Wisdom Transformed into Gold: The 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage in Georgia

The 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage in Georgia culminates in an exhibition at the National Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi, under the title, Wisdom Transformed into Gold – Our heritage where the past meets the future.

The exhibition reflects on the priorities for the museum to enhance the study of the history of technological innovations and experimental research. For example, the museum’s use of holograms – the holomuseum – to showcase archeological findings. A polychrome chalice, or cup, belonging to the Trialeti Culture (early second Millennium BC) occupies a special place in the treasury of the Georgian National Museum. Every technological method used to create the 4,000 year-old chalice continues to exist in the musuem, such as the gold-making techniques.

The exhibition presents, for the first time, the results of the experimental research that enabled Ermile Maghradze, the author of the project, to reconstruct the ancient gold manufacturing techniques and jewellry-making tools – and an exact copy of the golden Trialeti chalice. The exhibition also presents, for the first time, some gold jewellery of the Late Antiquity (2^nd– 4th centuries AD), goldsmiths’ tools from the museum’s ethnographic collection, and items made from gold and precious metals. From generation to generation, gold-making in Georgia has gained its own place within European civilization.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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