The Bronze Age Archaeological evidence attests to widespread use of small Baltic amber vessel in the form of a lion’s head was amber in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East by an exceptional object placed in the main chamber of the men, women, and children, primarily among the elite. As Royal Tomb at Late Bronze Age Qatna, at Tell Mishrifeh, well as for amulets and adornment, it was employed to Syria (Damascus, National Museum MSH02G-i0759). It, embellish arms and musical instruments, to create like the other exotic, high-prestige objects found on the spindles, buttons, and pins, and to decorate boxes and remains of a multiburial bier, may have served a ritual furniture. Carved amber and amber-embellished objects purpose. It is the most significant figured amber to come were offered to deities and buried in sanctuary from an excavation in the region. Was it carved in the foundation deposits. In the Greek-speaking world and in Syro-Levantine region, at Qatna even, or might it have Italy, these deities were almost exclusively female ones, been an exchange object or diplomatic gift?183 especially those associated with childbirth. Amber was also significant in funerary contexts. Large amounts of it Amber is attested with a high degree of probability in the were buried in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. Four of the New Kingdom, from the period of the 18th Dynasty graves in Circle A, which included both females and (1550–1295 B.C.) onward, but only in exceptional males, contained numerous beads: the most prolific was circumstances and always in conjunction with other Grave IV, with nearly thirteen hundred. The beads “may precious materials, such as rock crystal, gold, lapis lazuli, have been imported ready-made, since [they] are or faïence. Sinclair Hood argues that a number of “resin” different from the mass of Aegean ones.”180 The head and objects from the tomb of Tutankhamen, including two chest of the woman buried in Grave Omicron of Circle B heart (possibly) scarabs and the necklace that he were covered with various precious materials, including identifies as being from the Tumulus culture of central/ 181 northern Europe, are actually amber.184 The over a hundred amber beads and spacers. Tutankhamen amber would be a very early instance of The resources required to obtain so much amber must funerary amber in Egypt, and an extremely early instance have been enormous. At this stage, certainly, amber was a of an amber scarab, a form that became a popular subject material for the social elite, although as time went on, it in Orientalizing Italy (eighth–seventh century B.C.), became more widely used. As Helen Hughes-Brock especially in Etruria, given the scarab’s importance as a observed: sun symbol and its concurrent connection to rebirth.185 The large necklaces and spacer plates were only for The importance of amber in Bronze Age northern and the very few and very rich, and hardly found their way central Europe is demonstrated by major finds and beyond the great centers of the northeastern and significant objects pointing to several regional centers of southwestern Peloponnese. However, generation by manufacture with local characteristics, as Aleksandar generation amber spread over the Mycenaean world Palavestra and Vera Krstić summarize.186 and to Crete and down the social scale.182 In Italy, the Middle Bronze Age finds of amber in the The Late Mycenaean amber finds are in tombs of every Basilicata and Late Bronze Age finds at Frattesina, in the type, and very occasionally in shrines—although no solid Po valley, are symptomatic of an active trade in both raw evidence connects them to any particular group of people, and finished products. The amber finds from Italy are deity, or cult. In the ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, the early evidence of a long tradition of amber consumption eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt, amber was a rare among women of high social rank on the peninsula.187 substance during the Bronze Age. A recently discovered 60