Gold

On the occasion of the founding of the Centre for Ancient World Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a symposium was held from 19 to 20 April 2007 with the goal of presenting the wide variety of research projects being conducted at the Centre to a broader audience by means of an examination of a common topic. The topic "Gold" was chosen since this precious metal has played an exceptional role in all ancient cultures and in all spheres of life, in religion and cults, in literature and philosophy, in fine art and handicrafts, in power and social structures, and in commerce. Gold has also, in all time periods, tempted people to conduct immoral and criminal acts. Forgery and alchemist experiments were not alien to people in antiquity. For this reason, among others, philosophers of the ancient world as well as the early Christians were quite ambivalent about the value of gold. It is therefore not surprising that the contributions to the first symposium of the Centre for Ancient World Studies discussed gold from a large number of perspectives and based on very different methods.