Four thousand years before modern jewelry pairs gold with gemstones, Sumerian goldsmiths in the city of Ur had already perfected the combination. That pairing — lapis lazuli and gold — is exactly what our Sumerian Necklace carries forward today.
In the 1920s, British archaeologist Leonard Woolley began excavating a vast royal cemetery at Ur, in what is now southern Iraq — the heart of ancient Sumer, the world's first urban civilization. Sumerians had settled the land between the Tigris and Euphrates as early as the fourth millennium BC, building the city-states, writing systems, and legal codes that would shape the ancient Near East for the next two thousand years.
Among the dozens of graves Woolley uncovered, one stood out: the tomb of Puabi, a queen or high priestess buried around 2600 BC with a wealth of gold, silver, and precious stone that had lain undisturbed for over four thousand years. Her headdress alone held dozens of gold leaves, ribbons, and rosettes, layered above a heavy necklace strung with lapis lazuli and carnelian beads — stones so prized that Sumerian traders carried them in from as far away as modern-day Afghanistan.
Source: Closeup of Queen Puabi's gold headdress, photo by Mary Harrsch, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr
Puabi's tomb also revealed one of the era's darker customs: dozens of attendants, guards, and musicians were buried alongside her, part of a retainer sacrifice meant to serve their queen in the afterlife.
The lapis-and-gold combination Woolley found in Puabi's tomb has become one of the defining images of Sumerian craftsmanship — proof that four thousand years before modern jewelry-making, artisans in Ur were already mastering the pairing of deep blue stone and warm gold that still defines fine jewelry today.
Explore the World Jewelry collection.
Start with the Sumerian Necklace — lapis lazuli set against gold, drawn directly from the treasures Woolley pulled out of the Ur cemetery.
