The Status Of Gold Jewelry In Syria During The Byzantine Era

Abstract

The research aims to study the form and content of some artifacts of golden jewelry preserved in Syrian museums, and to highlight the ingenuity of Byzantine art and Syrian art in crafting jewelry during the period of the presence of the Byzantines in Syria, and what is the difference in aesthetic taste and the mutual influences between them, as well as providing an added value to topics related to the arts. Aesthetics in general and the art of crafting gold jewelry in particular.

The research methodology relied on two aspects, theoretical and practical, starting with collecting information based on the list of sources, references, magazines and all publications that dealt with the subject of the research and the archives of museums, up to the practical side: based on the study of the collections of archaeological golden jewelry found in Syrian museums.

Three main chapters were addressed, beginning with a review of the importance of the gold metal throughout the ages, and the Byzantine era in particular, in addition to the associated influences of the East on Byzantine art, and vice versa, down to the features of the Byzantine civilization and its associated social reality, traditions, customs, and Byzantine art that reached its peaks. In that period, in addition to presenting lighting on the sources of obtaining gold, and the types of jewelry in the Byzantine period concerned with research and providing information about them after studying and analyzing them, and then dealing with the practical side of the analysis in order to reach the symbolism of jewelry  to know the indications through an analysis of the strong connection to the economic and social and religious and ideological content.