BC600 Ancient Egypt Turquoise Color Faience Ceramic Proto-Glass Bracelet Jewelry

Description

Splendid, Delicate 2,500 Year Old Ancient Egyptian Turquoise Blue-Green Faience Tube Bead Bracelet – About Eight Inches.
CLASSIFICATION
: Primitive ancient Egyptian silica ceramic/glass (“faience”) tube beads. Primitive silica disc beads. Contemporary 14kt Gold Fill Memory Wire, Beads, and Ends. Sterling silver bracelets are also available upon request.
ATTRIBUTION
: Ancient Egypt, 26th Dynasty, about 7th century B.C.
SIZE
: Approximately eleven faience tube beads range between 20 and 40 millimeters (3/4 to 1 ½ inches) in length. About 3 millimeters (1/8th inch) in diameter. About twelve disc beads about 4 millimeters in diameter, about 2 millimeters in thickness. 14kt gold fill memory wire, beads, findings. Total length about eight inches.
CONDITION
: Excellent. Unbroken beads relatively intact, faience turquoise color well preserved.
DETAIL
: A bracelet of about eight inches length composed of sequentially-strung, blue-green tubular “mummybeads” constructed of faience, a primitive silica ceramic. Interspersed are disk-shaped silica beads used as accent separators. The faience beads used are premium specimens, specially selected for their color and durability. The beads are mounted onto strong 14kt gold-filled memory wire (sterling silver is available if you prefer). Of course a clasp and tab complete the bracelet so that it is easy to take on and off.
CONSTRUCTION
: Faience, a primitive form of ceramic, was the ancient forerunner of modern glass, and was used by the Ancient Egyptians as far back as 3000 B.C. to fashion various amulets, beads, and other items of personal adornment. Most amulet/necklaces were both worn on a daily basis for protection, as well as buried with the dead to afford protection in the journey from this life to the next. Some bead necklaces were purely items of personal adornment, as these might have been so worn. Faience was produced by crushing quartz mixed with copper, and made into a paste. The paste was then placed in a mold, and then fired. The quartz would fuse, and the copper would give the resulting product a color with blue and/or green hues, which was favored by the ancient Egyptians as the color of the Nile River.
CONSTRUCTION
: Faience, a primitive form of ceramic, was the ancient forerunner of modern glass, and was used by the Ancient Egyptians as far back as 3000 B.C. to fashion various amulets, beads, and other items of personal adornment. Most amulet/necklaces were both worn on a daily basis for protection, as well as buried with the dead to afford protection in the journey from this life to the next. Some bead necklaces were purely items of personal adornment, as these might have been so worn. Faience was produced by crushing quartz mixed with copper, and made into a paste. The paste was then placed in a mold, and then fired. The quartz would fuse, and the copper would give the resulting product a color with blue and/or green hues, which was favored by the ancient Egyptians as the color of the Nile River.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT
: In the southwestern corner of Egypt, near the border of Sudan, archeologists find evidence of human habitation at least 10,000 years ago. Though this area once was blessed with grassy plains and lakes that formed during periods of seasonal rain, it is dry now. We believe that by 6,000 BC the population kept herds of cattle and erected some large buildings. As the climate became more arid, these people migrated east and began what became the Egyptian civilization in the fertile Nile Valley. By the time another 2,000 years had passed, this population had settled Upper Egypt in such locations as Hierakonpolis, Naqada and Abydos. By 3,300 BC ancient Egypt had established itself as one of the world’s most advanced civilizations. It was destined to be one of the most long-lived as well.
The source of the life-giving Nile River, which made ancient Egyptian civilization possible, is found in the highlands of East Africa. The river flows in a northerly direction through territory that is now Sudan and Egypt, forms a broad and fertile delta, and empties into the Mediterranean Sea. Every year, during seasonal rains “upriver” in south Africa, the Nile overflowed its banks, depositing rich black soil on the floodplain. This allowed the ancient Egyptians to establishing a thriving agricultural economy. Other elements were conducive to the development of a great civilization.
The Nile provided transport, a constant source of water that sustained plants, humans and animals, and the rays of the sun in mostly cloudless skies provided light and heat. An additional bonus came in the form of natural barriers that prevented invasion by hostile peoples: the desert to the west, the sea to the north and east, and the cataracts of the Nile to the south. Though other civilizations rose and faded in importance, Egypt alone survived for thousands of years, allowing the fruition of sophistication and creativity. In this territory the two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are found; the pyramids at Giza and the lighthouse at Alexandria.
The Egyptians produced an immense and sophisticated catalogue of literature that included treatises on ethical and moral behavior, “how-to” texts, works of religious and magical import, and quite a number of epic stories, ribald tales and love poetry. They understood the principles of mathematics and architecture and were able to erect large stone buildings prior to 2,500 BC. They originated the basic concepts of arithmetic and geometry and of medicine and dentistry as well. They developed a calendar based on their astronomical observations. Egyptian cultural and religious images, whether sculpted, painted or drawn, fascinate modern people everywhere. Their early written form, known as hieroglyphics, is pictographic; symbols take the form of recognizable images.
As for religious belief, the ancient Egyptian culture was one of the firsts to have a concept of life after death. They paid lavish attention to preparations for that life, perhaps more lavish and detailed than in any culture before or since and certainly more sophisticated. Royal and private remains were laid to rest in underground chambers erected for that purpose. Above the ground great pyramids were erected, as well as sprawling temple complexes and immense statues that combined human and animal forms. Many survive today, though some were buried by the sands of time to come to light only much later. The study of ancient Egypt still consumes archeologists and scholars, who admit there is much yet to be learned about this fascinating culture. One contentious question concerns the origin of writing: Egypt or Mesopotamia? While the written record attests to at least 3,000 years of Egyptian culture, the archeological evidence suggests a time frame of greater duration.
GLASS HISTORY
: Naturally occurring glass, especially the volcanic glass obsidian, has been used since the Stone Age in many localities across the globe for the production of sharp cutting tools and, due to its limited source areas, was extensively traded. With respect to man-made glass, the ancient Romans were the first to mass produce glass articles, and this included glass jewelry and gemstones. In the ancient world, glass jewelry was very costly, not only for the ancient Romans, but particular so going back another 3,000 years further to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Sumer. Though glass jewelry, especially gemstones and beads, have been fashioned for perhaps 5,000 years, very little is known about the production of glass in the ancient world.
Perhaps around 4,000 B.C. the ancient Egyptians started fashioning amulets, beads, and small vessels out of a material known as “faience”, an ancient precursor to glass created by crushing quartz sand and mixing it with an alkali binder and mineral oxides to provide color. The discovery of the techniques for producing glass was probably the accidental byproduct of the ancient production of faience. Ancient lumps of glass have been discovered in the area of ancient Mesopotamia, as well as ancient Syria and Egypt, dating as far back as 4,000 B.C. Written records from ancient Mesopotamia refer to the manufacture of glass, describing the manufacturing process as difficult and a closely-guarded secret. Initially ancient glass vessels were produced in with the use of molds or forms.
Some of the earliest surviving examples of glass were from the 15th century B.C. tombs of the wives of ancient Egypt’s Pharaoh Thutmose III. Glass beads dating to about 1,800 B.C. were produced by the Indus Valley Civilization (ancient Northern India). Around 1,500 B.C. two new production techniques gave rise to more frequent manufacture of glass in Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as in Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece. Both techniques involved the use of molten glass rods, either wrapped around a mud core, or placed within a mold. However the end product was nonetheless frightfully expensive and the process both lengthy and labor-intensive. The disasters that overtook Late Bronze Age Mediterranean civilizations seem to have brought glass-making to a halt.
It picked up again in its former sites, as well as in Syria and Cyprus, in the 9th century B.C., when the techniques for making colorless glass were discovered. The first glassmaking "manual" dates back to about 650 B.C., in cuneiform tablets discovered in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. During the Greek Hellenistic (colonizing) period many new techniques of glass production were introduced and glass began to be used to make larger pieces, notably table wares. However in Egypt glass-making did not revive until it was reintroduced in third century B.C. Ptolemaic Alexandria (after being conquered by Alexander the Great). The term “glass” originated in the late Roman Empire in the Roman glassmaking center at Trier, now in modern Germany. The Romans utilized glass in domestic, industrial and funerary contexts.
In the Roman Empire glass was used primarily for the production of vessels, although mosaic tiles, window glass, jewelry, beads and gemstones were also produced. Roman glass production developed from Hellenistic technical traditions, initially concentrating on the production of intensely colored cast glass vessels. However, during the 1st century AD the industry underwent rapid technical growth that saw the introduction of glass blowing techniques (introduced a century earlier in Palestine and Syria), wherein a blob of molten glass was inflated either free form or into a mold by blowing through a hollow metal blowpipe. Glass blowing became widespread during the later Roman Empire, and with it the dominance of colorless or “aqua” colored glass, and the inexpensive process created huge demand for glass products, including jewelry.
Syria became the "glass factory" of the Roman Empire and glassware came to be widely disseminated throughout the Roman Empire (if you would like to learn more about ancient Roman/Syrian glass, there are two wonderful websites to start you on your voyage
here
and
here
). Roman glass ware which had, prior to the introduction of glass-blowing techniques, previously been traded as far as China and Western Asia (Roman glass has been found in first century B.C. tombs in China as well as what was Parthian Persia) now came to be exported throughout the known world in vast quantity. Glassblowing allowed glass workers to produce vessels with considerably thinner walls, decreasing the amount of glass needed for each vessel.
Glass blowing was also considerably quicker than other techniques, and vessels required considerably less finishing, representing a further saving in time, raw material and equipment. Although earlier techniques dominated during the early first century A.D., by the middle to late first century earlier production techniques had been largely abandoned in favor of blowing. Glass making reached its peak at the beginning of the 2nd century A.D., with glass objects in domestic contexts of every kind. An eight ton glass slab uncovered by archaeologists indicates that glass was being produced in very large batches contained in tanks situated inside highly specialized furnaces. Glass was seemingly manufactured on a large scale by a limited number of workshops, and then broken into chunks for distribution to a multitude of local producers of end products.
Otherwise there is only limited evidence for small-scale local glass manufacture, and only in context of window glass. The first-century A.D. Roman Naturalist and Historian “Pliny the Elder” documented the furnace-production of molten glass and the development of related production technologies. The Roman writers Statius and Martial both indicate that recycling broken glass was an important part of the glass industry, and that quantities of broken glassware were concentrated at local sites prior to melting back into raw glass. This is supported by the fact that only rarely are glass fragments of any size recovered by archaeologists from domestic sites of this period…broken glass shards were valuable, and hence invariably recycled.
With respect to glass jewelry, it is well known that the Romans and their successors in the East, the Byzantines (and Eastern Europe in general), were very fond of elaborate jewelry and other personal adornments. Typical jewelry included bracelets worn both on the forearm as well as upper arm, rings, earrings, and pendants, and in the classical world, glass jewelry was just as costly its counterparts made in gold and/or gemstones. Though introduced in first century A.D. Alexandria, the use of glass windows gained widespread popularity in the 6th and 7th centuries A.D. throughout Europe, mostly in conjunction with churches and royal structures. In the 8th century A.D. glass was described in Arab poetry, and in another 8th century book a Persian chemist recorded 46 recipes for colored glass (a later edition of the book included 12 additional recipes). By the 11th century clear glass mirrors were being produced in Islamic Spain.
In Medieval Germany the 11th century saw the introduction of a technique which mass-produced thin sheet glass, and in the 12th century the use of stained glass rapidly became an important medium in Romanesque and Gothic art. However the mass-production of glass during the era of the Roman Empire was not matched by the modern world until the advent of the industrial revolution. Glass remained expensive through the 17th century, and glass gemstones though less expensive than natural gemstones, were still expensive. The “gemstones” in the least expensive “costume” jewelry were generally made from colored amber. Excepting of course genuine precious and semi-precious gemstones, glass “gemstones” were still the domain of relatively more costly pieces.
SHIPPING & RETURNS/REFUNDS
:  Your purchase will ordinarily be shipped within 48 hours of payment. We package as well as anyone in the business, with lots of protective padding and containers. All of our shipments are fully insured against loss, and our shipping rates include the cost of this coverage (through stamps.com, Shipsaver.com, the USPS, UPS, or Fed-Ex). International tracking is provided free by the USPS for certain countries, other countries are at additional cost.
ADDITIONAL PURCHASES
do receive a
VERY LARGE
discount, typically about per item so as to reward you for the economies of combined shipping/insurance costs. We do offer U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail, Registered Mail, and Express Mail for both international and domestic shipments, as well United Parcel Service (UPS) and Federal Express (Fed-Ex). Please ask for a rate quotation. We will accept whatever payment method you are most comfortable with.
If upon receipt of the item you are disappointed for any reason whatever, I offer a no questions asked 30-day return policy. Send it back, I will give you a complete refund of the purchase price; 1) less our original shipping/insurance costs, 2) less non-refundable PayPal/eBay payment processing fees.  Please note that PayPal does NOT refund fees. Even if you “accidentally” purchase something and then cancel the purchase before it is shipped, PayPal will not refund their fees. So all refunds for any reason, without exception, do not include PayPal/eBay payment processing fees (typically between 3% and 5%) and shipping/insurance costs (if any). If you’re unhappy with PayPal and eBay’s “no fee refund” policy, and we are EXTREMELY unhappy, please voice your displeasure by contacting PayPal and/or eBay. We have no ability to influence, modify or waive PayPal or eBay policies.
ABOUT US
: Prior to our retirement we used to travel to Eastern Europe and Central Asia several times a year seeking antique gemstones and jewelry from the globe’s most prolific gemstone producing and cutting centers. Most of the items we offer came from acquisitions we made in Eastern Europe, India, and from the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean/Near East) during these years from various institutions and dealers. Much of what we generate on Etsy, Amazon and Ebay goes to support worthy institutions in Europe and Asia connected with Anthropology and Archaeology. Though we have a collection of ancient coins numbering in the tens of thousands, our primary interests are ancient/antique jewelry and gemstones, a reflection of our academic backgrounds.
Though perhaps difficult to find in the USA, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia antique gemstones are commonly dismounted from old, broken settings – the gold reused – the gemstones recut and reset.  Before these gorgeous antique gemstones are recut, we try to acquire the best of them in their original, antique, hand-finished state – most of them originally crafted a century or more ago. We believe that the work created by these long-gone master artisans is worth protecting and preserving rather than destroying this heritage of antique gemstones by recutting the original work out of existence. That by preserving their work, in a sense, we are preserving their lives and the legacy they left for modern times. Far better to appreciate their craft than to destroy it with modern cutting.
Not everyone agrees – fully 95% or more of the antique gemstones which come into these marketplaces are recut, and the heritage of the past lost. But if you agree with us that the past is worth protecting, and that past lives and the produce of those lives still matters today, consider buying an antique, hand cut, natural gemstone rather than one of the mass-produced machine cut (often synthetic or “lab produced”) gemstones which dominate the market today. We can set most any antique gemstone you purchase from us in your choice of styles and metals ranging from rings to pendants to earrings and bracelets; in sterling silver, 14kt solid gold, and 14kt gold fill.  When you purchase from us, you can count on quick shipping and careful, secure packaging. We would be happy to provide you with a certificate/guarantee of authenticity for any item you purchase from us. There is a fee for mailing under separate cover. I will always respond to every inquiry whether via email or eBay message, so please feel free to write.