Hellenistic Gold Eros Jewellery

Book excerpt: This work presents systematic and objective examination of the large corpus of Hellenistic gold Eros jewellery. By focusing on the question of the interconnections between the major centres of production - Egypt, South Italy and South Russia, Western Asia Minor, Greece and Syria a number of regional schools and new jewellery groups are identified. The keys to the discussion are the well documented find contexts from Northern Greece, South Italy and Tel Atrib (Egypt) that make it possible to arrive at a relative chronology for a particular type of Eros, found throughout the Hellenistic world. The morphological, stylistic, iconographic and technical continuities between Hellenistic jewellery and in particular the Eros motif ensure the successful use of this methodology. Evidence from Koroni in Attica and from several South Italian tomb groups has been examined in detail and dated, according to the methodology described above to ca. 240 BC. The study includes a discussion of the significance of Eros in the Hellenistic period. The study has shown the value of Eros jewellery as an indicator of the cultural life of the Hellenistic world - its values, literature and basic lore about nature and the arts. The Eros motif and its morphological lineage are traced through related depictions in contemporaneous decorative arts. The catalogue has brought together as much material as possible to establish a typology and chronology of Eros jewellery in the hope that it will provide the maximum amount of information for future studies. 32 plates, including 12 in colour, illustrate the work.