Necklace of blue cast glass beads and their gold covers

Mycenaean, about 1400-1300 BC
From Tomb 4, Ialysos (modern Triánda), Rhodes, Aegean Sea

This necklace was made of cast beads of blue glass in the shape of a vase, each carefully wrapped in thin sheet gold. Different numbers of plaques and covers survive from the tomb, indicating that some of the glass ornaments were lost or broken either before they were placed there, or at the time of the excavations.

The Mycenaeans learned the art of casting glass from the Minoans, a technique which ultimately derived from the Near East. Stone moulds have been found at palace sites like Knossos and Mycenae, carved with shapes for the casting of glass beads and ornaments. Necklaces made of such beads became especially popular in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC. They were easier and cheaper to make than jewellery of precious materials, thus presumably available to a much wider cross-section of Mycenaean society.

The British Museum also has four plaques from the same tomb, each decorated with a sphinx.

R. Higgins, Greek and Roman jewellery (London, Methuen, 1980)