ANCIENT GOLD
Gold is Zeus’s child, nothing erodes or consumes it. It conquers the mind of man and is the most powerful of possessions.-Pindar, Olympian Odes IThe first person to put gold on his fingers committed the worst crime against human life. There is no record, however, of who this was
.-Pliny the Elder, Natural Histories
Gold was a precious commodity in antiquity, and most gold jewelry was painstakingly assembled from thin sheets that were worked with wood, bronze, and stone tools. In order to make wire, they twisted sheet gold into a tube and rolled it between flat surfaces. The wires could be used for filigrees or combined to make a ropelike design. Granulation, another common technique, involved welding grains of gold onto a surface.
TREASURE FROM AMPHIPOLIS
This group of jewelry is thought to come from a single tomb near Amphipolis, one of the principal cities of ancient Macedonia. Though all the jewelry was produced in the Hellenistic period, the wide range of dates (the 4th to 1st centuries BC) suggests that the tomb was used by several generations of the same family.
Hellenistic Period Myrtle Wreath
Greek (Macedonian)
3rd century BC
Gold, garnet, carnelian
Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund
65.43.1
Pair of Diadems
Greek (Northern Greece)
Pair of Diadems
ca. 300 BC
Gold
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund
87.79.1-2
Gold Wreath (Primary Title)
Late 4th–Early 3rd centuries BC
Etruscan
Gold
2020.175
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