The Goldsmith – Jeweler Of Egypt

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

1. The Goldsmith’s Shop

Prefaced by the first groping efforts of primitive man toward personal adornment, comes the story of gems and jewelry as developed by civilization. This story begins in Egypt, because it is there that we find the oldest of all records concerning the making of jewelry. That record is to be found on the stone wall of an oblong room, the chapel chamber of an ancient tomb.

The chapel chamber is but one of many flat, oblong structures which surround the pyramids of Gizeh. It was the custom in ancient Egypt to provide the dead of high estate with a room to which the departed spirit might return each day to find the necessities, amusements and various interests which concerned him during life. For those things which could not be supplied in concrete form, pictures were substituted. From floor to ceiling, the inside walls of a chapel chamber were covered with rich murals, carved in low relief and painted in colors—which have in many cases remained unfaded through nearly fifty centuries.

These pictures are like some moment of arrested time: they convey to us, far better than history written in words, the manner of life and the industries which occupied the Egyptians of that period.

Most pertinent to our subject is a certain panel which shows the interior of a jeweler’s shop where work is in full swing, master and apprentices all earnestly engaged in making jewelry. The master weighs out precious stones on scales amazingly like those in use today. Near him stands the scribe who keeps the accounts. Six workers kneel before a small clay furnace and keep the fire glowing with their long blowpipes. Four apprentices beat gold into thin leaves, while still others hammer and solder gold, forming it into fine jewelry. One man, seated on a low bench, fashions an elaborate collar, and another grinds and polishes bits of sky blue turquoise for inlay work.

Perhaps the pictured jewelry shop was intended to provide a fresh supply of ornaments of gold and precious stones whenever needed by the spirit of the nobleman whose tomb it decorated. For, according to Egyptian belief, pictures and symbols took on the properties of real things by virtue of magical formulae recited over them as part of the funeral rites.

Fortunately for us, however, the jewelry that decorated a mummy was real and tangible; and it is due to the ancient custom of adorning the dead with jewels that many beautiful specimens have come down to us.

Among modern jewels there is an equivalent for most of the ancient jewelry. We have rings, bracelets, brooches, girdles, earrings, crowns, coronets; but the Egyptians had certain characteristic forms of jeweled ornament for which we have no equivalent. For example, the pectoral, which is found on nearly all mummies. It was a breast ornament, worn suspended from the neck by a ribbon or chain. Its design represented various deities, a kind of portable shrine for the gods. Many pectorals were made of bronze and covered over with thin gold leaf, but the finest were of pure gold, sometimes inlaid with lapis, carnelian and turquoise. And the beauty of Egyptian princesses and ladies of high degree was enhanced by a particularly becoming head-dress, nothing even, remotely approaching which is to be found in the jeweler’s shop of today. Often worn over a wig, which was arranged in a multitude of small braids, the head-dress itself might be said to take the form of an outer wig, fitting closely to the crown of the head and falling loosely in long flexible strings of gold beads or jeweled medallions over the shoulders. A gold head-band held it in place.

Very regal the princess must have looked when she donned this gorgeous wig-covering, and considering the tropical climate of Egypt, it must have taken Spartan courage to wear first the opulent wig and then all that weight of metal on top of it. But judging from the stunning effect of these curious head-dresses, even as displayed on artificial heads at the Metropolitan Museum, the game was worth the candle, which is not always the case when discomfort is the price of fashion.

By way of contrast Queen Nefertiti (of somewhat later date), as represented by her portrait head, is wigless. Her high crown is blue, and around it is a band of gold inset with precious stones. About her throat is the rich usekh collar—a wide collar-shaped necklace especially typical of Egyptian jewelry. It is found on nearly all mummies and painted on all mummy cases.

In early days of a jeweler was not only a highly skilled craftsman who made ornaments for personal adornment, he was also a goldsmith and an engraver of metals for any purpose. In fact, his craft was so inclusive as to cover all branches of decoration calling for the use of metals and gems. For the king, the Egyptian jeweler made such ornaments as magnificent bracelets composed of alternate plaques as hammered gold and engraved turquoise, or spiral bracelets of twisted bands of gold; but he also made emblems of royal authority—wonderful scepters of gold and sard. Even the king’s chariot had to be overlaid with sheets of gold and adorned with stone inlay. All these things were tasks for the goldsmith-jeweler.

For the adornment of the queen he made jewels richly engraved and delicately wrought, and he also made the jewel-cases to contain them. Her vanity box of filigree gold, shaped like a shell, her perfume caskets, and whatever receptacles she required for the unguents and paints employed in her elaborate art of make-up were fashioned by the versatile goldsmith.

The use of precious metals and gemstones was not as limited as it is today, but often spread itself lavishly wherever ornament was desired. Vases were shaped from gold and inlaid with turquoise; and furniture shone gorgeous with gold and lapis lazuli, which is a beautiful ultramarine stone frequently flecked with metallic specks ‘like to the serene blue heavens fretted with fire’.

Now to us, the rich and elaborate Egyptian jewelry, apart from its archaeological interest, is simply beautiful ornament. But to those who made and to those who wore that ancient jewelry much of it carried another value, one with which we must reckon if we are fully to understand and appreciate the work of the goldsmith of that day. His designs, for the most part, were not merely arbitrary—they were symbolic; and the symbols, according to popular belief, exercised a magic power in behalf of the wearer. Over and over again we find the lotus flower, the falcon, the scarab, or some Egyptian deity wrought in gold and precious stones, each one of which was an emblem held to exert some particular influence over daily life. The Egyptians, however, were not the first to wear gems as ornaments, nor were they the first to invest their ornaments with powers of magic.

The Goldsmith – Jeweler Of Egypt (continued)