The poor and stony soil of Hellas does not easily yield its bounty. Here generation after generation has struggled to wrench sustenance from the land. It is only in the river valleys and the infrequent plains where grains can be grown in quantities sufficient to produce profit beyond the immediate needs of the community, but there is yet another gift of the earth here, a gift by far richer than the crops of the field.

Glinting among the stones of the clear running streams and hidden in the depths of the mountains there is that shinning yellow metal which all peoples prize most. In Hellas there is today, as there has ever been......gold.

From the great forested mountains to the north to the rocky island of Siphnos in the sea south of Athens, gold has been found since prehistoric times. It would have been easy to spot just beneath the rippling surface of a stream. It would be only human to pick up the shiny yellow pebble so unlike the stones around it. If you attempt to break it with a stone, you discover at once that it does not break, but rather it flattens. It is not a stone, it is a soft and malleable metal which can be shaped and modeled without heating like copper. This surely was the beginning of gold working in the ancient world.

One quality of this metal soon becomes evident; it does not oxidize like copper or silver. It remains through all time clean, bright, and shinning. The Hellenes believed that gold was a naturally occurring amalgam of clear water and sunlight which was forever bright and pure.To wear a bit of gold was to wear a piece of the sacred sun, itself. Gold was valued above all other objects in Hellas.

The very word,"gold"came to be synonymous with value and prestige and the wearer of the gold by association, took on these qualities. It should noted that in ancient times gold was far rarer than it is today. Rural agriculturists and transhumanent pastoralists of the highlands might pass their entire lives without ever seeing the gold which is so ubiquitous today.

Of all the bodily adornments of gold, it is the crown which is of the greatest prestige for it implies not only wealth, but power as well.The objects in this exhibition all are meant to be worn as symbols of social status and public displays of riches. All of these were at one time proudly worn by real people long forgotten. Only their crowns of gold remain.

The Crown Of Gold

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