийское царство, а затем и далее на запад вплоть до Нижнего Поволжья.
Проведенный в работе анализ археологических материалов не дает оснований говорить о попадании изделий южно-сибирского (забайкальского) происхождения в погребения кочевников Азиатской Сарматии. Вместе с тем, очевидно, что в некоторых погребениях Нижнего Поволжья, датирующихся в рамках конца II – I в. до н.э., встречаются отдельные предметы, как правило, статусного облика (массивные золотые украшения: гривны и браслеты, поясные пластины), в большинстве своем с утратами и со следами древнего кустарного ремонта, которые можно рассматривать как предметы, привезенные кочевниками из Центральной Азии. Нельзя, впрочем, исключать и роль межплеменных браков элиты кочевников в распространении таких вещей, тем более что, по крайней мере, часть из них в Поволжье была найдена именно в женском погребении № 8 кургана № 55/1954 у с. Калиновка.
В некоторых случаях можно также говорить об определенных восточных влияниях в оформлении поясных пряжек, чем-то похожих на отдаленные прототипы из Монголии и Забайкалья.
В целом есть все основания для предположения о миграции какой-то группы (групп) кочевников из Центральной Азии в степи Нижнего Поволжья и их возможном участии в событиях, связанных с падением Греко-бактрийского царства. Судя по количеству предметов, рассмотренных в этой статье, число мигрантов не была значительным, что соответствует и наблюдениям других исследователей, основанных на анализе погребального обряда. Замечу, что для рассматриваемого времени имеются лишь редчайшие примеры того, как вещи попадали с запада на восток (вероятно, также через евразийские степи). Однако, рассматривать перемещение указанных выше предметов с востока на запад и с запада на восток как отражение экономических связей по Шелковому пути, как я уже отмечал в других работах, не приходится.

This book addresses the question of what function gold objects had in the Middle and Late Bronze Age states of Syria and the Northern Levant, how gold objects evolved formally and stylistically over time, and how the gold assemblages were contextualised and composed. One focus of the study is on the objects from the Middle Bronze Age 'Tomb VII' of Qatna, which are presented in their entirety for the first time in this volume. In addition, gold assemblages from other Middle and Late Bronze Age sites in the Syrian-North Levantine region are examined with regard to their composition and parallels between the sites. Textual sources relating to gold from Syria and the Northern Levant are analysed in contrasting detail in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the use of gold objects in the Middle and Late Bronze Age states of Syria and the Northern Levant.

An underwater survey at the ancient anchorage of Yavneh-Yam, located on the southern Mediterranean coast of Israel, has revealed remnants of a sunken cargo dated to the Late Bronze Age. The cargo includes a small collection of objects composed of whole and broken down gold jewelry and scrap, in addition to a collection of small stone weights suggesting that it was the stock-in-trade of a Canaanite merchant that plied the eastern Mediterranean waters. The gold and the weights appear to represent means of payment that were commonly known and in use throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages in the southern Levant. DOI:10.2458/azu_jaei_v07i2_golani

M.Ю. Трейстер, Ахеменидские ювелирные украшения и украшения
костюма из драгоценных металлов из Южного Приуралья. Изделия ахеменидского круга и местные подражания. Произведения постахеменидской традиции //
M.Ю. Трейстер и Л.Т.Яблонский (ред.). Влияния ахеменидской культуры в Южном Приуралье (V–III вв. до н.э.). Т. 1. М., 2012, 134–167.

The Egyptian presence in the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age is to
be considered as rooted and capillary on the territory. Nevertheless, by
excluding some written sources as the Letters of el-Amarna, it is practically
impossible to evaluate local perceptions and representations of who populated
the region during this period. In fact, Southern Levant presents an extreme lack
of human depictions and iconographies, thus Egyptian direct witnesses become
very useful to provide a vivid picture of society and its prominent historical
protagonists.