Some Additional Pictures

Varna Finding

Here are a few more pictures of the gold objects found in Varna



Source: All over the Internet

All the gold pieces were very likely formed by hammering. Bang your gold into a sheet, bend /cut it into shape. It takes some skill to make the larger objects, but it is quite possible.
Personally, however, I would guess that the gold pieces used for hammer shaping were first cast into some standard-size ingots.

Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Çori

Here are a few more pictures of Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Çori carvings and sculptures:


Fully carved animal
Source: Klaus Schmidt: "Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs", Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), p.239. With kind permission.


A "skin head" from Nevalý Çori with a snake on his back The front side is destroyed.
Source: Klaus Schmidt: "Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs", Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), p.239. With kind permission.


"Totempoles" at Nevalý Çori and Göbekli Tepe
Source: Klaus Schmidt: "Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs", Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), p.239. With kind permission.


Göbekli Tepe, sculpture of a man with beard, limestone, height 66cm; and Pillar 18, the eastern central pillar of enclosure D, after being raised into an upright position in spring 2010, height 5.4m
^{Source: Klaus Schmidt: "Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs", Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), p.239. With kind permission.}

In every new season more and more figurines and other complex objects are discovered in Göbekli Tepe. We will have to wait and see what the future will bring.

Natufian Culture

The Natufians produced a lot of small figurines, often highly abstract (or very primitive) but also major art. Here are the famous Ain Sakhri lovers



Source: All over the Internet

The sculpture was found in 1933 by René Neuville, a French consul in Jerusalem and prehistorian, in a small museum in Palestine. He recognized it for what it was and traced its origin to the Ain Sakhri caves. Excavations of the caves revealed that the sculptures must be Natufian.

In the (slightly edited) words of Wikipedia: "Although it lacks details, such as faces, it is considered to be a clever piece of sculpture. The figure looks differently, depending on the viewer's perspective. It may resemble a couple, a penis, breasts, or a vagina depending on the perspective, or as two testicles when viewed upside-down. It is clear that the figures in the couple are facing each other, but the gender of the figures can only be presumed. What is clear is that the sculpture is phallic whichever way it is viewed."

Well. But even the Natufians couldn't make love all day, on occasion they had to work. Since they are supposed to be the first (or at least among the first) people who cultivated wheat, emmer or einkorn, they needed tools for harvesting.

Here is your basic stone age sickle; exhibited in the Archeological Museum in Istanbul. It's probably partially a model, the museum doesn't tell.


Source: Photographed in the Istanbul Archeological Museum

Copper and Bronze Objects

In April 1961, a small group of Israeli archaeologists were in a cave high above a dry riverbed in the Judean Desert. They were looking for Dead Sea scrolls, didn't find any, but an unbelievable treasure instead. The Nahal Mishmar hoard. Several hundred copper and copper alloy objects plus other stuff from around 3500 BC came to light.
Here is a picture from the hoard in-situ:


The Nahal Mishmar hoard as found
Source: Courtesy of the Israel Museum

One of the interesting points is that we can see that copper alloyed with arsenic (and antimony in this case) looks like silver:


Source: Courtesy of the Israel Museum

Many more picture from the present exhibition in the Israel museum via this link..
What follows are dagger blades that very likely were made from arsenic copper, resembling silver:
Actually no! The museum has now (2018) finally managed to label the objects and claims that they were made form silver.


~~Arsenic~~ Silver bronze daggers from the Minoan time (ca. 1600 BC) as displayed in the Heraklion Museum, Crete. Large picture

Scarface

Here is an unexpected Internet find: an unidentified scarface. Comes up in connection with the "Foroughi collection".
Mohsen Foroughi (1907-1983) was a pioneer of modern architecture in Persia and a noted collector of Persian art. He was imprisoned in 1979 after the revolution, and his art collection was placed in the Archaeological Museum, Tehran.


A Scarface "Statuette of a bearded man. Elamite, 3rd millennium B.C.E. Height: 11.5 cm. Forughi Collection, Tehran"

Same guy but in color (found 2017 in the Net) . One of the two is obviously a mirror image if the original.

Here is one from an auction. Not as well preserved as the rest but worth quite a bit


No. 4: The (second-to) last Scarface
Source: Internet; Christie auction

An unexpected Aug 2018 find. On Pin Interest an thus, as quite often, with no clear origin. Following the leads just gets you into unending circles.


No. 5 The (presently; Aug. 2018) last Scarface
Source: Internet; Pin Interest


No. 5 once more on the title page of a book found in 2020
Source: Internet; British Museum

Here is No. 6, discovered in April 2019:


No. 6 The (presently, April. 2019) last Scarface
Source: Internet; Sotheby auctionJune 5, 1999

Sotheby adds the following information;
" By Carter B. Horsley The Sotheby's June 5, 1999 Antiquities sale is highlighted by several superb works and one quite exceptional piece,
a small black chlorite figure of a mythical hero from Bactria or Eastern Persia, circa 2200-2000 B.C., shown above. This 4 1/2 inch high figure at first conjures the great small Sumerian sculptures, but those elegant, formal, sedate works are quite calm compared with this stocky, rather mysterious figure. The catalogue quotes a discussion about a related work in the Louvre that notes that "his beast-like expression and his body covered in scales - doubltless to convey hairiness - suggest an analogy with the monster giant Humbaba, as he appears, with his speckled body, on an 18th Century Syrian cylinder seal." The catalogue also notes that one expert has suggested "that the objects suspended from the belt are compartmented stamp seals which may have been worn as a symbol of membership in a particular clan or tribe," and another expert as suggesting that a "cavity beneath the left armpit must have been to allow the fitting of a small container, into which, it seems, could be placed an offering, the figure being the mystical presenter of the offering."
The piece, Lot 74, was formerly in the Breitbart and Ben Heller collections, among others, and was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1985 to this year. It is ambitiously estimated at $250,000 to $350,000. It was hammered down for $725,000 (not including the buyer's premium as do all the sales prices in this article, except where noted), an extremely impressive price considering that the piece was not in pristine condition!"

The Louvre, Paris, now (2020) gives this explanations:
"Scarfaces" are anthropomorphic dragon-snakes belonging to the mythology of central Asia, where they incarnated the hostile forces of the underworld. Their power was controlled not by killing them but by reducing them to silence by a slash across the right cheek. Thus dominated, they could become benevolent.
Uncertain origin:
Very few scarface statuettes exist. Only four complete and three fragmentary examples are known. These pieces are thought to have been found in the Fars region of Iran, close to the modern town of Chiraz. However, this is uncertain, first, because it is based only on hearsay, and second, because the choice of materials and the way in which it can be taken apart links this small statue closely with the stone sculpture of the Oxus civilization in Bactria and Margiana during the third millennium BC. That civilization produced numerous princesses in chlorite or steatite and calcite.

A dirct comparison of all 6 scarfaces known to me can be found here.

Mirror

Here is an elaborate mirror from supposedly Greek times (the museum doesn't say much about the object). I have no idea if the originally polished bronze surface was silver coated but it appears to be likely.