GOLD AND GLASS

Length 33.5 cm. ; average diameter of beads 0.3 cm ; length of beech-nuts 0.6 cm. ; weight 13.9 gr.

USAK MUSEUM

The necklace is strung with 118 beads of varying forms, from thirty-two of which were suspended pendants with the shape of a triple-lobed beech nut. Eighty of the beads are plain and spherical, of larger and smaller sizes; two are spherical with a wire collar around the perforations; one is a very short plain cylinder. The remaining thirty-five beads are granulated, most formed from three rings of granules soldered together, either in the form of short cylinders or squat spheres, some with wire rings around the perforations; the others are formed from a spiralled single length of granules. Of the beech-nut pendants, twenty are gold, and twelve were originally glass. The gold pendants are suspended from plain beads by a three-link chain, the top ring attached to the bead, the bottom ring to the pendant. To twelve of the granulated beads is attached a wire ring, through which is hooked the looped upper end of a wire stem which pierces a perforated beech-nut pendant made of glass. One of the glass pendants is missing completely, five retain only the stem with its granular termination. Of the surviving six, four are turquoise and two brownish-red in colour. Both gold and glass pendants have a cluster of granulation at the tip.
Plain spherical beads and granulated beads are combined in necklaces from tombs at Sardis. One of these has beads attached to pendants by three-link chains. Beech-nut pendants of the early Hellenistic era are invariably suspended from strap necklaces; examples are from the tombs of Pavlovsky and the Great Blitznitza in the Crimea, a necklace said to be from near Thessaloniki, and one said to be from
Kyme. The 'spear-head' pendants cited in inventories of the 3rd century BC from Delos, where they are called "little spearheads", may have been of this type. In the so-called Tomb of the 'Carian Princess' at Halicarnassos was also found a necklace with beech-nut pendants. A necklace in Pforzheim has beech-nut and ribbed seed pendants and is part of a group said to be from Sardis. A necklace in the Batya and Elie Collection in Jerusalem has gold granulated beads from which are suspended beech-nut pendants with granulation clusters at the tips, as well as plain spherical beads. The necklace also has individual bud-shaped pendants of red and blue stone. Other elements of this necklace provide close comparisons for the acorn necklace and the hippocamp brooch , both from Toptepe.