 Hi, my name is Mary-Louise Hart and I'm an associate curator of antiquities here at the Getty Villa. One of my specialties is ancient jewelry and I was very proud to have had the opportunity to work on and to write about the spectacular ensemble of ancient Ptolemaic jewelry. So this is a jewelry group consisting of numerous pieces, all of which seem to have come been made together at the same time. They're all made up from the same type of gold. All of the details seem to have been worked in the same way and they were all they were all found together. They've all always been together. So when you say the same type of gold, the same sort of purity of gold? The same purity of gold. So this ensemble of jewelry dates from about 220 to 100 BC. It's Hellenistic and we think it was made in Alexandria. It's a product of the Ptolemaic Royal Court, not the Queen herself, probably because it lacks the kind of iconography associated with her cults. But probably belong to a priestess who who was part of the Royal Entourage. Okay, so this would have been a very high status. It would have been very high status and all of these objects would have presumably been worn by the same person all at the same time. Okay, and they do show signs of wear. Okay. And the two pieces that we looked at, which are the two most dramatic pieces of the set, are the fabulous openwork hair net and the beautiful diadem, which surmounted the head of the woman. Now, they're both rather small, so clearly whoever wore them was a very petite person, had a very small head, but you know, of a feminine stature, it's not too hard to believe that they could have all been worn. There are also a pair of snake armlets that would have been worn above the elbow. Okay. And there's another pair of golden snake bracelets that would have been worn at the wrist. So we have to imagine some of the really delicate, wealthy garments, maybe silks or really fine. Yes, absolutely. And you should think of someone like Cleopatra, but a few years before her. I mean, very much that the Cleopatra ensemble of the snake bracelets. And there's a lot of magic and a lot of a lot of meaningful messages in this jewelry, all of it carried by the gold. Okay. Which is going to be the most valuable material that they could find to work with. And to carry the messages. There are also several sets of earrings, some of them with dangling Eros figures. Some of them are little ram's head style earrings, which are very, very popular during this period. Very normal. They're not always in gold, but they're a normal style of earrings. And huge cabochon gem rings. And these are rings that are so big that they go across the hand. And they're used for seals. And one has an engraving of Taiki. And the other one has an engraving of Artemis on it. So what sort of iconography did you find overall on these? I mean, you talked about the snakes, but the hair net itself had Venus and Cupid, right? Yep. Well, in this period, we call them Aphrodite Eros. Right. So these hair nuts like this are rare, and as you can mention, extraordinarily special. The center medallion is made by Répeuxet, which is pounding out from the back into a form that makes the essential figure into a mold, and then they're turned around and they're chased from the outside and polished off. This one has Aphrodite and her little son Eros coming over her shoulder. It also exceptionally has theater masks, which help to anchor the strands of gold spools that come down the sides of the hair net. So it is known that the Ptolemy's had a great fondness for theater, and they love performance. And so there's sometimes you do see theatrical references in the artwork. So maybe this would be the sort of thing that you would wear out on a night on the town? Well, I think so. Or, you know, it's, yeah, exactly. And also two religious cults that have performance involved. Okay, yes, that's true. It's not, you know, they don't, they still, they're not to the point where they're thinking of going to play like we would. Right. Just, you don't just get dressed up for it. And the fact that that hair nut was worn with a diadem that has flaming torches on the side of it, is a sign that it was used for religious or ritual purposes. Because whenever you have flaming torches, as an attribute, or as iconography, in ancient art, you know that we've got some sort of a divine procession or situation going on. Okay, okay. Because that's torches were symbolic of that. Right. Now on the, on this diadem, the flames of the torches are made by the metalworker having twisted threads of gold into the shape of the flames. Wonderful. And they're spectacular. They're absolutely spectacular. Well, it looks like some of them were sort of long, narrow, like narrowing strips that were cut at an angle because they, they get seemed like increasingly smaller towards the end. Towards the center. Yeah. Towards the Heracles, no. Yeah. Yes, it's true. It's true. And they, they merge from a sort of a foliate that is a very, what would, what it would be is that both the fire and the, the, gosh, what would you call it? The thing that holds the torch. There are delicate floral tendrils that are worked in gold filigree around the golden flames. Right. And there are also tassels. Yeah. So one of the most wonderful things about both the Heranet and the diadem were these tassels that come around, come around the head and the back of the head of the woman who wore them. And then the Heranet at the back has two drops of, of multi-tiered tassels. She would have jingled as she walked. She would have caught the light and, and it all over her head, around her head on the top. And then along down the back, she would have looked absolutely gorgeous from profile and from the back as well, because then you would have gotten a full effect. Right. So you have to think of people who don't have electric lights and they've got candles and flickering, you know, beautiful candlelight and fires around. And then the way the gold catches light and then garnets especially. Well, that's interesting to imagine her suddenly unveiling all of this, sort of taking off a veil from being outside. And then, you know, sort of showing off the whole ensemble. Yes. And she would have had, you know, gold on her arms and gold on her ears. And it would have been quite an extraordinary scene. Yeah. And to think she isn't even the queen. Right. The queen would have had, would have been, you know, better even than this. And it's hard to imagine anything better than this, because these pieces do even surpass, they, they surpass most in collections of the world. Oh, yeah. The Benaki in Athens has, has some diadems that are outrageously heavy and big and huge and big stones. Right. But this is a delicate sea of this workmanship. This is extraordinary. Yeah, it's not big, heavy material. Yeah. Everything in here is done quite delicately and according to a certain very refined taste. Well, it seems like it must have been a goldsmith of the very highest order, because from what I could tell, no, there, there haven't been any shortcuts taken. No shortcuts. And it's, and it's hard to imagine how someone could have, what they would have done to their eyes working on the very fine, Yeah, that granulation is so tiny. So they must have had some sort of lenses that gave them some magnification, because, and this, this work, I think also was physically very hard on people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it was hard on their eyes and I, and I think it was a young person's work primarily. And then when you got older, you hopefully you owned. Yeah. Well, you would need to have very small, delicate and as well really good motor control. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, so it's a set of great mystery. And it's a set, a set that was one of the proudest acquisitions of the department that was sold to us by the fleshmen in New York.