The earth is fraught with just a huge amount of all kinds of artifacts. Literally tons of stone, bronze, copper and rusty iron, not to mention gold and silver items. Bronze alone has probably dug thousands of tons! For example, take a look at the photo below this text. It has a wall in the Archaeological Museum in Halle in Saxony-Anhalt, Halle, Germany. On the wall there are stone axes found only, let us emphasize this, in this German "land". But in Germany there are still many "lands", and in Europe there are many different countries. And we have already visited some of their museums here, at VO, and saw how much there is, not only in showcases, but also in storerooms.
Finds from Nebra. State Museum of Ancient History, Halle
So it's ridiculous to say that all this is buried in the ground on purpose (and to different depths!) To prove … what? What do hundreds of tons of bronze sickles or daggers, of different shapes, with different metal compositions, which are found with different bones, beads and wood remains, prove?
Stone axes on the wall of the Archaeological Museum in Galle.
Well, these are bronze helmets in the storehouse of the Archaeological Museum in Athens. Enough for a whole squad of hoplites. Moreover, there are dozens of such museums (and storage facilities) in Greece, Crete and Cyprus!
That is, archaeologists are dealing with a staggering amount of routine. And all this routine says only one thing. In the past, people lived at different times. Downstairs, their tools and weapons are made of stone, but sometimes they are all found upstairs. Especially on river slopes, where water washes them out of the ground. Then comes copper, followed by arsenic and antimony bronzes, then tin, then iron. And never the other way around! But gold (oh, this coveted gold!) Comes across in all horizons, except for the horizons of the Stone Age.
Sickles, axes and adzes, as well as a gold plate from the Archaeological Museum in Chemnitz, also in Germany.
Casting shape. And she comes up to the sickles from the burials, the finds from which are exhibited in the museum in Chemnitz.
However, routine is routine, but sometimes archaeologists come across very original finds, well, just very much. We can say unique! And besides, they are found very often by accident. We have already talked about many such finds - "swamp people", ancient rich helmets, sculptures at the bottom of the sea. Today we will get acquainted with another truly unique find - "Heavenly Disc from Nebra".
Celestial Disc from Nebra, c. XVII century. BC NS. (State Museum of Ancient History, Halle)
What is it: "Heavenly Disc from Nebra"? And this is a bronze disc, the diameter of which is 30 cm. Its surface is covered with a patina of aquamarine color, and it also has gold inserts that depict the Sun, the Moon and 32 stars, and for some reason there is the Pleiades cluster among them. Both from an artistic and archaeological point of view, this find is simply unique. It is customary to attribute this artifact to the Unetice culture that existed in Central Europe according to radiocarbon analysis around 1700-1300. BC NS. Today, however, thanks to the data of dendrochronological studies, this dating is somewhat older: 2300-1600 BC. NS. It was named so in honor of the Unetice burial ground near Prague, excavated back in 1880. In her burials there are amber beads, stone drilled axes, then bronze axes, arrowheads, daggers, weights for looms, and also … bowls of skulls! And now there is also such an artifact as this disc.
The discovery of the disc for the first decade of the 21st century became an archaeological sensation and caused a lot of fierce controversy among scientists. The fact is that it appeared not as a result of excavations, but as a "product" of the black market in 2001. But according to German law, all archaeological finds are the property of the state. Therefore, the Swiss police arrested the disc sellers during a special operation in Basel. The find was transferred to the archaeological museum at Martin Luther University in the city of Halle, and the hunters for ancient artifacts were sent to prison.
The building of the State Museum of Ancient History in Halle.
At first, the find was perceived rather skeptically, especially in Germany, where this disc was considered a fake. For example, Peter Schauer from the University of Regensburg put it this way: "If you urinate on a piece of bronze and bury it for a couple of weeks, you will get exactly the same patina." But then a micrograph of corrosive crystals was taken, and now it just confirmed the antiquity of the find, so today most experts have no doubts about the authenticity of the disc.
At the trial, the sellers of the artifact said they found it in 1999 with a metal detector in a place called Nebra (Saxony-Anhalt, 60 km west of Leipzig). In the same burial, they found two bronze swords, two axes, a bronze chisel, and fragments of bracelets in the form of spirals. Archaeologists immediately went to the place indicated by them, began to dig there and found traces of bronze. They found that the soil from the excavation site exactly matched the composition of the one found on the disc. So from this side, its authenticity was confirmed. X-ray spectral analysis of the disc materials showed the following: the copper from which it was made was mined in Styria, and gold was mined in the Carpathians.
Interestingly, the disc was found at the site where about a thousand ancient burials were found from the Neolithic era. Interestingly, the place where the disc was found was on the top of a 252-meter hill, and in ancient times it was surrounded by a fence. Archaeologists have carefully studied both this place and its surroundings and found out that this settlement was arranged in such a way that at each solstice the Sun would set right behind the highest point of the nearest mountain range. This gave grounds to associate the artifact with prehistoric "observatories" such as Stonehenge and the much more ancient Gosek circle nearby.
It is very possible that this disc was used to measure the angle between the points of sunrise and sunset just around the time of the solstices. And if this is really so, then before us is nothing more than the most ancient portable device for such measurements. The fact that this disk had the function of an astronomical device is also evidenced by the addition of arcuate plates from the right and left edges, made of gold of a different composition than the signs of the Sun, Moon and stars. These arcs describe an angle of 82 degrees, which is equal to the angle between the position of the Sun at the latitude of Nebra during the summer and winter solstices. The fact is that two stars were under these arcs, and one star was moved to the side. And although the left plate has been lost today, we can conclude that this "device" at first had one "basic configuration", and then it was "tuned" exactly to the place where it was then found!
On the bottom of the disc there is another gold insert, the purpose of which is still not clear. It is believed to be a "solar boat", and the transverse scratches on it are oars), and that it symbolizes either the Milky Way or the rainbow. Another 39-40 holes were drilled around the disc circumference. The diameter of each of them is about 3 mm each, and why they were needed is also not clear.
The Disc from Nebra was the cause of several court cases, primarily related to the fact that the state of Saxony-Anhalt registered its image as … its trademark! In 2003, the state won a lawsuit against the city of Querfurt, which also began to use the disc image on its souvenirs. In 2006, another case followed, in connection with the fact that the disc got on the covers of books of the publishing houses Piper and Heyne.
Center building in Nerba, directly at the site of the find.
It cannot be confused with anything! And it is difficult to drive past it without looking inside.
The defendant's representatives stated that the first "publication of the disc" took place 3500 years ago, due to which it is naturally in the public domain, that is, "public domain", and therefore can be used freely. On the contrary, representatives of the authorities pointed out that the first publication of this artifact took place in 2002, that is, its images under the copyright law have belonged to the state for 25 years, that is, until 2027. In general, this find is mired in the courts. However, from October 2004 to February 2007. this disc, along with The Cart from Trundholm and 1600 other artifacts from the Bronze Age, took part in the impressive Forged Heaven exhibition in Halle, Copenhagen, Vienna, Mannheim and Basel. Now the disc is in a museum in Halle, but in June 2007, in order to attract tourists, an ultra-modern multimedia center was opened in Nebra, entirely dedicated to this unique object of the distant past.
