#colchis

[thatshowthingstarted]

Gold Turtle Necklace from the Kingdom of Colchis,

(modern-day Georgia/South Caucasus), c. 450 BCE,

Length: Approximately 33 cm (13 inches).

Composition: It consists of 31 gold pendants (one large central turtle and 30 smaller turtles).

Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia.

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Temple Pendants from Georgia (South Caucasus) c.350 BCE: this jewelry was worn as part of an elaborate headdress, with each pendant hanging on one side of the wearer's face

These temple ornaments were created in the Kingdom of Kartli (also known as the Kingdom of Iberia) nearly 2,400 years ago, when Kartli controlled most of what is now eastern Georgia. Like the neighboring Kingdom of Colchis, Kartli was famous for its mastery of goldsmithing, and these pendants are a reflection of that tradition.

Temple pendants (also known as temple ornaments) are pieces of jewelry that hang down along each side of a person's face, often covering the temples and part of the cheek. The pendants are typically suspended from a headdress, headband, or diadem. This type of jewelry is often associated with the cultures of the Near East, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, but it has appeared in many different cultures throughout history.

These particular pendants were discovered in a cache of artifacts known as the Akhalgori treasure. They measure about 13cm long, and each pendant depicts a pair of horses in exquisite detail. The legs and ears are crafted from pieces of gold leaf, while the eyes are formed by thin gold wire; the horses are depicted with reigns, harnesses, rounded forelock tufts, and decorative saddle-cloths, and each pendant is decorated with intricate patterns of gold granulation.

As this book describes:

These temple ornaments are masterpieces of the goldsmith’s art. The finest granulation is used, and individual parts are created from fine wire and thin gold leaf. The bodies of the horses are formed by two halves soldered together. The legs and ears are made of gold leaf with details depicted in relief, and even the horses’ eyes are soldered on with fine wire.

The pendants reflect some Achaemenid, Scythian, and Greek influences, but the style and technique is still distinctly Georgian:

The form of the temple pendants — a wide plaque surmounted by a large rosette with special springs for fastening — is not found among objects from Achemenid Iran, whereas the figure of the horse, with its horse-cloth ending in a toothed pattern and drop-shaped pendants, “plumes” and harness is indisputably Achemenid. The technique employed is also Achemenid, although ornamental jewellery found in Iran does not have such rich granulation.

The temple pendants of the Akhalgori hoard are an example of metalwork fashioned in the imperial Achemenid, yet incorporating the achievements of the local metalwork schools, which can be seen in the details of the ornamentation.

Sources & More Info:

Georgian National Museum: Temple Pendants

Lost Treasures of Persia: Temple Ornaments from the 4th Century BC

Papers in Ancient Near Eastern, Mediterranean, and Armenian Studies: Achaemenids and the Southern Caucasus (PDF)

Classical Wisdom: Should We Own Stuff?

[katerinaaqu]

The image of Medea and Circe talking to each other in Colchian language and Jason just standing there all confused in Argonautica will never stop being funny in my head! 😆😆😆

[owltxt]

my attempted very simplified visualization of Colchis' orbital turn/solar day as explained in Lorgar's primarch book, and interpreted by the ancient desert settlers

:3c for my personal notes but thought i would still share

very longgg passage excerpt below cut from Lorgar: Bearer of the Word containing more thorough details about this world's timekeeping

Translator's Note on Time

The world of Colchis is of a magnitude larger than Holy Terra, and consequently even approximations of time by the accepted nomenclature of 'Terran standard' are unsuccessful in conveying the very different diurnal and nocturnal cycle of its inhabitants. Before we begin, the reader should familiarize themselves with the following information.

The orbit of Colchis around its star takes nearly five years - four point eight to be more precise. Therefore if a Colchisian refers to being six years old, they are in fact twenty-eight or twenty-nine Terran years old.

A Colchisian solar day, that is, one complete planetary rotation, is seven point one terran days, or one hundred and seventy point four Terran hours. Clearly even humans, as adaptable as they are, cannot survive with a ninety-hour day/night cycle, and so Colchisian culture developed a system for intermediary sleep and waking periods.

These periods are often referred to as 'days' in many volumes but this can be confusing and portray an erroneous image of events. In this text I have endeavored to achieve a more literal translation of the Colchisian terminology, which is derived from the language of the ancient desert settlers.

'Day', in the following manuscript, refers to a complete orbital turn of the planet, from sunrise to sunrise. This day is further divided into the following times of approximately twenty-four hours each (the exact length depends further upon seasons and locality, and chronometry on Colchis is a dedicated and difficult scientific discipline in its own right): Dawnaway, Mornday, Long Noon, Post-noon, Duskeve, Coldfall, High Night.

These sub-days are then broken down into three further periods, two of wakefulness and one of sleep, approximating eight hours each. These three periods are called wake-rise, wake-main and rest-eve, with the last being the sleep period (although frequently inhabitants may sleep less than eight hours during Mornday, Long-Noon, and Post-Noon, and slightly longer during the darkness of the remaining time).

One might therefore refer to wake-rise of Dawnaway, being sometime in the first eight hours of the twenty-four-hour period of a new Colchisian day. Custom has it that the hottest time, wake-main of Long Noon, is also a rest period, for when the local star is at its zenith, it is exceptionally deleterious to health to be out of cover. Conversely, rest-eve of High Night is the coldest and darkest period of the Colchisian day.

[hopefully-grimderp]

Started on my next Primarch audiobook, "Lorgar: The Bearer of Words".

I'm on Chapter 1 and I already hate it on Colchis! What do you mean I need an advanced Math degree to tell the time?!!!

[cinematropes]

73 reactions · 62 shares | Ο ΙΑΣΟΝΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΧΡΥΣΟΜΑΛΛΟ ΔΕΡΑΣ ΑΠΟ ΣΑΒΒΑΤΟ 21 ΝΟΕΜΒΡΙΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΛΙ ΣΤΟ ΘΕΑΤΡΟ BADMINTON Το συναρπαστικότερο ταξ

Ο ΙΑΣΟΝΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΧΡΥΣΟΜΑΛΛΟ ΔΕΡΑΣ ΑΠΟ ΣΑΒΒΑΤΟ 21 ΝΟΕΜΒΡΙΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΛΙ ΣΤΟ ΘΕΑΤΡΟ BADMINTON Το συναρπαστικότερο ταξίδι της ελληνικής μυθολογία

Sharing this trailer from a play I watched years ago: "Jason and the golden fleece"

This was also my inspiration for drawing Medea with curled horns:

More pictures:

I was asked about this by @goldenportobello:))

[tagedeszorns]

Hear me out: Erebus, but he stopped shaving his entire head.

Curly Erebus.

You're welcome.

[laiapolypharmakos]

Chalciope/Iophossa

Wife of Phrixus, Chalciope, daughter of Aeetes, sister of Medea

She's staring at Phrixus, mesmerised, while he is yapping about random stuff🥰.

The only canonical thing is attested in the aspect of Chalciope is a generalistic characteristic of the race of Helios, that is:

Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4. 727-29:

For all those of the race of Helios were plain to discern, since by the far flashing of their eyes they shot in front of them a gleam as of gold.

The earring is an inspiration of these earrings found in Colchis from the 5th century BC. I found in this post and here a zoom:

Of course, it couldn't be any other way: Chalciope had to have a reference to her husband Phrixus. The earrings represent the Chrysomallos with Phrixus and Helle on its back. The acorns, apart from referring to the original jewel, refer to the oak tree on which the golden fleece was hung, and also refer to the fact that Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Zeus of the fugitives (Zeus Phyxos), and Zeus is associated with oak trees.

4. 123:

And they two by the pathway came to the sacred grove, seeking the huge oak tree on which was hung the fleece, like to a cloud that blushes red with the fiery beams of the rising sun. 

2. 1146:

The ram, at its own prompting, he then sacrificed to Zeus, son of Cronos, above all, the god of fugitives.

Fun fact:

Why Iophossa?

In Hesiod fragments edition, GE.F15 it says: 

PHRIXUS Scholiast on Apoll Rhod, Arg. ii. 1122: Argus. This is one of the children of Phrixus. These . . . Hesiod in the Great Eoiae says were born of Iophossa the daughter of Aeetes. And he says there were four of them, Argus, Phrontis, Melas, and Cytisorus.

In spanish editions it also says that Acusilaus also mentioned the name of Iophossa.

Regarding this variation in the name, I found a paper analysing the etymology of the names of the figures from Colchis (I have included a reference below; it is in Russian, I do not know Russian, so I used Google Translate). From what I understand, certain authors may have used real names or symbolic names of mythological figures and made calques in Greek. It also says that if we accept that Calciope is a calque of Iophossa, we can trace the same roots that make up the name, which are “ayas”, meaning “metal”, and “abhasa”, meaning “looking like" and can give more information of the "original name" of this Colchian princess.

Lebedev, A. V., & RAS Institute of Philosophy. (2021b). Indo-Aryan names in the saga of Argonauts, onomastics of Colchis and Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea region. Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology, 25, 728–782. https://doi.org/10.30842/ielcp230690152546