• latw-153-1
    Gold melon bead. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul)

    Gold melon bead

    Date
    Ca. 575-540 BC, Lydian
    Museum
    Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 5268
    Museum Inventory No.
    5268
    Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
    J61.001
    Material
    Gold
    Object Type
    Jewelry and Ornaments
    Site
    Sardis
    Sector
    Nec
    Trench
    Tomb 61.2
    Locus
    Tomb 61.2 Locus 1
    Description
    Spherical form perforated with central hole. Outer surface articulated with curving, melon-like segments, which terminate at the hole mouths. Granulation in single rows between segments and in double rings around hole mouths. Height 0.0095 m, weight 2.35 g.
    Comments
    From a schist-lined cist burial in the Great Necropolis of Sardis (Inderesi region; grave 61.2). Recovered from a glass workshop destroyed in the mid sixth century BC at Sardis (see Cahill, “The Persian Sack of Sardis”) were one complete and one fragmentary melon-shaped bead of colored glass, in which each segment (eight in the complete bead) had been individually made in a color that contrasted with those of adjacent segments (Cahill in Greenewalt et al. 1990, 153-154 and fig. 17). For other comparanda, see Greenewalt 1972, 135 n. 35.
    See Also
    Baughan, “Lydian Burial Customs”.
    Bibliography
    Greenewalt 1972, 125, 135 (with previous bibliography); Dedeoğlu 2003, 35, fig.
    Author
    CHG