Gold in antiquity: Did you mean...?

Cups were a part of everyday life in the ancient world, just as they are today but craftworkers and artists were often challenged to use their talents to produce especially decorative and beautiful examples. In this gallery of 24 images we...

The Seven Cities of Cibola are the mythical lands of gold that the Spanish of the 16th century believed existed somewhere in the southwest of North America, comparable to the better-known mythical city of El Dorado. No sites matching the...

Scythian art is best known for its 'animal art.' Flourishing between the 7th and 3rd centuries BCE on the steppe of Central Asia, with echoes of Celtic influence, the Scythians were known for their works in gold. Moreover, with the recent...

El Dorado ('Gilded Man' or 'Golden One') referred to the legendary kings of the Muisca (Chibcha) people who populated the northern Andes of modern-day Colombia from 600 to 1600. The name derives from the coronation ritual when the new king...

The coinage of the Byzantine Empire continued that of its more ancient predecessors and functioned as a convenient method of payment for goods and services, especially to soldiers and officials, and as a means for people to pay their taxes...

Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise. Christopher Columbus. On June 22, 2005, the Sulaymaniyah Museum of Iraqi Kurdistan purchased a...

The Oxus Treasure is a collection of 180 artifacts of precious metal, dated to the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550-330 BCE), which were discovered on the north bank of the Oxus River near the town of Takht-i Sangin in Tajikstan between 1876-1880...

The jewellery of the Minoan civilization based on Bronze Age Crete demonstrates, as with other Minoan visual art forms, not only a sophisticated technological knowledge (in this case of metalwork) and an ingenuity of design but also a joy...

A map of Europe displaying important cities that shaped its history, from antiquity to the present. Cities on the map represent key centers throughout history. Each city represents a distinct period from Athens, Rome, and Constantinople (now...

Mansa Musa I was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa from 1312 to 1337. Controlling territories rich in gold and copper, and monopolising trade between the north and interior of the continent, Mali grew extremely wealthy. Mansa Musa...