Gold in antiquity: Did you mean...?

A captured German bunker with 50-mm gun at Gold Beach, attacked during the D-Day Normandy landings of 6 June 1944. (Imperial War Museums)

An aerial view of Gold Beach during the D-Day Normandy Landings of 6 June 1944. The smoke is from German defensive positions struck by Allied naval and air bombardment. (Imperial War Museums)

Both earrings are placed in a mirror-image position, with the lower surfaces facing each other. Each earring is composed of nine lunar-shaped segments forming a flattened half- ball. The cuneiform signs run vertically...

Hairnet made of finely woven gold wires, 1st century CE (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome)

A chunk of quartz with gold from the Witwatersrand mines in South Africa. Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

This is the upper surface of the earring . The right lower circle is broken and at the center of the trifoliate group lies a single golden sphere. The cuneiform text is read vertically, from the upper surface downwards...

The convex and carved surfaces of the earrings. Each earring is composed of nine lunar-shaped segments forming a flattened half- ball. The cuneiform signs run vertically from above downward, starting from the right...

A photograph of liquid gold in a refinery.

Both earrings are placed in a mirror-image position, with the lower surfaces facing each other. Each earring is composed of nine lunar-shaped segments forming a flattened half- ball. The cuneiform signs run vertically...

Gold daric from Persia, kingdom of Achaemenids, 5th-4th century BCE. O: King with bow and quiver. R: Incuse oblong.