Golden craftsmanship: casting and hammering

A different technique can be seen in the compartments of this necklace. When comparing those compartments, it becomes clear that they are all quite similar, and some of them might even look exactly the same. Therefore, casting could have been used as the main technique for this section of the necklace. Casting is a process in which a liquid material is poured into a mold. When the liquid solidifies, the object is taken out of the mold and immediately shaped into the desired form (Fig. 35). The use of the same mold for these different compartments would explain why the horses are all so similar. However, some argue that casting was seldomly done for gold, because of the large potential for waste. It is indeed difficult to melt the exact amount of gold needed to fill up the mold, and gold may have been too valuable to do this.See: Ogden, Jack. ‘Gold in Antiquity’. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 17, no. 3 (1 September 1992): 261–70. Therefore, chasing might be another option. This technique consists of hand-working gold by hammering it out into thin sheets and shaping or cutting it into the desired form. When hammering from the reverse side creating relief, this is called repoussé. Often these two ways of hammering are used simultaneously (Fig. 36).See: Ogden, Jack. ‘Metals’. In Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, edited by Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw, 148–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. In this case, only an expert could produce such sophisticated and similar horses.