Alcune perle di vetro - rinvenute in una molto singolare sepoltura danese dell'età del Bronzo - sono risultate (all'analisi spettrofotometrica) identiche ad alcune perle Egiziane che il Faraone Tutankamon portò con sé nella tomba nel 1323 a.C.
Ciò permette di ipotizzare che - parallelamente al commercio in direzione Nord-Sud dell'Ambra - esistesse un concomitante e contemporaneo (1400- 1100 a.C.) commercio in direzione Sud-Nord delle perle di vetro.
Ambedue i materiali - ambra e vetro - posseggono la proprietà fisica di lasciarsi attraversare dalla luce del sole, illuminandosene.
Proprio questo fatto potrebbe far pensare che siano entrambi materiali legati al Culto del Sole e che non sia stato solamente un motivo affettivo - bensì anche una credenza religiosa - che ha fatto di quei monili non semplici decorazioni dei vivi, ma anche oggetti da portarsi
perfino nella tomba, per garantirsi un viaggio nel sole dell'Aldilà...
Una scoperta interessantissima e curiosa, ma che certamente non cambierà la Storia come noi la conosciamo, almeno fino a che qualcuno che sa non verrà a raccontarci che questo commercio era tenuto in piedi da guerrieri invincibili, che possedevano una loro scrittura, etc etc...
Danish Bronze Age glass beads traced to Egypt
An international collaboration between Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, and Institut de Recherche sur les Archéomatériaux (IRAMAT) at Orléans, France, has resulted in a sensational discovery about the trade routes between Denmark and the ancient civilisations in Egypt and Mesopotamia in the Bronze Age 3,400 years ago.
The discovery also gives us new knowledge about the sun cult in the Nordic Bronze Age.
Above: The women from the Ølby site. The site was excavated in 1880 by Sophus Müller. Next to the woman's left arm was a blue glass bead (from Egypt), two amber beads, and two small bronze spirals; Below: Hesselagergård-pit excavated 1878-81. On the neck lay a blue (Egyptian) glass bead and five amber beads
[Credit: ScienceNordic]
Archaeologists Jeanette Varberg from Moesgaard Museum and Flemming Kaul from the National Museum, and Bernard Gratuze, director of IRAMAT, analysed the composition of some blue glass beads found on buried Bronze Age women in Denmark.
The analyses revealed that the glass originate from the same glass workshops in Egypt that supplied the glass that the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun took with him to his grave in 1323 BC.
The study was recently published in SKALK.
Globalisation in the Bronze Age
Twenty-three glass beads from Denmark were analysed using plasma-spectrometry. Without destroying the fragile beads, this technique makes it possible to compare the chemical composition of trace elements in the beads with reference material from Amarna in Egypt and Nippur in Mesopotamia, about 50 km south east of Baghdad in Iraq.
The comparison showed that the chemical composition of the two sets of trace elements
match.
The analyses of the Danish glass beads (•), here zirconium / titanium and chrome compared with analytical results from Egypt (orange) and Mesopotamia (purple).
A similar split pattern resulted from the examination of other elements such as cobalt and boron
[Credit: ScienceNordic]
The researchers' first object for comparison was a bead from a wealthy woman's grave at Ølby, about 40 km south of Copenhagen. The woman had been buried in a more extravagant fashion, lying in a hollowed-out oak trunk and wearing a beautiful belt disc, a smart string skirt with tinkling, shining small bronzes tubes, and an overarm bracelet made of amber beads, and a single blue glass bead.
Two early Mesopotamian gems found in Denmark
[Credit: Denmark National Museum]
The glass bead turned out to be Egyptian.
This is the first time that typical Egyptian cobalt glass has been discovered outside the Mediterranean area.
The archaeologists can now also substantiate that there is a connection between the amber beads and the glass beads.
These 44 turquoise beads were found in a Bronze Age urn in 1885
[Credit: ScienceNordic]
It has been known for a long time that amber was exported in the Bronze Age from Nordic latitudes and southwards.
Tutankhamun and other Egyptian pharaohs had large amber chains in boxes in their burial chambers.
Now the researchers are linking amber and glass together in an unexpected way.
Nordic and Egyptian sun cults traded goods
One property that both glass and amber have is that sunlight penetrates their surface. It appears that glass and amber beads have been found together on sites from the Middle East, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Germany to the Nordic latitudes.
The archaeologists believe this could be proof of a link between the Egyptian sun cult and the Nordic sun cult.
Among the eight main head-rests in Tutankhamun's tomb was one made of blue glass with gold foil around the edge
[Credit: ScienceNordic]
When a Danish woman in the Bronze Age took a piece of jewellery made of amber and blue glass with her to the grave, it constituted a prayer to the sun to ensure that she would be re-united with it and share her fate with the sun's on its eternal journey.
The old amber route to the countries in the Mediterranean thus now has a counterpart: the glass route to the North.
So far, the researchers have shown that there was a trade connection to Egypt and Mesopotamia in the years 1400-1100 BC.
Finding out whether the route continued in the later Bronze Age is a future task for the Danish-French research team.
Authors: Jeanette Varberg, Flemming Kaul & Bernard Gratuze | Source: ScienceNordic [December 07, 2014]
