BANDED AGATE & VARIEGATED JASPER BEADS
Indus Valley Civilization 3000 to 1000 B.C.

The most beautiful beads were made more than 3000 years ago!


Mohenjo Daro

A mysterious urban civilization from the cradle of history
In greater India we have to go back 4000 years in time to find examples of
city-planning like we find in the old Harappa and Mohenjo-daro cultures in Pakistan.
With the sole exception of Sawai Jai Singh’s planned construction of the pink city, Jaipur,
in the 18. century, there have been no cities like the ones made in the ancient Indus Valley Civilization!
 
Not even the great mogul emperor and master architect Shah Jehan,
who made the Taj Mahal, made any city planning close to that we find in the ancient Indus cities. 

This Golden Age of the Indus Valley Culture is reflected in the Indus beads you can see on Ancientbead.com.
These ancient beads from the eastern part of Pakistan tell the story of a culture that in it’s own
way was excelling from the macro world of cities to the miniature world of beads.

At its peak The Indus Valley Culture is estimated to have encompassed a 1.5 million sq km! 
This area, larger than Western Europe, was glued together through water ways. The Indus people
commanded a large fleet of ships making it possible to flourish in the vast river plains and adjacent
regions in what are now Afghanisthan, Pakistan and western India.

In size this, one of the world's first great urban civilizations, dwarfed contemporary
civilizations in the Nile Valley in Egypt and in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys in Iraq.
 
A Golden Age of beads
In what is referred to as the late Harappan period from 1900 to 1000 B.C. expressions of art
reached a climax. Most of the Indus beads displayed on Ancientbead.com are from this late period.  
 
With exceptions, the art of bead making has been in a slow decline since then.
As an example, take a short look on the page with the etched beads from the later
Maurian period; most of the beads from this period are made in a much more sloppy way.

Hence the most beautiful beads were made more than 3000 years ago! The large
holed Indus beads you can see below are like cultural messengers, each of them in the language
of stone. Shapes and colors bearing witness to an age where there was ample time to sit with
a single piece of agate and wait for the right bead to emerge.


An ideal bead is both ancient and beautiful!
The beads displayed here would be stunning even if they were new!
 
Each of the beads displayed on this page are among the most perfect beads I have seen!
 
These beads are composed pieces of art where the beauty of the stone patterns are
revealed by their makers. They are made out of the human intention to create beauty.
Around 3000 years ago they came out of raw stone to let itself be displayed on this page. 

Believing that the the sculpture was waiting inside the stone for the artist to free it, these ancient
craftsmen knew the art of letting the different natural motifs of the agate show itself at its finest! 

As you can see in most of the beads, symmetry plays an important role in choosing-creating the motives.
Often you can also find the golden angle in the motives. In the magic Eye Beads the
eye is almost always placed in the symmetric middle or in the golden angle position. 

Beads as currency
In the Indus Valley civilization it is easy to assume that beautiful beads had a symbolic religious
function that reached into the sphere of trade. Beads would fulfill the same function as later coins would.

In the historic periods to follow the Indus culture beads started to loose their importance as currency
because the relatively high and well ordered social organization of Kingdoms made the controlled mass
production of coins possible. A bead does not posses the same quantifiable quality as a coin produced
by a certain Kingdom. In contrast to a coin the value is of a certain bead can always be argued.
 However if the beads lost their importance as currency they
at least in the east never lost their importance as magic totems!
 

The late Indus Valley Beads - around 1000 BC The Indus people went to great efforts to obtain exotic stones for making beads of different colors, shapes and sizes. With increasing bead making skills in the end of the Indus Valley period it was not enough just to posses a perfect made bead. In order for the bead and its owner to stand out the hunt for the special stone became more and more important. The Indus people and the Mesopotamians loved jasper. It was their favroite gem stome. Especially they liked variegated jasper. Jasper is an opaque cryptocrystalline quartz, typically red to brown, or in more rare cases green. The strange mineral 'landscapes' you will explore below reflect the strive for the sublime made bead made out of the sublime material. In these kind of rare beads one will often find what is called variegated jasper.  In this type of jasper there are up to 20 percent non-quartz elements. These elements account or the wide range of colours and decorative patterns.
IV  1 -   19 * 10 mm	One of the simple reasons behind these	IV  2 -  14 * 9 mm An almost abstract painting in
A unique bead with 6-colored spiral motif. Crystalline bands	beautiful holes is time: Ample of time just to sit with one bead.	green, rosa and white colors. Indus Valley beads were the the first to demonstrate abstract art in the world!
IV  3 - A wonderful 3 colored bead with a golden angle motif. It has stunning artistic banding and colour tones.		IV 4 -   18 * 10 mm A 3 colored bead with a beautiful golden angle motif.
IV  5 -     23 * 7 mm
A tubular shaped bead with 3-colored spiral motif. The banding lines are 'composed' in a very harmoneous way in this incredible bead.	-	IV  6     14 * 8 mm A beautiful and very rare colour combination of yellow and red. It seems that red stripes and dots were the indus peoples favorite. At least I have not seen beads with so many red coloured motif as in this collection from the Indus Valley.
IV  7   - 21 * 9 mm		IV  8    - 20 * 10 mm
IV  9  -  25 * 8 * 7 mm   A tubular shaped bead with a soft rosa colored motif. The eyeformation in the midle is less visible.
		IV  10   -  17 * 11 mm This stunning bead reminds me of pictures of Saturn.
		IV  12   - 15 * 10 mm A beautiful and calm composition in spiral striped bead.
IV  11   - 21 * 11 mm A komplimentary, golden angle color composition in red and green.
IV  13   -  17 * 9 mm A beautiful and very unusual color blend displying a symmetrical motif.		IV  14   - 16 * 9 mm A komplimentary color composition in red and green.
IV 15    - 21 * 9 mm
Soft yellow and rosa colours spiral their way round this bead. As said before: these old artist have composed these beads. They are ancient masterpieces of art.		IV  16  - 14 * 10 * 9 mm Etched Red and black banded agate are extremely rare. But the two beads you see here are not etched! It is their natual colour! This natural colour combination have never been seen before! Maybe these two beads are the only of their kind who has 'survived' up till today.
IV  17 -   19 * 6 mm Eye bead - This is the back side of the bead. Look in the eye bead section to see the front side.		IV  18  -  13* 8 mm The red color in this fantastic bead looks almost like it has been etched into the stone. But it is natural!
IV  19   -   22 - 20 * 9 mm I think this incredible bead is made out of fossilized agate. The Indus people loved to make beads out of rare materials.
		IV  20 -   18 * 11 mm In this bead the bands of red, yellow and brown are very thin.
		IV  22 -    18 * 8 mm
IV  21  -  22* 11 mm
		IV  24  -  20 * 10 mm
IV  23   - 19 * 11 * 10 mm In this bead it becomes clear that the etched beads in the beginning very designed to dopy the original stripes. It is stange that today collectors prefer the etched 'copies'.
IV  25  -  23 * 9 mm		IV  26  -  19 * 9 mm The design on this bead is 100% natural!
IV  27  -   20 * 8 mm
		IV  28   - 18 * 10 * 7 mm
		IV  30  - 17 * 10 mm
IV  29  - 27 * 9 mm A soft motif made of dark red and green colours		The symmetry and harmony in the colour composition in this bead is awesome.
		IV  32  - 23 * 7 mm Tubular shaped bead
IV  31  21 * 9 mm
IV 33  - 25 * 10 mm Note the red colour in a wonder banded display of 5 different colours!		IV  34    -   15 * 10 mm
IV  35  -  18 * 10 mm In this awesome bead it is clear to see how the etching of beads was an attempt to copy mother nature.		IV  36   - 14 * 8 mm On this rare ancient bead you will find 4 different versions of the red colour!
IV  37  - 18 * 8 mm Mother nature's natural banding	Look at this hole... No artist in the later periods could make such holes!	IV  38   -  15 * 10 mm
IV  39  -  19 * 10 mm		IV  40   -  20 * 11 mm
IV  40		IV  41
IV  42   - 10 * 10 mm Eye bead made of fossilized stone.  This is the back side. Look in the eye bead section to see the front side.		IV  43    - 9 * 7 mm
IV  41  - - 13 * 9 mm In this bead you can see formations of crystal quartz
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