The Bronze Age is known for its epic heroes, grand civilizations – the ruins of some still survive to this day – and, of course, the increasing development of precious objects as some cultures became more socially stratified.
At its simplest level, the term “Bronze Age” is used to refer to the period when cultures in Europe, Asia, and Africa first began to use metalworking. The Bronze Age roughly lasted from 3000 BC to 1200 BC, after the Stone Age and before the Iron Age in most cultures.
In addition to advances in metalworking, this period often includes a number of other important developments in human societies, such as writing systems, urbanization, and more complex governmental systems. Other technologies, such as the plow and the wheel, also appeared during this time.
What things did people of this age consider luxuries? Luxury, like beauty, is an eye of the beholder, and some cultures valued certain things more than others. Likewise, the things that people of the past valued were often different from what we might consider valuable today. Below we have selected some strange but impressive artifacts from the Bronze Age.
Octopus Vases
The Minoans, known for the myth of the Labyrinth and the Minotaur, were one of the oldest complex Greek societies living on the island of Crete. From the time of the Minoan civilization, which existed from about 3000 BC to 1100 BC.
The island had particularly skilled artisans who produced beautiful frescoes and ceramics. From the latter developed the so-called maritime style, which often depicted sea creatures. Some of the most amazing of these included vases with intricate depictions of octopuses, such as the vases repaired from shards found in the Cretan city of Palaikastro (see photo). But other surviving pottery depicts fish, dolphins, seaweed, and sponges. Later Greek cultures, such as Mycenaean, borrowed these themes.
Hittite sun disk
One of 13 sun disks found in tombs at Alakahoyuk, an archaeological site in Turkey. This sun disk, along with others found in the tombs, dates back to the Early Bronze Age. It is believed that they had some ritual significance, but the reason why they were placed in the tombs remains uncertain.
The Hittites were a Bronze Age culture that lived primarily in what is now Turkey, from about 1700 B.C. to 1200 B.C. One of the most impressive of these was discovered in a tomb at the ancient site of Alakahoyuk.
Figurines made of Harappan terracotta
Harappa, a settlement of the Harappan people or Indus Valley, was one of the oldest civilizations in India. Among the artifacts discovered in this ancient city and in the area of its influence are a large number of terracotta figurines.
They were made to resemble anything from animals to human figures, most of them female. While terracotta objects vary in complexity, some are intricately crafted and painted. Some of the women are covered with jewelry, and they may represent deities.
Ritual bronze wine vessel
The Bronze Age in China began as early as 2000 BC and lasted until about the 3rd century BC.
According to the Sidney and Lois Eskenazy Museum of Art, some were made specifically for burial among the wealthy, while others were used in rituals at ancestral altars . In the Shang and Zhou dynasties, these ritual vessels also sometimes included inscriptions and dedications.
Dancing pygmy Pepi II
The Bronze Age of Egypt (approximately 3100 BC – 1100 BC) spans three periods and two intermediate periods, from the Old Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom – a glorious span of time for ancient civilization, when monuments such as the pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx were built. Expensive items such as papyrus, an early type of paper that came from the plant of the same name, are fairly well known. But one of the strangest luxury items of this period was, unfortunately, not an object but a real person-in this case, a dancing dwarf.
Around the 23rd century BC, Egyptian King Pepi II, then eight years old, learned that Harkhuf, a famous general and explorer of the time, had obtained a pygmy during an expedition to Africa. The Egyptian pantheon of gods included several dwarf deities. Living gnomes and pygmies were rare and highly coveted, believed to have special abilities, and the young king was eager to have them.