The Nebra Disk
telegraph.co.uk
Archaeologists in Germany believe that they have discovered the world's earliest accurate depiction of the cosmos embossed in gold on a 3,600-year-old Bronze Age disc. They believe that it might also lead them to the site of a German "Stonehenge".
The disc adds to a growing body of evidence about the Bronze Age in Europe which is causing historians to revise radically their understanding of the period. Until recently the era was considered to have been relatively primitive.
Scientists are beginning to discover, however, that Bronze Age man was a highly adept astronomer whose religion was intrinsically linked to the heaven's movements.
The disc bearing elaborate gold leaf images of the sun, 32 stars, and a crescent moon, was found three years ago at the site of a Bronze Age camp near the town of Nebra in east Germany, but the results of tests on its authenticity were only published last week.
The disc, valued at £6.4 million, was uncovered by a group of people using metal detectors who had kept their discovery secret. Seven members of the group are under investigation in connection with the theft of ancient objects from the state of Saxony-Anhalt, on whose land the disc was discovered.
The police set a trap for the group in February by luring its members to meet what they believed to be a prospective buyer in the basement of the Hilton hotel in Basle, Switzerland.
The disc was handed to scientists at the Institute for Archaeological Research in Halle where it has been studied and subjected to carbon data testing.
The archaeologists had kept the discovery a secret for most of this year to prevent treasure hunters from searching the Nebra site.
Announcing the find last week Harald Meller, the institute's director, said: "It is without doubt the earliest genuine depiction of the cosmos ever to have been discovered. It suggests that the site where it was found almost certainly functioned around 1600bc as an astronomical observatory, like Stonehenge in Britain."
The first henge on the site of what is now Stonehenge in Wiltshire was just a large earthwork probably built around 3100bc and abandoned soon after. It was not until 2150bc, archaeologists believe, that the second and most impressive stage of Stonehenge began with the transportation of the stones from the Prescelli mountains in south-west Wales.
Mr Meller said that although an earlier impression of the cosmos dating from 2400bc was found in Egypt, it was the invention of an artist and not an accurate depiction of the night sky. The painting was found in the burial chamber in the pyramid of the Egyptian pharoah Unas, which is decorated with stars.
Earlier this year German archaeologists revealed that a series of golden cones decorated with astrological symbols that had been found at sites across Europe, were in fact ceremonial hats, worn by Bronze Age "wizards" or priests.
Photographs of the disc were published in Germany last week. They show a round shield-like bronze plate covered in verdigris as a result of being buried underground for thousands of years. Yet the 12-inch diameter disc clearly bears the images of what is either the sun or a full moon, a crescent moon and the horizon embossed in gold.
The plate is also studded with 32 stars, but most significant according to the archaeologists, is a group of objects thought to be the Pleiades star cluster, which appear at the time of the autumn equinox.
"During the Bronze Age the Pleiades were considered a heavenly sign which signalled the approach of autumn," said Wolfhard Schlosser, an astronomer at Bochum University who is researching the disc.
"The arrival of the stars in the night sky showed that it was time to start bringing in the harvest."
The disc suggests that the European Bronze Age was also influenced by ancient Egyptian culture. A curved scythe-like object at its base is thought to represent the "sun ship" that the pharoahs believed pulled the stars through the heavens.
Mr Schlosser said that the disc was most probably one of a pair. "The other disc may yet be found at the Nebra site and if our assumptions are correct, it most likely depicts the heavens during the spring equinox. Both would have been used for religious and agricultural purposes to see into the future," he said.
The scientists believe that the disc was originally smeared with rotten eggs. These would have caused a chemical reaction on its bronze surface, which would have turned the disc's background a deep violet colour simulating a night sky out of which the gold-embossed stars would have shone.
Mr Meller and his team are currently excavating the 750ft-high Mittelberg hill near Nebra where the disc was found. The site was originally thought to have been a simple Bronze Age camp, however the archaeologists are now convinced that it was used as an astronomical observatory and a temple in which the disc or discs played a central role.
They point out that the images on the disc correlate exactly with what they have calculated to have been the view of the night sky from Mittelberg hill during the Bronze Age.
Nebra's 3,000 residents are following the archaeologists' progress with rapt attention. They hope that what was hitherto a run-down east German backwater will soon be turned into a tourist attraction featuring the "German Stonehenge".