15 min read

First Quarter (Again): Hail to the smiths

A twelve-inch diameter disk of bluish bronze set with gold celestial objects in an expressive style.
Crop of a photo of the Nebra sky disc, an early Bronze Age metalwork discovered in modern Germany but made of gold and tin from Cornwall, copper from Austria, and a prehistoric British gold inlay technique. The golden objects depicted are generally believed to be the Sun, the Moon, the Pleiades (see the cluster of seven stars), and other stars, with the gold bands on the left and right representing the range of solar rising and setting positions along the east and west horizons, from solstice to solstice. The golden arc at the bottom may be a "boat" to carry the Sun and Moon across the sky, or it may be a rainbow or a comet; if this culture also conceived of south as "up" and north as "down," the arc may represent the northern aurora.

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