Copper ingot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cyprus is thought to have been the main producer of copper in the Late Bronze Age, although very few ingots, apart from miniature votive ingots, have been found there. Ingots of this characteristic shape were made only in the Late Bronze Age and seem to be the usual form in which pure copper was transported as a raw material to the ports of the eastern Mediterranean. Copper was mixed with tin, usually in a nine-to-one ration, to make finished bronze objects such as the adjacent stand (74.51.5684). The ingot's irregular surface was produced as the pure copper cooled in the open mold in which the metal was cast. The sheer weight of the ingot, approximately sixty-three pounds, is testimony to the large scale of the copper industry at this time and the bulk quantities of copper that were being exchanged. The discovery off the coast of Anatolia at Ulu Burun of a Late Bronze Age shipwreck with a cargo of over ten tons of Cypriot copper ingots provides remarkable confirmation of the extensive international metals trade in which Cyprus clearly played an important role.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art