Myths and legends of different peoples at all times have endowed and endowed gold with tremendous witchcraft. The country that was the first to start mining and processing gold is considered to be Egypt, "to whom excellent arable land was granted, as well as inexhaustible deposits of stone, copper and gold". In Egypt, monumental buildings were erected, including a sixty-meter monument 8 honor of the Sun God Ra, who had gold hair. Legend has it that the Phoenix bird, who burned itself and reborn again, young and renewed from the ashes, met the first rays of the sun on the gilded tops of such monuments.
The Egyptian priests taught that gold came from the Sun, which once poured on the Earth in a golden rain, and therefore the stone columns erected into the sky, erected to the glory of the Sun God, were also a symbol of the noblest of all metals - gold, which the Egyptians called "radiant".
Asia Minor was also rich in gold. This is confirmed by the presence of numerous myths and legends - for example, the myth of the ruler of the end of the VIII century. BC to the Phrygian king Midas, who had an incredible ability to turn everything in the world into gold, no matter what he touched. Midas was close to starvation, but he was saved by swimming in the waters of the Pactokles River, which became gold-bearing when Midas entered its waters. And the ease of extraction from this river of gold gave birth to the proverb of the Lydian king Croesus: "May Pactokles flow for you, may you abide in gold and wealth."
The first to mint gold and silver money was the father of Croesus, Aliat, who lived in 605-502. BC. They were made according to his instructions as a percentage of the value of gold to the value of silver at the rate of twelve to one,
In Asia Minor, one must look for the origins of the legend of the golden fleece. A fleece was a sheep's skin, which was laid out at the bottom of a gold-bearing stream so that gold-bearing sand swept over it: grains of sand were carried away by the current, and heavy particles of gold got stuck in the wool, which was then dried and knocked out. And, perhaps, the skin with washed gold was sold to foreigners, which is why the legend of the golden fleece was born.
The Argonauts went to Colchis (modern Georgia) after him, inventing a legend that the skin of the Greek "magical golden fleece ram" appeared in Colchis after Frix and Gella escaped from Greece from the persecution of an evil stepmother.
There was also another legend, according to which in the Caucasus "there was iron, more valuable than gold, and weapons made from it have irresistible power and incomparable fighting qualities." Caucasian blacksmiths possessed almost "demonic" powers when forging items from metals. To this day, there is the Order of the Golden Fleece, established in 1430, and its origins go back to the legendary Colchis, which Herodotus wrote about as a “blessed golden” land, where a highly developed gold-making existed already in the 5th century BC.
Around 1000 BC, the Jewish king David decided to start building a temple in Jerusalem, which he called nothing other than "an earthly jewel, which stood at the head of all desirable things, and nothing more." But the temple was built by his son, King Solomon. Even the floor was covered with gold leaf in the luxurious glittering hall of the temple. But in 586 BC, the Jerusalem temple was plundered by Nebuchadnezzar II. On the eve of the new era, one of the rulers ordered the restoration of the shrine, but in 70 AD it was again destroyed and plundered by the Romans.
Promotional video:
The Bible tells that Solomon received one hundred and twenty centners of gold from the South Arabian queen of Sheba, for which he awarded her with a son (king of kings), who became the ancestor of the Ethiopian dynasty.
The Phoenician city of Tire (the modern city of Sur in Lebanon) was so rich in gold that the Bible says about it: "Silver accumulated there like sand, and gold like street mud."
Solomon's father-in-law, the ruler of Tire Hiram I, entered the biblical country of Ophir by ships, which the Egyptians called Punt: "And they went to Ophir, and took from there gold four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon." The pioneers from Ophir belonged to the discovery of Spanish gold mines, which Gaius Julius Caesar used for his needs. Having borrowed fourteen million marks, Caesar left Rome in 62 and went as governor to Spain, where two years later he became so rich that he repaid the debts, and to cover new ones he soon found gold in Galia, which he went to war.
In 334 BC, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great began a war over gold with the Persian kings. A century and a half later, in 168, the Roman general Emilius Paulus defeated the last king of Macedonia in battle and seized the gold mine, from which his contemporaries were indescribable delight.
Plutarch tells about the third day of triumph and a peculiar parade of captured gold treasures: “Then came the men carrying gold coins poured into seventy-seven jugs, each of which weighed three talents (78.6 kilograms), so that one jug 'had to be carried by four. Following were about four hundred golden crowns, which were sent to Emilia through the envoys of the city of Asia in Greece in recognition of his victories."
People stripped gold of its sanctity
“Money was the first source of self-interest, insidious usury and the desire to get rich, indulging in idleness,” wrote Gaius Pliny the Elder. “But these vices soon intensified even more, and there arose true madness and an unquenchable thirst for gold.” Under Pliny, Emperor Nero ordered the Pompeian theater and his palace to be crowned with a roof of sheet gold. Pliny had to watch as Spain presented the emperor Claudius with such a golden crown that if he tried to stand under it, he would immediately be crushed like an insect. The crown weighed 2,800 kilograms.
Many rulers went mad for gold. The wife of the same emperor Claudius wore a mantle woven of gold. The horses of Emperor Caligula ate oats from golden decks. Even the church has been drawn into luxury. Priest Jerome wrote on this occasion: “We build as if eternal life is prepared for us in the earthly abode. The walls shine with gold, the vaults of the halls are of gold, the capitals of the columns are covered with gold, but he is hungry and dies naked in front of our door. Christ is in everyone who is in need."
Obsessed with the desire to find gold, Christopher Columbus went from Spain to India. He was lucky, but the gold riches did not go to him, but to the conquistadors who came for him. At the same time, the Aboriginal Indians saw God in gold, and therefore they worshiped him and made sacrifices.
In the capital of Colombia - Bogota, in the Museum of Gold, there is a unique collection of eight thousand minted and cast from gold household items and amulets of the ancient peoples of America. These items remained hidden from the Spaniards in the forest.
In the Middle Ages, Germany was the main gold mining Noah in Europe. The power of gold is reflected in its history and literature, for example, the cursed treasure of the Nibelungs is described, the legend of which - "The Song of the Nibelungs", was composed in 1200.
In the XVIII century. Brazil becomes a gold-rich country. In 1913, during excavation work on the territory of a brass factory in Eberswalde (near Berlin), a gold treasure was found from about 900 BC, consisting of processed and unworked gold, which contained ornamented gold bowls, necklaces, bracelets, a kitchen utensils and ingots weighing 2.5 kilograms.
When people learned to use fire and melt metal, bronze came to replace the Stone Age. From the nuggets of copper and gold found, people made weapons and other household items. The demand for them grew rapidly, and stainless gold acquired special value, which became the equivalent of all values.