A Carnelian Feast at the British Museum
January 3rd, 2017
On a recent visit to London, I decided to have another look at the British Museum's handful of Indus objects. They are usually displayed – with little celebration, given their importance, like the first seal ever found at Harappa for example – in the South Asia gallery. Unfortunately the South Asia galleries were closed for renovation. However, like on a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, I decided to try my luck a short walk away in the Mesopotamian galleries. Once again I found some of the best Indus pieces here, in traditional royal necklaces of gold, lapis and carnelian, reiterating the deep aesthetic connections between these two systems of civilization.
On a recent visit to London, I decided to have another look at the British Museum's handful of Indus objects. They are usually displayed – with little celebration, given their importance, like the first seal ever found at Harappa for example – in the South Asia gallery. Unfortunately the South Asia galleries were closed for renovation. However, like on a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, I decided to try my luck a short walk away in the Mesopotamian galleries. Once again I found some of the best Indus pieces here, in traditional royal necklaces of gold, lapis and carnelian, reiterating the deep aesthetic connections between these two systems of civilization.
Although carnelian was found in Anatolia, Iran and later Egypt as well, the long carnelian beads here are better known from Indus cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, and were probably made in the Gulf of Khambat in Gujarat. The way these three elements, gold, lapis and carnelian are played off against each other in different ways in different necklaces worn by royalty and female and male gods suggests an international world-view among the priests and elites. Perhaps it's the perennial way in which we seem to value something from a distant place. With the gold beads made in the Mesopotamian region, the lapis from Afghanistan, and the carnelian from India, Bronze Age Mesopotamian jewellery offered an early vision of globalism.
Looking closely at so much carnelian made me realize what a rich and resplendent material it was, offering evidence of intense craftsmanship, more consequential than practiced on lapis lazuli, more work than stretching a thin foil over a bitumen core for the gold beads (made to a carnelian specification, in fact [see Figures 3, 5]). "Indus beadmakers have the distinction of producing the longest and most slender beads of carnelian in the world, prior to the advent of diamond drilling," writes J.M. Kenoyer. A single bead, up to 5 inches long, could take weeks to make from a blank piece of carnelian rock. When I hold one of these long beads in my fingers – remarkably yet understandably, they are still made in Khambat – I realize how precious each one is, how hard and apparently easy to snap, yet cold and dense in burnt orange hue. Carnelian asks you to look into the stone and what has been made of it. Lapis beads are flatter and more opaque, gold reflects; carnelian insists that you hold it up and see what happens.
You can't quite do that at the British Museum, but the pieces on display give the best sense anywhere of the richness of ancient Indus carnelian art and manufacturing (the former must have driven the latter), and the shared pleasure it afforded with their Mesopotamian trading partners.
Omar Khan, 1.2.2017
The object titles and image descriptions at the British Museum are given below.
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1. Carnelian beads from Royal Grave PG 580. "Grave PG 580 About 2500 BC (early Dynastic III) This tomb produced material of exceptionally high technical quality, and it may date to a slightly later time than most of the other royal tombs. No human bodies were identified in the tomb; the bones had perished. The tomb contents included many weapons and jewelerry.
The jewellery techniques include filigree, the creation of elaborate shapes with gold wire, and an early type of granulation. The beads were found scattered and have been arbitrarily restrung. They reveal long distance trade; the lapis would have come from Afghanistan, the carnelian and gold from India, Turkey, Iran or Egypt."
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2. Queen of the Night. "The Queen of night and other figures here wear rich jewellery" with inset, "Reconstruction of the Queen of the Night based on remaining traces of paint."
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3. Gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian beads. "These brilliant blue beads of lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan, and the red carnelian from the region of the Indus Valley, may have been obtained ready-made. The gold beads are made with gold leaf covering a bitumen core and would have been made locally. Old Babylonian period, 2000-1600 BC from Ur"
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4. Fragmentary statue of a god. "This fragmentary unidentified god is painted red. He sits on a black throne and wears a white sheepskin garment. These colours are similar to those used for the Queen of the Night plaque. Yellow, representing gold, was used for his headdress and for the horizontal beads of his necklace. The vertical beads were coloured red to represent carnelian. Both the headdress and the necklace are like those worn by the queen. 1800-1750 BC (Old Babylonian Period) from Ur."
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5. Beads of gold, carnelian and lapis lazuli. "The queen's jewellery. The jewellery on this panel was found with the body of Queen Puabi herself. Her tomb chamber contained a huge quantity of artefacts. Other items are now preserved in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad and the University Museum, Philadelphia..""Beads of gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian found by Puabi's thighs, possibly part of her belt."
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6. "Beads of gold, carnelian and lapis lazuli and a few of shell. These were all found at the neck of Body C, and have been restrung.""Grave PG 1054 About 2500 BC (early Dynastic III) This was one of the best preserved of the royal tombs, with evidence for a complicated ritual involving the construction of the main chamber at the bottom of a shaft. In the chamber the principle occupant, a woman, was found with a few attendants. At higher levels above the chamber there were several separate layers of funerary offerings with further bodies, including one of a woman, Body C, who also wore elaborate jewellery. A cylinder seal bearing the name of King Meskalamdug was also found in an upper level of the filling of the tomb."
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7. Lapis, gold and carnelian choker. Note how there are gold, lapis and two carnelian versions of the large beads.
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8. Gold and carnelian beads. "The two beads etched with patterns in white were probably imported from the Indus Valley. They were made by a technique developed by the Harappan civilization."
More from the British Museum, whose Indus objects are not easy to find online. but which has a Teaching History page for seals.
http://www.teachinghistory100.org/objects/about_the_object/indus_valley_...
Looking closely at so much carnelian made me realize what a rich and resplendent material it was, offering evidence of intense craftsmanship, more consequential than practiced on lapis lazuli, more work than stretching a thin foil over a bitumen core for the gold beads (made to a carnelian specification, in fact [see Figures 3, 5]). "Indus beadmakers have the distinction of producing the longest and most slender beads of carnelian in the world, prior to the advent of diamond drilling," writes J.M. Kenoyer. A single bead, up to 5 inches long, could take weeks to make from a blank piece of carnelian rock. When I hold one of these long beads in my fingers – remarkably yet understandably, they are still made in Khambat – I realize how precious each one is, how hard and apparently easy to snap, yet cold and dense in burnt orange hue. Carnelian asks you to look into the stone and what has been made of it. Lapis beads are flatter and more opaque, gold reflects; carnelian insists that you hold it up and see what happens.
You can't quite do that at the British Museum, but the pieces on display give the best sense anywhere of the richness of ancient Indus carnelian art and manufacturing (the former must have driven the latter), and the shared pleasure it afforded with their Mesopotamian trading partners.
Omar Khan, 1.2.2017
The object titles and image descriptions at the British Museum are given below.
1. Carnelian beads from Royal Grave PG 580. "Grave PG 580 About 2500 BC (early Dynastic III) This tomb produced material of exceptionally high technical quality, and it may date to a slightly later time than most of the other royal tombs. No human bodies were identified in the tomb; the bones had perished. The tomb contents included many weapons and jewelerry.
The jewellery techniques include filigree, the creation of elaborate shapes with gold wire, and an early type of granulation. The beads were found scattered and have been arbitrarily restrung. They reveal long distance trade; the lapis would have come from Afghanistan, the carnelian and gold from India, Turkey, Iran or Egypt."
2. Queen of the Night. "The Queen of night and other figures here wear rich jewellery" with inset, "Reconstruction of the Queen of the Night based on remaining traces of paint."
3. Gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian beads. "These brilliant blue beads of lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan, and the red carnelian from the region of the Indus Valley, may have been obtained ready-made. The gold beads are made with gold leaf covering a bitumen core and would have been made locally. Old Babylonian period, 2000-1600 BC from Ur"
4. Fragmentary statue of a god. "This fragmentary unidentified god is painted red. He sits on a black throne and wears a white sheepskin garment. These colours are similar to those used for the Queen of the Night plaque. Yellow, representing gold, was used for his headdress and for the horizontal beads of his necklace. The vertical beads were coloured red to represent carnelian. Both the headdress and the necklace are like those worn by the queen. 1800-1750 BC (Old Babylonian Period) from Ur."
5. Beads of gold, carnelian and lapis lazuli. "The queen's jewellery. The jewellery on this panel was found with the body of Queen Puabi herself. Her tomb chamber contained a huge quantity of artefacts. Other items are now preserved in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad and the University Museum, Philadelphia..""Beads of gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian found by Puabi's thighs, possibly part of her belt."
6. "Beads of gold, carnelian and lapis lazuli and a few of shell. These were all found at the neck of Body C, and have been restrung.""Grave PG 1054 About 2500 BC (early Dynastic III) This was one of the best preserved of the royal tombs, with evidence for a complicated ritual involving the construction of the main chamber at the bottom of a shaft. In the chamber the principle occupant, a woman, was found with a few attendants. At higher levels above the chamber there were several separate layers of funerary offerings with further bodies, including one of a woman, Body C, who also wore elaborate jewellery. A cylinder seal bearing the name of King Meskalamdug was also found in an upper level of the filling of the tomb."
7. Lapis, gold and carnelian choker. Note how there are gold, lapis and two carnelian versions of the large beads.
8. Gold and carnelian beads. "The two beads etched with patterns in white were probably imported from the Indus Valley. They were made by a technique developed by the Harappan civilization."
More from the British Museum, whose Indus objects are not easy to find online. but which has a Teaching History page for seals.
http://www.teachinghistory100.org/objects/about_the_object/indus_valley_...
About the object
Archaeology in the Indus Valley
Harappa and Mohenjo-daro are the two most important ancient cities to have been discovered by archaeologists in the Indus Valley in what is today Pakistan and northeast India. Excavations have shown Harappa to have once supported a population of 50,000, approximately five times larger than other towns and villages nearby. The cities showed a high level of urban planning. They had a dense network of streets within strong city walls, granaries to store food and the world’s earliest system of sanitation and water supply with wells, bathing rooms and covered drains. Houses had sleeping and cooking areas, courtyards and upper stories.
As well as the carved stone seals, archaeologists have found figurines, beads, weights and pots for cooking and storage. Materials used to make these include clay, gold, semi-precious and precious stones, copper, ivory and glass. Workers in particular crafts seem to have lived near each other in districts.
The seals
These small objects have been beautifully carved out of stone and then fired to make them more durable. Over 3,500 seals have been found so far. The most typical Indus seal is square, with a set of symbols along the top, an animal in the centre, and one or more symbols at the bottom. Animals found on the seals include rhinoceros, elephants, unicorns and bulls. On the back is a projection, probably to hold while pressing the seal into other materials such as clay. The projections also have a hole for thread, presumably so the seal can be worn or carried as a necklace.
Early writing?
The symbols at the top of the seal are generally thought to form the script of the Indus Valley language. Similar markings have been found on other objects including pots and what may have been a notice board. These indicate that people wrote the first line from right to left, the second line from left to right, and so on. Around 400 different symbols have been catalogued, but the script has still not been deciphered. The inscriptions on the seals are thought to be related to trading transactions, perhaps indicating the identity of traders, makers or factories.
What might the seals tell us about trade?
The seals were pressed into soft clay to seal the mouths of jars and, as suggested by the imprint of fabric on the back of some seal impressions, were used to create clay tags for sacks of traded goods such as grain. Indus Valley seals have been found as far afield as Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) in the cities of Umma and Ur, in Central Asia and on the coast of the Arabian Peninsula. A large number of seals have been found at the port of Lothal in western India. Finds of Mesopotamian weights in Indus Valley cities confirm that trading took place between these two civilisations. Some experts believe that Mesopotamian written records of trade in gold, copper and jewellery may be referring to the Indus Valley. It is clear that the Indus civilisation was part of an extensive long-distance trading network.
About five thousand years ago, the Indus civilisation grew up in the rich, fertile floodplains of the river Indus. At its height, the civilisation extended over almost 200,000 square miles. Research and archaeological investigations have uncovered entire cities and have shown a network of international trade. These seals provide a good starting point for exploring the civilisation itself and also provide useful comparative links with the study of other early civilisations.
Date
2500 – 2000 BC
Culture
Indus Valley culture
Material
Steatite stone
Dimensions
between 2 cm and 2.5 cm square
thickness: between 0.6 cm and 1 cm
thickness: between 0.6 cm and 1 cm