The cradle of the goldsmith's
art was the Sumerian civilisation which flourished in the fertile plain between
the rivers Euphrates and Tigris just north of Basra in modern Iraq. They consolidated
their homes and villages into larger, better-organised communities, mini-city
states, on the banks of the rivers. Then they traded their wheat or barley up
and downstream for other goods, including gold. Thus, in what the Greeks later
called Mesopotamia, The Land Between the Rivers, the Sumerian people flourished
from 4000 BC for almost 2000 years. Their cities, Uruk, Larsa, Umma and Ur, had
a network of streets and well-organised society. They pioneered cuneiform writing
on clay tablets the size of a postcard, and wrote poetry. Their craftsmanship
with wood, stone, ivory, semi-precious stones and, above all, gold was astonishing.
The evidence is before us at the British
Museum in London, the University Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and,
nearer its origins, at the Baghdad Museum in Iraq. Gold cups, helmets, bracelets,
garlands and chains of delicate workmanship are now on display that reveal an
exceptional understanding of how to exploit gold's malleability, ductility and
resilience. "Sumerian jewellery fulfilled practically all the functions which
were to occur during the course of history," the jewellery historian Guido
Gregorietti observed. "In fact, there were more different types of jewellery
than there are today."
After the Sumerians wrote the opening chapter in the history of gold, mastery
of the metal subsequently spread out through a crescent of early civilisations,
between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean to Assyria and Babylonia, onwards
through Anatolia (modern Turkey) to the city-state of Troy, southwards to Egypt,
westwards to Minoan Crete and Mycenæ
in mainland Greece, and ultimately to the Etruscans
in Italy. But the Sumerians showed the way ahead.
Sumer itself did not have gold; that was traded down the Euphrates and Tigris
rivers from the interior of Asia, where alluvial
gold gleamed in the rivers of Anatolia and across the Black Sea in southern
Russia (whither Jason and his Argonauts from Greece later went in search of the
'golden fleece' - sheepskins were used to catch gold particles in streams).
The veil over Sumer was lifted in 1922 by the archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley
in a joint expedition for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania,
which spent 11 years excavating the 'Royal Tombs' at Ur. Under a heap of rubble,
Woolley located 16 royal tombs, built at the base of deep pits. In each pit were
neat rows of bodies, not just the elite Sumerian society, but women harpists and
female attendants to accompany them on their journey to another world. They seemed
to have been poisoned or drugged, for there was no sign of violence.
The tombs were also the great repository of early Sumerian wealth and artistry,
dating from 2800-2370 BC. The treasures included a golden helmet of great elegance,
decorated in impeccable embossed technique, with its crown crinkling like the
hair in a wig (Baghdad Museum, Iraq). Nearby, was a bull's head of delicate gold
foil attached to the sound box of a harp (University Museum, Philadelphia) and
a wonderful sculpture depicting a goat or ram caught in a tree, made of foil,
shell and lapis lazuli over a wood core (British Museum, London). One tomb held
the body of a woman named Pu-abi, resting on a wooden bier. She had ten rings
of gold and lapis lazuli, with a golden cup nearby. Her female attendants had
garlands of willow leaves made of gold foil in their hair, and gold vessels and
jewellery abounded.
The treasures reveal how well the Sumerian goldsmiths understood working with
gold. They used different alloys,
and cast cold either solid or hollow ornaments. Using the lost-wax
technique, they chased veins on leaves or grooves on beads. Jugs or cups could
be beaten into shape from a flat sheet of gold, using sophisticated heat treatment.
They beat gold into thin foil or ribbon. "Sumerian work is flavoured with
amazing sophistication … delicacy of touch, fluency of line, a general elegance
of conception," wrote jewellery expert Graham Hughes. "All suggest that
the goldsmiths' craft emerged almost fully fledged in early Mesopotamia."
See also: library/history
and library/jewellery.