Gold bowl from Altstetten

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After the restoration

The Altstetten gold bowl was found in Zurich- Altstetten in 1906 . It comes from the Late Bronze Age and, with a weight of 910 grams, is considered to be one of the heaviest gold vessels of that era in Europe. It is exhibited in the Swiss National Museum in Zurich , right next to the Erstfeld gold treasure .

discovery

Condition after recovery
Found location

On October 17, 1906, the construction worker Härri came across a gray mass that he believed to be a stone while building the track for the Zurich-Altstetten railway north-west of the Zurich freight station while digging a shaft. It was about one meter deep in the ground in a 70 centimeter thick layer of loamy material interspersed with gravel, which in turn was covered 30 centimeters with humus. When he hit it with his pimple and then tried from below to detach it from the earth, the mass broke into pieces and the shell came to light.

As an investigation of the site showed, the bowl was placed at the bottom of a 80 cm deep and 50 cm wide shaft with the opening facing down on a stone slab. In the shell a whitish dust-like mass is said to have located where it is cremated remains could have acted. Since the worker assumed it was "earth", he threw it away. The stone slab was also not recovered.

The bowl was covered with a gray ceramic pot, from which the worker picked up two shards; they are said to have been decorated on the outside with finger strokes. Today they are gone. Investigations of the terrain in the vicinity of the site did not reveal any further evidence.

The bowl was dented when it was discovered, but otherwise in good condition. The hole that had been made by Härri's pimple hit was also torn open. During the restoration, the shell was restored to its original shape, the torn area was put back together a little to make the opening smaller. After the discovery, the bowl was handed over to the management of the Swiss Federal Railways , which later donated it to the National Museum.

description

The hemispherical bowl is made of so-called 22-carat soap gold ; naturally occurring gold that accumulates in rivers and streams. It has a diameter of 25 cm, is 12 cm high and weighs 907.3 grams. The edge is 1.3 cm high, the base has a diameter of 8.2 cm. The thickness of the gold sheet varies between 0.4 mm and 2 mm.

The bowl consists of a single piece of gold sheet and is decorated with protruding bosses with a diameter of 4 mm. The shape of the figures was left out. In the top row, four crescent moon and four alternating circles are clearly recognizable. They are 2 cm in diameter and could represent suns or full moons. On the bottom row there are seven regularly distributed crescent lunas.

  • inner side wall

  • Bottom, inside

  • Gold bowl Altstetten - 7 out of 10 (retouched) .jpg

In the middle row, seven animals are shown schematically, of which the deer can best be recognized. Four others are goat-like animals and one may be a fox. Six animals look to the left, one to the right. All are in rest position, none walks or jumps.

A spectral analysis of the gold sheet by the laboratory of the Württembergisches Landesmuseum showed a gold content of 85.36%, silver 4%, copper 0.4% and tin 0.24%. This shows that the bowl is not made of mountain gold as it does not contain tin. It could not be clarified whether the silver content is natural or whether the silver was added. The copper content is a natural addition. The analysis could not determine the origin of the gold either; it is conceivable that it comes from Swiss waters.

Only guesses can be made about the intended use of the bowl; It is not clear whether it was used in a cultic context, whether it is a dedication or whether it served as an urn. The Zurich secondary school teacher and historian Jakob Heierli (1853–1912) published the first description of the bowl in 1907 in the Anzeiger für Schweizerische Altertumskunde.

execution

detail
detail

First the body of the vessel was driven out of a round piece of gold sheet , whereby the metal had to be made pliable again and again by heating. It cannot be ruled out that a rough form of the shell was cast before the forcing. Very fine incised lines around some of the figures, some of which are barely visible to the naked eye, show that they were sketched out with a scriber. Why the pre-scorings were made on the outside and not on the inside, from where the bumps were knocked into the sheet, could not be answered, possibly the goldsmith got a better overview of the effect of his representation. Incised lines running straight across humps indicate that the lines were drawn before the humps were struck.

The bosses were then chiseled into the bowl with a punch , with the figures being outlined first. Finally the horizontal rows were struck. The horizontal rib on the edge of the vessel was also carved out from the inside.

Age

Since the gold bowl is a random individual find without any connection with a find environment, it is difficult to determine its age; a final age determination has not yet been carried out. The fact that the vessel is unique for this room makes it even more difficult to determine the age. Initially, the bowl by Jakob Heierli, Emil Vogt and others was attributed to the Hallstatt period based on Italian models , later it was dated to the late Bronze Age based on comparisons with similar vessels .

literature

Web links

Commons : Goldschale Altstetten  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Blog Swiss National Museum
  2. ↑ Patrick Nagy: Technological aspects of the gold bowl from Zurich-Altstetten . In: Yearbook of the Swiss Society for Prehistory and Early History Volume 75/1992, p. 113.
  3. ↑ Patrick Nagy: Technological aspects of the gold bowl from Zurich-Altstetten . In: Yearbook of the Swiss Society for Prehistory and Early History Volume 75/1992, p. 113.

Coordinates: 47 ° 23 '10.6 "  N , 8 ° 30' 28.9"  E ; CH1903:  680746  /  248932