gems, jewelry, ancient jewelry, Egypt, gold, history of jewelry, history of rings

The instinct for personal adornment is universal, found not only in advanced civilizations but also among the most primitive peoples. There is even some debate over whether clothing or ornamentation came first as humans emerged from the “state of nature.” It also remains unclear whether the origin of ornaments lay in vanity or in a belief in their magical power to ward off evil. Regardless of these uncertainties, the innate desire for adornment—always fueled by emulation—has played a crucial role in the development of the arts. In Egypt, jewelry appears in the graves of the Badarian culture, dating to before 4000 B.C. These early ornaments are simple, often crude, with small pierced shells strung into beads, sometimes combined with colored stones or arranged into girdles made of steatite beads covered with blue glaze. Even at this early stage, Egyptians had mastered vitreous glazing, enabling the imitation of semiprecious stone beads. Between this primitive era and the rise of the dynasties around 3000 B.C., jewelry continued to consist largely of stone and glazed beads, though bangles made from shell also appeared and the use of metals began. In the early dynasties, gold became relatively common, as seen in a hollow bracelet from the tomb of King Khasekhemwy of the Second Dynasty at Abydos. During this time, the invention of faience marked a significant advance in the jeweler’s craft, making brightly colored beads and ornaments easier to produce by molding crushed quartz into shapes and coating them with the same glaze used previously on solid stone.