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Full Description
When Hesiod, the Greek poet of the eighth century B.C., recounted the history of the world as he understood it, he described the legendary first generation of mortal men, who lived in peace and ease, as the people of gold. Nearly three millennia later, we still refer to a particularly happy or prosperous era as a golden age. The reason Hesiod's metaphor translates so perfectly into our own idiom is that the mystique of gold, the quintessential precious metal, is truly universal.
The very scarcity of gold accounts for part of its allure and much of its monetary value: the total volume of gold ever mined, from prehistory to the present day, would probably fit inside a cube with sides just twenty yards (18 m) long. Yet gold's incredible material properties also contribute to its appeal. Gold does not corrode, so it never loses its brilliant luster, and it can be chased, embossed, punched, drawn into wires, hammered foil-thin, and shaped in countless other ways.
This engaging book reveals that the ways in which gold, in turn, has shaped humanity are no less numerous. Since prehistory, for example, artisans have fashioned gold into ritual objects and high-status ornaments; beginning in the sixth century B.C., gold served as currency; and even in the modern era it has encouraged wars of conquest and triggered frantic gold rushes. Each chapter is devoted to one historical epoch, explaining how people of that time mined and refined gold, and how they used it for cultural and economic purposes. Two hundred gorgeous colour photographs illustrate golden objets d'art as diverse as the funerary masks of Tutankhamen; intricate Celtic jewellery; a figurine of El Dorado, a pre-Columbian chief said to ritualistically cover his entire body in gold dust; bejewelled medieval reliquaries and crucifixes; and even Gustav Klimt's gold-drenched canvas The Kiss. With its authoritative yet lively text and these arresting illustrations, The Lure of Gold sets, as it were, the gold standard for books on material culture.
Contents
Table of Contents from: The Lure of Gold Introduction I. The Bronze Age and Early Advanced Civilizations 1. The Discovery of the "Sun Metal" in Prehistoric and Early Historical Times 2. Egypt: The Gold of the Pharaohs and Gods 3. Self-presentation and Divine Rites: The Gold Cultures of the Ancient Near East 4. Minoan Joie de Vivre and the Mycenaean Cult of Rulers II. Europe in the First Millennium 5. Greece Influences an Age beyond Its Borders 6. The Mysterious Celts and Their Fascination with Gold 7. The Etruscans: Artists and Connoisseurs 8. Rome: From the Modesty of the Republic to the Splendor of the Empire III. Great Non-European Cultures 9. Gold in the Islamic World: Between Moderation and Opulence 10. Gold for Buddha, Kings, and Emperors: Temples, Pagodas, and Insignia of Asia 11. The Discovery of the New World: The Legend of Eldorado 12. The Gleam on the Gold Coast: The Wealth of African Rulers IV. The Western World from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century 13. Treasures of the Age of Migrations and the Early Middle Ages 14. Byzantium: The Gold-Glittering Bastion of Christianity 15. The Metaphysics of Light and the Demonstration of Power: Gold in the High and Late Middle Ages 16. The Metal of Artists, Alchemists, and Kings: The Renaissance, the Baroque, and Classicism 17. Gold in the Modern Age Bibliography Index
