Beautiful jewelry ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians described their native country as "the black land,"  recognizing it as a font of fertile abundance in contrast to the harsh,  unyielding deserts surrounding them. This fertility applied to more than  just agriculture. The inventiveness and creativity of ancient Egypt still  exerts influence and inspires awe today. The ancient Egyptians were  trailblazers in many fields, but particularly in the field of beauty. 

Pioneers in the arts of adornment, including cosmetics and tattooing, they  did not limit themselves to enhancement of only the body's natural charms. The ancient Egyptians were also brilliant innovators in the  creation of jewelry.  The ancient Egyptians loved ornamentation. Jewelry was designed,  crafted and worn with great care thought and care. In their typical  holistic fashion, fine jewelry was valued not only for beauty but also for  the magical and spiritual protection it provided for its wearer. Did the  concept of purely ornamental adornment exist for the ancients? Did they  make that distinction between amulets and jewelry? Many  anthropologists believe not. 

Minerals and metals were identified with specific deities as well as with  specific spiritual and therapeutic values. Thus their words for lapis lazuli and turquoise were synonymous with joy and delight, respectively. Copper and malachite were identified with Hathor, gold connected to the solar  deity.  The Egyptians did not confine themselves to a limited selection of  materials: a very wide variety of minerals were crafted into jewelry  including amethyst, cornelian, jasper, onyx and quartz crystal. Today  these stones are classified as semi-precious versus precious gems like  diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. How or even whether the  Egyptians classified these gems remains unknown: the distinction  between precious and semi-precious, for us, has largely to do with scarcity and economic value. Connections between availability and economic value did also exist in ancient Egypt but we cannot assume that modern  cultures and ancient Egypt share the same perceptions of what was  precious. For instance, during many periods of Egyptian history, silver was valued more highly than gold, due to its relative scarcity. Just as in  today's world, silver holds less economic value than gold, perhaps many of  what are now considered semi-precious gems may have been perceived as  quite rare and valuable in old Egypt. Many were obtained only with  great effort and cost: lapis lazuli, which held great spiritual significance  for the Egyptians, was not obtained locally but imported largely from  what is now Afghanistan. 

Yet as regards the production of jewelry, the Egyptians seemed to have  also been faced with some purely practical concerns: what to do should a  desired gemstone be unattainable, unavailable or perhaps unaffordable?  In typical ingenuous and innovative fashion, the Egyptians invented the  art of the fabulous fake. The ancient artisans became so adept at crafting  glass bead versions of precious stones that it can be difficult to  distinguish the mimics from authentic emeralds, pearls and tigers-eye. 

This innovation depended upon yet another revolutionary legacy from  ancient Egypt: the development of glass. Debate ranges among modern scholars as to whether glass was initially manufactured in Egypt or in  Mesopotamia (or whether it arose in both nations).