The oldest pieces of wrought jewelry in the world are four bracelets made of cast gold, turquoise, amethyst and lapis. For 5,000 years they lay on the arm of the dead Egyptian Queen Zer, (Djer) wife of the third King of the first dynasty. When her tomb at Abydos in southern Egypt was excavated in 1901 by the English archeologist Sir Flinders Petie, they were as bright and pretty as the day they were enclosed in her tomb. The skill and workmanship used to make these four bracelets shows that the jewelers and lapidary arts were highly advanced 5,000 years ago and must have been a very old art then.
From time beyond history the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians showed an artistic craftsmanship that produced superior flint handaxes, arrowheads, and knives that were more refined and reached a level of sharpness, finish and precision unequalled by any other neolithic culture known. Some of their flint knives were chipped with a most extraordinary care and have a serrated edge so minute as to hardly be visible to the naked eye. They are among the most beautiful products of the flint knapper.
Jewelry making was an important art and a major industry in ancient Egypt. Gold was plentiful and so was agate, carnelian, turquoise, amethyst, garnet and jasper. Lapis lazuli had to be imported. All the colored semiprecious gemstones were highly valued by the Egyptians. Jewelers had reached by the time of the 12th dynasty, a level of skill that has never been exceeded. Some of their techniques remain mysteries and are lost to the world forever.
Both sexes loved ornaments and covered neck, breasts, arms, wrists and ankles with jewelry. As the nation fattened on the tribute from Asia jewelry ceased to be restricted to the aristocracy and became a passion with all classes. Every scribe and merchant had his seal of silver or gold or engraved carnelian, every man and woman wore rings and the women gold ornamental chains. About the time of the 18th dynasty earrings because the rage and everyone had to have their ears pierced for them, not only girls and women but boys and men as well.
Jewelry was invented and developed in Egypt to beautify and enhance the femininity of their women. The Egyptians also invented and developed all the beauty aids that are still used today to glorify their ladies. Faces were rouged, lips were painted, nails were colored, hair was dyed with henna. Their eyes were painted with green malachite, the eyebrows and lashes painted with black manganese pyrolusite. They used seven creams and two kinds of rouge. They had mirrors, razors, hair curlers, hair pins, combs, cosmetic boxes, dishes and spoons made of wood, ivory or alabaster designed in delightful and appropriate forms. The kohl that women use today for painting the eyebrows and lashes is a lineal descendant of the oil used by the Egyptians: it has come down through the Arabs whose word for it, al kohl, has given us our word alcohol.
Perfumes of all sorts were used on the body. The women of ancient Egypt could learn very little from us in the matter of cosmetics and jewelry if they were reincarnated among us today. Children of both sexes went naked till their teens except for earrings and necklaces; the girls however showed a modesty by wearing a single strand of beads around the waist. Grown men and women went naked to their navel and wore only a short tight skirt of white linen.
The Egyptian jewelers made magnificent necklaces, bracelets and crowns, setting polished colored gemstone in gold with fantastically beautiful color combinations. They interlaced and wove gold wire into dainty filigree, set with bright colored polished gemstones. Ingenious clasps were fashioned that fitted the precision and looked like lotus and cowrie shells.
Bracelets and arm bands were fastened with clever sliding pins and latches. Equally delicate jewel boxes were made to hold these luxuries – some of ivory and alabaster, others of ebony and colored wood inlays attest to the remarkable skill.
Egyptian cabinet makers were the world’s finest craftsmen. They were masters at joining and veneering; at inlaying with faience, ivory, cloisonné, ebony and semiprecious colored gemstones; and overlaying with molded gold, silver and copper. The relics of Tutankhamun’s tomb have revealed the astonishing luxury of Egyptian furniture, the exquisite finish of every piece and part, beds of sumptuous workmanship and design. There were exquisite specimens of thrones, canopies, carrying-chairs, coffins chariots, cabinets and cosmetic boxes. The jewelers and lapidary craftsmen furnished costly vessels of gold and silver, optical quartz crystal goblets and sparkling bowls of diorite so finely ground that the light shown through their stone walls. The alabaster carvings and cups were elegant. The jewelers filled the tomb with a profusion of precious ornaments seldom surpassed in design and workmanship. Necklaces, crowns, rings, bracelets, pectorals, gold chained medallions, gold and silver. There were carnelian and green feldspar, lapis lazuli and turquoise, everything was in his tomb. Tutankhamun’s coffin was solid gold and weighed 2,300 pounds and was inlayed with turquoise, carnelian and lapis lazuli.
Jewelry was worn in ancient Egypt for three reasons: for personal adornment, to denote rank and insignia of office and as a charm or amulet to protect the wearer from the harm of evil spirits and to bring good luck and good fortune.
The Gods too, had their jewelry. Every shrine sheltered the statue of Gods which had to have a change of raiment including jewelry as part of the daily ritual of service. The temple magazines held impressive quantities of jewels which have long since been looted.
Most of the magnificently beautiful and colorful pieces of jewelry were made for the Pharaohs to wear in life. When the Pharaoh died, his mummy was smothered in loads of the finest jewelry. Royal tombs because tremendously rich in the finest jewelry. Only a small fraction of this great hoard of jewelry remains today in different museums. The most, was lost forever to the impious and rapacious tomb robbers who hacked the royal mummies part with axes to strip them of their jewels. This beautiful and exotic jewelry is as much a part of these gifted people as the stunning accomplishment of the great Pyramid.
METHODS & MATERIALS The ancient Egyptian goldsmiths and lapidaries were the first to invent practically all the methods used to make jewelry as we know it today. The only modern improvements over their ancient methods is probably motor driven tools, carborundum grinding and polishing wheels and diamond bladed rock saws. The ancient Egyptian goldsmith and lapidary would feel perfectly at home at any rock club meeting. He was well acquainted with all the common minerals we know of today and how to make them into beautiful jewelry. Egypt never developed the art of faceting stone. Egyptian jewelry was made up of a combination of gold set with colored semiprecious gemstones.
GOLD. Gold was the principal metal Egyptian jewelry was fashioned from. Egypt was fortunate in having within its boundaries, immense deposits of gold, the richest by far in the ancient world. But it had to import silver and iron from Asia, also a natural white alloy of silver and gold called electrum. Modern precious metals such as platinum, rhodium and palladium were virtually unknown to the ancient world. The ancient Egyptians word for gold was nub. A goldsmith was called a nuby and the land from which the Egyptians got most of their gold was known as Nubia – the land of gold. Nubia was in southern Egypt in the ancient land of Kush, in what is now called Sudan. The gold deposits in the deserts bordering Egypt and Nubia were the largest in the ancient world, and it is probable that the techniques of extracting the metal and working it were largely Egyptian discoveries. Modern experts investigating the skill and diligence with which the ancient goldfields were exploited have reported that the Egyptians were very thorough prospectors and miners. Very little or no gold has ever been found in their waste piles. No workable deposits have been discovered that they overlooked! The jeweler’s par excellence were, of course, the goldsmiths as is the case today. It is incredible that the tools used by the goldsmiths were the simplest and most primitive kinds. Yet they fashioned the most magnificent jewelry ever created. When modern jewelry craftsmen examine ancient Egyptian jewelry, it is almost impossible for them to believe that the ancient craftsmen did not use modern tools and the materials available today. Their furnace was a simple pottery bowl upon a stand filled with glowing charcoal. Their blowpipe was a hollow reed tipped with a clay nozzle which would need to be renewed frequently. Yet even with such a crude instrument it would have been possible to raise the temperature of a metal object on a brazier to a critical point in selected areas sufficiently high to make hard solders melt and run, and even to fuse the metal being worked.
A SECRET SOLDER The ancient Egyptian goldsmiths soldered their gold work by a most clever but secret process that remained a great mystery until modern chemistry recently rediscovered and revealed the secret. They could solder dainty wire filigree and granular gold to a surface without flux or flooding the work with solder, all joints were clean and showed no solder. The Egyptian goldsmith mixed ground copper carbonate or malachite with glue. This adhesive was used to stick the grains of gold or wire into place or to coat and hold the adjacent edges of the parts to be joined. The work was then heated on the charcoal brazier with the assistance of the blow pipe on those areas which have to be raised to the highest temperatures. At 220oC. the copper carbonate or malachite changes to copper oxide; at 600oC. the adhesive has become completely carbonized and at 850oC. the carbon combines with oxygen of the copper oxide and vaporizes as carbon dioxide, leaving the merest traces of copper adhering to the gold parts. At about 880oC. a curious phenomenon occurs: the gold in contact with the copper melts to form a welded joint, well below the melting point of the gold. The process had great advantage for the ancient goldsmith. There was no decrepitation of flux to throw pellets of solder off the job and the various parts were already stuck together by the dried adhesive before the heat was applied. All that was required to be done, once the mixture has been correctly prepared and applied was to carefully heat over a bed of glowing charcoal. The beauty of this process is that the work can be subsequently reheated up, a number of times without the risk of unfastening joints that had previously been made. This process made possible the beautiful cloisonné work.
CLOISONNE The chief glory of Egyptian decorative jewelry is its cloisonné work, in which thin narrow strips of gold are bent into shape, placed on edge and soldered to the base plates so as to form cells or cloisonné. The cells are then set with inlays of colored stones, but to fit such as carnelian, turquoise, lapis lazuli or colored glass. These were cemented in position with resin mixed with powdered limestone or gypsum and applied in a molten state. The cements were often tinted to match the color of the inlay. When the inlays had all been carefully fitted, the entire face of the jewel is ready for final polish. This technique was known from the earliest dynasties. The superlative color combinations achieved with turquoise, carnelian and lapis lazuli in gold cloisonné make possible, jewelry of unsurpassed beauty, elegance and charm. Much of the staggering wealth of Tutankhamun’s burial treasure was the great hoard of amazingly beautiful cloisonné jewelry – as pendants, crowns and pectorals, etc.