(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
8. Beads For Barter
There are many people even today who consider an investment in precious stones (particularly diamonds) as one of the safest and most convenient ways of accumulating wealth. A compact fortune in the tabloid form of gems can be tucked in a small corner of one’s pocket and easily converted at need into the coin of any country. The practise of using precious stones and jewelry as a medium of exchange began before recorded history.
There is no record of any money in the world earlier than about 600 B.C. Before that time everything was bought and sold by barter, the generally accepted standard being cattle. Cattle, like well-invested funds, had the advantage of increasing, therefore cattle were satisfactory as a medium of exchange when the transaction was taking place between neighbors. But obviously cattle were difficult to transport long distances. Something valuable but easily carried was essential as a medium of exchange, and jewelry, precious stones and metals, the latter valued according to weight, fulfilled the requirements.
Perhaps, the most convenient and welcome of all substitutes for currency was beads. Beads are the Adam and Eve of the jewelry family and their countless progeny have spread over all the inhabited lands of the earth from the darkest jungles of Africa to the icebound countries of the far north. Beads were cherished in the magnificent courts of the Pharaohs, and they flourish today in the ‘five-and-tens’ of the New World.
The jeweler of ancient times seems to have delighted in seeing how many different kinds of beads he could make. There were minute carved beads, balls of amethysts, and melon-shaped beads of limpid rock crystal, pale red carnelian beads shaped like an hour-glass, and cylindrical beads of green feldspar. There were ‘crumb’ beads in which small bits of soapstone or faience were cemented together. ‘Eye’ beads with fixed stare of black-glass pupils surrounded by rings of white which protruded from the sides vied in popularity with eye-agate beads. Pendants of carnelian, lapis and green feldspar were carved in an endless variety of shapes such as locusts, birds (the hawk was a favorite), animals and figures; there were miniature vases and two-handled urns, and every bead was a symbol.
The demand for beads in Egypt did not lessen as the centuries passed. During the Eighteenth Dynasty beads and pendants by the million were being manufactured. Not only were they worn by the living, but vast quantities of them were used to decorate the dead. Sometimes woven together in patterns they quite covered the mummy like a cheerful pall.
Regardless of their lavish use at home in the Nile valley, there were still countless numbers of beads that traveled by sea into other countries. Fleets of Egyptian galleys sailed constantly across the eastern end of the Mediterranean, trading with primitive settlements that dotted the southern coast of Asia Minor. Or perhaps the merchant, using a small flat-bottomed boat, carried his jeweled ornaments and beads up the Nile into Nubia, to barter them for panther skins, ebony, ivory and ostrich feathers. The inventories of those ancient cargoes read like descriptions from the Arabian Nights.
The trade routes of early times may be traced by the beads which blazed their trails. And wherever the bead went there too, of necessity, went some wave of influence caused by the intercourse between various countries. One of the tide-marks used by the archaeologist to measure the degree of a nation’s civilization is its bead and jewelry culture.
A fresco from the tomb of an Egyptian nobleman lifts the curtain of time and gives us a glimpse of what the well-dressed Egyptian wore at a dinner party, especially in the way of jewels, for apparently the emphasis of a festive costume lay not so much in the dress as in the jewelry and accessories. The simple draperies of both men and women are quite eclipsed by enormous black wigs bound round the forehead with jeweled bands from which dangle large pendants of gold. Every one’s arms, necks, wrists, and in some cases ankles, are encircled with jewels, and from their ears hang heavy earrings. The serving maids, dispensing with all draperies whatsoever, are clad simply in wigs and jewels. As a final touch of luxurious sophistication every guest wears perched on top of his or her wig a rather sizable perfume-box shaped somewhat like a beehive.
At such a banquet as that pictured in the fresco, rings would be given to the guests as favors. These rings, made of faience, were brilliant blue in color and very perishable, but that was of no consequence since they were intended to be worn only during the festive occasion.
Egypt, however, was not permitted to continue developing her arts in peace. Many wars sapped her strength, and the land was overrun with foreigners. By 1000 B.C she was well on her way downhill and under such conditions the Egyptian goldsmith found little encouragement to develop new methods or new designs. Nevertheless, he did keep on making endless jewelry after the old patterns—there was a market for it in foreign lands, a market more widespread than ever before, because a new branch of transport was gradually coming into power. No longer did the merchant ships of Egypt herself put out to sea, but Phoenician galleys laden with spices, precious stones, and the products of Egyptian and Babylonian workshops, carried on a brisk trade with the coast settlements of Greece, Italy, Africa, Spain and Britain.
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