Ancient Greek gold was a very important part of ancient Greece. Now as the end of 550 BC approached, the Greeks had already started to mine for gold all over the Middle East region as well as the Mediterranean region.

When was the element gold discovered

The Greeks thought that gold basically came from a mixture of water along with sunlight. In around 344BC, Hellespont was crossed by Alexander the Great and 40,000 men. This started an extraordinary campaign in the Greeks military history.

Ancient Greek Gold

Now the booty that they got from this military campaign was lots and lots of gold which was from the Persian Empire. Now gold was actually one of the main reasons for many conflicts in ancient Greece.

According to a myth, the king of Mycenae, Agamemnon and the leader of the famous expedition to Troy were believed to have lived around the time of 1550 BC. His funerary mask which was made of ancient Greek gold was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann, a German archeologist in 1876, at Mycenae.

Ancient Greek Gold: Facts

Now areas from Gibraltar to around Asia and Egypt was mined by the ancient Greeks. After this, they planned on practicing alchemy, so that they could turn all the base metals into gold.

This way, they would not have to mine so much anymore. Now the alchemists weren’t very successfully since gold turned out to be an element but then from their efforts, one can tell their desirability for gold.

Gold Coins and their Uses

Now the gold which was acquired by the Greeks was often used in minting money. The gold coins would help in paying for goods and so on. It was also widely used in making jewelry for women. This gold was sometimes also crafted as small figurines, animals, birds and so on.

Now since the Greek kings were very wealthy, they started to develop a very intricate taste in artifacts which were made of ancient Greek gold. Now the goldsmiths used to increase their repertoire by using motifs which were exotic in nature. For example, the crown of Isis, the crescent and also the Hercules knot which is also known as the reef knot.