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| The Berlin Wizard Hat Image Philip Pikart |
The Berliner Goldhut is believed to have been used as the insignia of
priests around 800-1000 years B.C. Now academics have discovered it had an even
more important purpose.
In
Neues Museum in Berlin, there is an extraordinarily fine example of a
goldsmith's art. It looks like a tall wizard's hat and it dates from the late
Bronze Age, over 3000 years ago. The "hat" is one of four similar
conical artifacts discovered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in
Europe, (one in France and two others in Southern Germany.) The specimen in
Berlin, thought to be made of organic material covered in fine gold leaf, is
considered to be the best of the four and the only one that is fully preserved.
A Single Find with No Provenance
Described as a
"single find", there was no evidence for its history or chronology
when the artifact came to the Neues Museum in 1996. Academics and researchers
were confused as to why people who were alive during the Bronze Age would
construct such an intricate artwork, when it was all they could manage to
simply survive. These were people who made weapons and tools from copper and
its alloy, bronze, and for whom life was hard, short and dangerous.
Yet, research
indicates that the beautiful, golden, conicular artifact, like the other three
surviving cones, is actually an astronomical calendar, and was probably worn as
a headdress by a priest or holy man. Besides its spiritual significance, it
also had a practical use, as religious events could be logged. It was described
as "lunisolar", because the calendar determined both lunar and solar
dates.
A Complex Mathematical System
The
mathematical methods that were applied to the calendar have not yet been fully
deciphered, but it appeared to work by calculating in units of 57 months. Each
symbol represented a single day. The number of symbols per zone were multiplied
with the number of rings or circles within each of the symbols.
Amazing that
we, today, think ourselves so smart and so advanced. How did our simple Bronze
Age ancestors achieve all this with their limited facilities and knowledge?
Perhaps they were much more intelligent, artistic and resourceful than we ever
supposed.
Sources:
·
"Inside the Pergamon and Neues Museums,
Berlin", TV Documentary,Yesterday, 12 January 2012, 2.00pm.
Originally:Kensington TV, Toronto, Site Accessed: 12
January, 2012.
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