A Stone that Linked Continents
Sat, 04/10/2010 - 11:25 — grace.norman@gm...
description:
<p>King Tut's tomb contained a beautiful blue stone—from Afghanistan. How did it get there?</p>
Era:
Age of Settlement
Theme:
Traces & Narratives
Year:
1500
BCE/CE:
BCE
Date Period:
BCE
Asset Type:
Trend
Caption:
Lapis Lazuli--treasured the world over.
More Information:
<p><em>0046</em>. AMRC Collection, Williams Afghan Media Project, Williams College, Williams College, Williamstown, MA.</p>
<p>Dupree, Nancy. <em>R10-15</em>. Dupree Collection, Williams Afghan Media Project, Williams College, Williamstown, MA.</p>
<p><em>K-00304-33</em>. AMRC Collection, Williams Afghan Media Project, Williams College, Williams College, Williamstown, MA.</p>
<p>Levy, Michael. "Hymn to the Muse." In <em>An Ancient Lyre</em>. 2009, MP3. <br />
An ancient Greek musical fragment, circa 2nd century CE. <br />
© Michael Levy.</p>
<p>Lysippos. "Lapislazuli Afghanistan-b." Digital image. <em>Wikipedia Commons</em>. Accessed August 11, 2010. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lapislazuli_afghanistan-b.jpg. GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License</p>
<p>Palladian. "Natural Ultramarine Pigment." Digital image. <em>Wikipedia Commons.</em> Accessed August 11, 2010. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Natural_ultramarine_pigment.jpg. </p>
<p>Peterjr1961. "Cult Image of the God Ptah." Digital image. Peterjr1961's Flickr Photostream. Accessed August 11, 2010. http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterjr1961/2755873280/. <br />
Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en</p>
<p>PHG. "Seated Buddha." Digital image. <em>Wikipedia Commons</em>. Accessed August 19, 2010. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SeatedBuddha.jpg. <br />
GNU free documentation license: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License</p>
<p>"Sample [lapis Lazuli Fragments]." Digital image. The British Museum. Accessed August 19, 2010. K-00304-33. <br />
© The Trustees of the British Museum</p>
<p>Sarahang. <em>Man Jane Kharabatam</em>. Lorraine Sakata, 1967. <br />
A ghazal. © Radio-Television Afghanistan Archives.</p>
<p>Veneziano, Caterino. "Madonna of Humility." Digital image. The Amica Library. Accessed August 11, 2010. http://tinyurl.com/25ckkyu.<br />
Cleveland Museum of Art.</p>
<hr />
<p>Producer: Alexis Menten</p>
Video Transcript:
<p>Afghanistan can appear to be a country without resources. But in fact, one of its natural resources was so valuable in ancient times that it was traded far and wide—as it still is today.</p>
<p>Afghanistan did have some resources that were highly sought after by others.</p>
<p>The most famous being lapis lazuli, the famous blue semi-precious stone which we find archeologically all the way over from Egypt over to China.</p>
<p>There was only one known source of lapis lazuli in ancient times – the highlands of the northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan. There, people have been mining lapis for many thousands of years.</p>
<p>Lapis comes almost exclusively from Afghanistan. And so the presence of lapis means that you must have been having trade with Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Lapis turns up already in the Bronze Age, in tombs in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and that’s evidence that already by the Third Millennium, we were having trade from Afghanistan to the West.</p>
<p>The blue pigment ultramarine is made from ground lapis lazuli, and historically, ultramarine was the second most expensive pigment after gold.</p>
<p>As soon as you see a painting that’s full of lapis, your eyes should flash and you should see dollar signs. Why is the Virgin’s robe always blue in Italian painting? Because it was expensive.</p>
<p>During more modern times in the 1980s and 90s, the Northern Alliance took control of the lapis lazuli mines. They used the profit from export sales to purchase weapons to fight the Soviets, and later, the Taliban.</p>
<p>Indeed if we look at most of history we find that people that are engaged in the trade of goods often do better economically than the people who make the goods. And we can tell archeologically in Afghanistan that it was a center for this kind of transit trade which could be very, very profitable. And if it was profitable then you had the money to import what you wanted as well.</p>
<p>History has shown that sometimes trade itself is as profitable as the value of the objects that are traded.</p>
<p> </p>
