3. Cilt - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

AMBER FROM THE ARTEMISION AT EPHESUS IN THEMUSEUMS OF İSTANBUL AND SELÇUK/EPHESUSUlrike MUSS*The legend which has grown up surrounding the origin of amber points toa relationship to the sun, to the tree as provider of raw material, and to water:Phaeton, the son of Helios and Klymene, secretly mounted the chariot of his fatherand crashed down with it into the River Eridanos. His sisters the Heliades werepunished, as they had harnessed their father’s horses, by being turned into poplarson the banks of the Eridanos. Their tears, in which evidence of resin has beenseen, dropped into the river and there hardened into amber. The river Eridanosseems to be modern Po in Northern Italy 1 .The Greeks called petrifi ed conifer resin from the Tertiary period Elektron. Thelustre of amber (Fig. 1), its golden coulor and its property of becoming electricallycharged when rubbed are unique, and already in antiquity led to the superstitionthat amber offered protection against demons and illnesses. Amber is therefore isa material of strangely esoteric character 2 .The British Excavator David George Hogarth mentioned in Excavations (1908)two kinds of amber: 1. clear tawny of hard texture, which resists disintegratinginfl uences; 2. more opaque and dusky red, of friable texture, glowing deep crimsonwhen held up to the light. This last variety Hogarth believed to be of Sicilian origin.The clear tawny variety was –after Hogarth– probably brought from the Balticcoast.Some of the beads which have been found during the British Excavation in1904/05 and which are in the British Museum in London, have been analysed byCurt W. Beck with the so called ‘Infrared Spectroscopy’ these came from the Balticcoast 3 .* Ulrike MUSS, Austrian Archaeological Institute, Vienna/AVUSTURYA1 A. Mastrocinque, Ambra e Eridano. Studie sulla letteratura e sul commercio dell’ambra in etàpreromana, (1991) esp. 7ff.2 D. Strong, Catalogue of Carved Amber in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities(1966) 41ff.3 Not published, information by personal communication (letter) between C. Beck and A.Bammer.13