These two artifacts are among my
all-time favorite archaeological finds.
The first, pictured above, is a
jeweler's mold from the Viking era. I think it was found at Hedeby.
Using this mold, the enterprising silversmith could cast
Thor's-hammer pendants for believers in the old religion, and
Christian crosses for believers in the new, at the same time. Nothing
like free enterprise, and the profit motive, to promote tolerance.
The second is this . . .
. . . a pair of loaded dice from
Pompeii. Loaded dice have also been found at various Legionary forts
and garrison towns.
A neat thing about studying the past is
that it makes you marvel, simultaneously, at how much we have changed
over the centuries, and how little.
10 comments:
Love the wry archaeological commentary on the immutability of human nature, Mumpsimus.
But socialism will totally work next time when we get it right! /s
Great post as usual.
Very cool mold - it has all the features you need to do repeated pours - it is refractory, it has been carved so that the mold itself has a draft for easy release of the cast object, it is portable, and as you pointed out, it serves two religions.
The dice on the other hand, I have to tell you, I learned how to shoot craps on a bus ride through the Shenandoah valley over 50 years ago, but I have never been intrigued by gambling. I like to keep my money. Don't want to give it away to some shark or sharp. But even with my minimal exposure to and interest in dice games, just how unobservant would one have to be not to notice that those dice were loaded? I mean, come on man! Even hefting them would be a dead giveaway, I would think.
So, there it is - casting good, gambling bad, at least in my world.
Thanks for your insights on the mold, Sixty; it just looks like a lump with holes in it to me. Is it rock, do you think, or iron? Are you using "refractory" in the sense of "heat resistant?"
As for the dice, I figure they must have looked smooth and legit when new, but the interior pits were exposed by time and weathering, and maybe hot ash from the eruption.
Yes - one wants to make molds out of refractory material when casting hot stuff. The one in that picture is a permanent mold that looks to be carved out of a piece of rock. Good stuff.
All the molds I made were temporary - you had to break the mold to free the cast metal piece. So we would make a permanent mold in which to cast a wax positive, then invest that wax into a mold - say sand for example, or refractory plaster. With the latter we would build up layers of the material and imbed stainless steel wire as we went to give the mold enough strength to resist the force of the molten metal - you have to remember that metal weighs the same even in liquid from and it can exert a lot of force when it runs down into a mold. When doing sand casting the mold is contained in what is known as a flask. Keeps everything together until the piece cools. That reminds me - there is a foundry in the next town over that has a piece I cast in iron last year - that was a first for me, but guess what, I am not going back to that hell hole just yet. They can keep it for now.
Did I ever tell the story about the foundry in PA that lost 20 tons of molten iron down a fissure in the earth? No? Well, in addition to being a failed casting it was also an accounting nightmare.
I learned that a three degree draft angle allows a piece of metal to fall out of a mold once it cools. You definitely don't want any undercuts.
But enough about hot metal - I sometimes wonder about the path not taken, but there you go...
This is why you learn history. Human nature don't change.
ed, Agree. The Bard was a genius in understanding human nature and it sure as hell hasn't changed since he walked this earth.
nd,another oft-overlooked volume that understood people is the Bible.
I know the Lefties sneer at anybody who's read it, but the people who wrote that book nailed it, too. They must have been very particular in choosing who did the writing. The saga of the Hebrews becoming prosperous, then decadent, then forsaking God, being conquered and having to rediscover the truths of the Word fascinated me when I was just a teenager.
That's when I really understood what people meant when they talked about human nature.
another oft-overlooked volume that understood people is the Bible.
Amen to that! Which makes me wonder, whenever I see the ad on TV for Pray.com that promises soothing bedtime Bible stories that "help you rest better, fall asleep faster, and wake up revitalized" which of the stories in their fullness actually fill that bill and come through as restful or soothing? Clay feet are par for the course in the Old T And for every New T parable and miracle, there are, blind guides, lost sheep and a muttering crowd of leaders stirring up trouble and looking for a gotcha.
As for the apostle Paul's list of troubles, oh my, nothing soothing about that! In his words, according to Trump's Two Corinthians, "Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches"
Back to the post, I was already heading in the "How Much/How Little direction with the queue jumping thing. We've had clearly marked highway/bridgework going on all summer in our area that requires lane closures and orderly merging, which an amazing number of people who appear to have or earn enough money to buy and maintain expensive cars, find difficult to do, preferring to fly up past the rest of the rubes who've heeded the signs and moved over, to wedge themselves in at the merge point. They don't appear to be people who weren't paying attention and found themselves in a pinch. I love it whenever a trucker finally decides they've had enough and moves out to block the flood of entitled zoomers.
Those are a paired pair of fun/intriguing finds, MrMumpsimus. thanks for sharing.
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