The Berlin Golden Hat (or Berliner Goldhut) is a tall, conical artifact made of hammered gold and decorated with astronomic symbols including the moon almost 3000 years old. It dates back to 1000-800 BC and may have been used as the ceremonial hat of a high priest or ruler used when worshipping the sun.
It is possible that the Berliner Gold Hat was also used as a calendar: the symbols on the artefact would have permitted the determination of dates or periods in both lunar and solar calendars. Since an exact knowledge of the solar year was of special interest for the determination of religiously important events such as the summer and winter solstices, the astronomical knowledge depicted on the Golden Hats was of high value to Bronze Age society. Whether the hats themselves were indeed used for determining such dates, or whether they simply represented such knowledge, remains unknown.
It was bought in 1996 by the Berlin Museum fur Vor- und Fruhgeschichte and has no provenance, but it is assumed that the Hat was found in Southern Germany or Switzerland.
The participants of 'Achievements and Problems of Modern Egyptology' faced a third day in full armour: wool sweaters, warm jackets and heavy coats. The government of Moscow, responsible for starting the heating, seems the cruellest of mankind's enemies when you have to spend eight hours in a freezing cold President Hall at the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The venue itself is grand, having almost every facility you can imagine - from conference halls and canteens, to billiards tables - but the temperature was oh-so-low yet again.
Ancient Egyptian Magic: Manipulating Image, Word, and Reality, an exhibition of twenty objects from the Brooklyn Museum’s world-famous ancient Egyptian art collection, explores how the Egyptians, known throughout the ancient world for their expertise in magic, addressed the unknown forces of the universe.
