This beautiful ring-shaped “idol” is made out of hammered sheet gold. It is composed of a flattened gold ring topped by a trapezoidal projection, which curls over at the top edge and would have been used to suspend the “idol” from a necklace.

Pendants of this type have been found in Bulgaria (for example, on the necropolis at Varna on the Black Sea), Northern Greece and Anatolia. Other materials (silver, stone and, in rare cases, terracotta) were also used to make objects of this type. This type disappeared during the 5th and 4th millennia. According to some archaeologists, these “idols” symbolize very stylized human figures, but acceptance of this hypothesis is not unanimous.

All e-Tiquities have been searched in the Art Loss Register database.