Berlin gold hat
The Berlin gold hat is a Bronze Age artefact made of thin gold sheet . It served as the outer decoration of a long-shafted headgear with a brim, which was probably made of organic material and mechanically stabilized the thin sheet of gold on the outside.
It is the best preserved specimen from a group of now four known, conical gold hats from the Bronze Age, which were used in southern Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries ( sheet gold cone from Ezelsdorf-Buch , golden hat from Schifferstadt ) and France ( gold sheet cone von Avanton ) were found in a more or less good state of preservation.
Today it is assumed that the gold hats served religious and cult purposes and were used by priests of a sun cult that was widespread in Central Europe in the late Bronze Age . This view is supported by the pictorial representation of an object interpreted as a conical hat on a stone slab from the grave of Kivik in Skåne (southern Sweden) in a clearly religious and cultic context.
The Berlin Gold Hat was acquired from the art trade in 1996 by the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History as a find without a place of discovery, i.e. probably from a robbery excavation . On the basis of the ornament comparison with other, more precisely dated finds, the time of its manufacture can be traced back to the end of the Bronze Age , around 1000 to 800 BC. BC, dated. Southern Germany or Switzerland are presumed to be the original location .
description
The Berlin gold hat is a 490 g gold hat with a long, slender shaft and a stepped and bulged foot, decorated with punch marks and ornamental wheels . In its composition it resembles the gold sheet cone from Ezelsdorf-Buch, which was discovered earlier.
The sheet metal of the Berlin hat is reinforced in the area of the "hat band" by an approx. 10 mm wide ring made of flat bronze sheet. The outer edge of the hat brim is closed by a twisted square wire around which the sheet metal is flanged upwards.
The total height of the sheet gold cone is 745 mm. The piece was made as a driving work from a probably alluvial gold alloy with 89.7% gold, 9.8% silver, 0.4% copper and 0.1% tin and has an average wall thickness of 0.06 mm.
The sheet gold cone is ornamented over the entire length with horizontal decorative and frame bands. 14 different stamps and 3 different ornamental wheels or roll marks were used. The horizontal bands were systematically decorated with repeating, similar stamp patterns.
The visual separation of the individual ornamental bands was realized by ribs and drifting beads, in particular with the use of roll marks. In the ornamental bands, there are mainly hump and circular motifs that have a circular inner hump and are framed with up to six outer rings.
As a special feature, the unique appearance of a decorative ribbon consisting of lying crescent moon with inner hump and underlying eye-shaped or almond-shaped humps is to be appreciated. The tip of the cone is crowned by an eight-pointed, uncontoured star, the background of which is underlaid with point humps.
The shaft merges into a wide, vertically ribbed band in the conical base, which is provided with similar motifs . In the area of a reinforcing band made of bronze , the hat goes from the conical base into the brim, which is also designed with disc-shaped symbols .
Calendar function
According to Wilfried Menghin , the cone-shaped gold hats of the Schifferstadt type , to which the Berlin gold hat also belongs, show a systematic sequence in the number and type of ornaments used in the individual ornamental bands.
In this context it has been found that images of astronomical calendar functions based on a lunisolar system are conceivable on the gold hats . Due to this lunisolar character , a direct reading of time periods in lunar or solar units would be possible.
Since the exact knowledge of the solar year was of particular importance for the determination of times of cultic significance such as the summer or winter solstice , the astronomical knowledge deposited on the gold hats was particularly important in the Bronze Age society. It is unclear whether they were used as a calendar or whether they represent the underlying astronomical knowledge.
The functions that have been possible up to now (as of July 2005) include the counting of time segments up to a maximum of 57 months . By simply quadrupling these values, however, it is also possible to display periods of time that are larger in scope, e.g. B. the Metonic cycle possible.
One character or a single circular ring of a symbol represents a day. In addition to ornamental rings with symbols of different numbers of circular rings, special characters and symbols appear in so-called switching zones that have to be added or omitted from case to case when calculating the above-mentioned time periods.
In principle, starting with zone i, a total is formed using a suitable, coherent section n of adjacent ornament zones Z_i..Z_i + n. If necessary, the number of symbols of one or more switching zones occurring in the area of this section is subtracted from this sum in order to arrive at the corresponding value in solar or lunar time notation.
The illustration on the left shows the solar imaging mode, on the right the reading scheme for the synodic (lunar) months. The fields from zones 5, 7, 16 and 17 shown in red and blue represent switching zones of the calendar system with which time periods of different lengths are shown.
The values assigned to the respective fields are the product of the number of symbols in the respective ornament zone and the number of circles or circular rings occurring in the predominant individual symbol. The special symbols in zone 5 are assigned the numerical value "38" according to their number.
- Example:
- Zone 12, as the predominant symbol, has a total of 20 type no.14 hallmarks, a circular disc symbol, which is surrounded by 5 circles in the edge area.
- The product of 20 and 5 = 100 results for this zone.
The smaller ring circles present in the spaces between the main symbols are regarded as ornaments and are not taken into account for the calculation.
Since a lunisolar calendar system may have been depicted on the gold hats, direct reading or conversion into lunar or sun units is possible.
For the representation of the solar or lunar maximum time segment with a yellow background in the tables and counting according to days , the values of the fields with a colored background in the column above must be added to a segment total. If switching zones with a red background appear here, the sum of these values with a red background must be deducted from the section total. This means that time periods with a maximum length of 12, 24, 36, 48, 54 and 57 synodic (lunar) months in the lunar system and 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, 54 and 57 solar months (as the twelfth Part of a tropical year ) in the solar system.
- Example:
- To show a 54-month cycle in the lunar system, the numerical values from the colored zones 3 to 21 are added. The total is 1739 days. The numerical values from zones 5, 16 and 17 with a red background are subtracted from the result (or they are not even taken into account when adding up). The result of 1739−142 = 1597 days corresponds quite precisely to 54 synodic months of 29.5305 days each.
The difference of 2 days to the astronomically correct value occurring in the calculation results from the Bronze Age observation accuracy of synodic and solar month lengths.
Site and history
The Berlin Gold Hat was offered on the international art market in 1995 and was purchased as a Bronze Age artefact by the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History in 1996 . According to the seller, the piece originally came from an anonymous Swiss collection that had been built up in the 1950s and 1960s. It is believed that the Berlin gold hat was found in southern Germany or Switzerland . Further details on the circumstances of the find are not known. From the condition of the sheet gold cone, however, it can be assumed that - analogous to the Golden Hat from Schifferstadt - it was buried upright and filled with earth or ashes .
Manufacturing
If the gold weight of the cone is transferred to the dimensions of a cuboid gold bar, taking into account the missing brim, the result is a gold cube with an edge length of less than three centimeters as the starting material. This gold was blank during the machining process to an average wall thickness of 0.06 mm forged .
The material of the golden hat solidifies as the degree of deformation increases and then tends to crack . To avoid these cracks, a particularly uniform deformation was required during forging. In addition, the workpiece had to be annealed repeatedly to at least 750 ° C during the manufacturing process .
Due to the low melting temperature of the gold alloy (approx. 960 ° C), a very precise temperature control and uniform heating of the component was necessary in order to prevent the surface from melting. For this process, the Bronze Age craftsman used a charcoal fire or an oven similar to the kilns for pottery , the temperature of which, however, could only be controlled within limits by the addition of oxygen with a bellows .
If one takes into account these peculiarities of the material used and the modest technical means, the production of an undecorated component from such thin sheet of gold alone represents a tremendous technical achievement.
As part of the further processing, the Berlin gold hat was provided with radial ornamental bands. For this purpose, the hollow inner body was probably - similar to the golden hat from Schifferstadt - filled with a suitable goldsmith putty based on tree resin and wax for the purpose of stabilization and the thin gold sheet from the outside by repeatedly pressing on a total of 17 different negative marks and rolling 3 different roll marks in structured in the present form.
Whereabouts
The Berlin Gold Hat is located in the “ Neues Museum ” in Berlin and is a core piece of the Bronze Age collection.
literature
- Wilfried Menghin , Peter Schauer : The sheet gold cone from Ezelsdorf. Cult devices of the late Bronze Age (= the prehistoric and early historical antiquities in the Germanic National Museum. H. 3). Theiß, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-8062-0390-3 .
- Peter Schauer: The gold sheet cones of the Bronze Age. A contribution to the cultural connection between Orient and Central Europe (= Roman-Germanic Central Museum. Monographs. Vol. 8). Habelt, Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-7749-2238-1 .
- Mark Schmidt: Of hats, cones and calendars or the dazzling light of the Orient. In: Ethnographic-Archaeological Journal. Vol. 43, 2002, ISSN 0012-7477 , pp. 499-541.
- Martin Radtke, Uwe Reinholz, Erik Strub, Hermann Born: News from the Berlin Gold Hat: Material analysis with synchrotron radiation. In: Acta praehistorica et archaeologica. Vol. 41, 2009, ISSN 0341-1184 , pp. 29-35.
- Wilfried Menghin: The Berlin gold hat. Power, magic and mathematics in the Bronze Age (= Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz. The collections of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. Vol. 2). Schnell and Steiner et al., Regensburg et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-7954-2271-4 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Anja Grebe (Red.): Gold and Cult of the Bronze Age. Verlag des Germanisches Nationalmuseums, Nuremberg 2003, ISBN 3-926982-95-0 (exhibition catalog, Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, May 22 - September 7, 2003).
- ↑ Wilfried Menghin: The Berlin gold hat. Power, magic and mathematics in the Bronze Age (= Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz. The collections of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. Vol. 2). Schnell and Steiner et al., Regensburg et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-7954-2271-4 , p. 25.
- ↑ World: The First Magic Hat. Retrieved January 17, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Wilfried Menghin: The Berlin gold hat and the golden calendars of the old European bronze age. In: Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica. Vol. 32, 2000, ISSN 0341-1184 , pp. 31-108.
