One-per-centers have been around for a long time, probably since the late Neolithic period, when nomadic hunter-gatherers settled into farming communities. The concept of private property—of land that could be handed down to one’s heirs—and the advent of metallurgy, which created durable symbols of prestige, contributed to social stratification.
In the southern Levant (contemporary Israel), during the Chalcolithic period (the Copper Age—4500-3600 B.C.E.), the élite of a culture about whom little is known, except that they were “masters of fire”—coppersmiths and craftsmen with a rich symbolic life—took their privilege to the grave with them. Ordinary mortals were simply interred, but the bodies of tribal worthies were exposed to the elements, which cleansed their bones, then buried with pomp. An absorbing show of their funerary treasures, which are part of a massive hoard unearthed by Israeli archeologists, in 1961, from a cave in the Galilean highlands, is now on view at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, on East Eighty-fourth Street. The pièce de résistance, visiting America for the first time, is an elegant band of blackened copper, seven inches high and almost seven in diameter. Its upper rim is encircled with spiky figures: a hilt-shaped cross; two long-necked birds, which might be vultures; and two stylized gates or grilles, surmounted by horns. The actual function of this object, in life or death, is mysterious, but it has the aspect of a diadem (its circumference is that of a smallish man’s hat), and the show’s organizers are calling it “the world’s oldest crown.”
Crowns have been worn by rulers and divinities of both sexes since prehistoric times. The salient features of alpha malehood—manes, antlers, gorgeous plumage, and, above all, literally, the sun’s corona—have inspired their design. Napoleon’s imperial crown was a wreath of golden laurel leaves, the classical world’s homage to a victor of games or war. Christ’s crown of thorns mocked his claim of being the king of the Jews. When three cobras appear on the marble diadem of a Hellenistic queen, she is probably Cleopatra. The word “diadem” comes from the Greek noun for “band,” or “fillet,” but the later, more elaborate crowns of Christendom are castellated, like a turret. Paul VI, the last Pope to be crowned, in 1963 (his successors have opted for inauguration), wore a dome-shaped “tiara” that resembled a basilica. The ancient “crown” from Galilee may also symbolize a sacred building—a close or an enceinte.
If you’re not entitled to a crown by birth or election, you might still get one through a lucky marriage. Tiaras are synonymous with romance for millions of little girls, and there is a brisk trade in the plastic-and-rhinestone variety ($15) in the lobby of the Broadway Theatre, where Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” is playing to full houses of would-be little princesses. Queen Elizabeth, in the meantime, is reported to be lending her grandson’s wife a wardrobe of sparkly toppers for the upcoming royal visit to Australia. (She is also said to have told the former Kate Middleton that she should lower her hemlines.) No one needs to tell the noble Grantham ladies how to dress, and the delicious Buckingham Palace scene, in the season finale of “Downton Abbey,” featured a veritable riot of diamond headgear—Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, and Art Deco. (For twenty-five hundred dollars, you can rent Lady Mary’s “star tiara,” all forty-five carats of it, for your own special occasion, though it’s only yours for a day.)
The “world’s oldest crown” may not be a crown at all—it might have been the stand for an urn, or something else entirely. But the culture that created it had a keen sense of female dignity. The show also includes several bone-and-ivory figurines with violin-shaped silhouettes; an exquisitely slim little Venus with a prominent nose and a neatly incised pubis; a breasted ossuary that was probably the receptacle for a revered woman’s bones; and a clay libation vessel that depicts an enthroned Copper Age Madonna, though perhaps what she’s sitting on is a birthing stool. The ochre striations on her body seem to represent her flowing hair and clothes; her bearing is regal, and her head is crowned. Not with a diadem, however—with something more familiar to Cinderella before she met her Prince Charming: a buttermilk churn.
Photograph: Clara Amit/Israel Antiquities Authority
