Silver by cupellation
Plata por copelación del plomo argentífero
- Date
- c. 3500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Habuba Kabira, middle Euphrates, Syria; Anatolia (Fatmalı-Kalecik)
- Credited to
- Societies of the Uruk expansion and eastern Anatolia
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Oxidation of molten lead in a porous crucible (cupel) to separate the silver it contains, with litharge as a by-product. The first chemical separation of one metal from another, and the origin of silver as a currency metal.
Litharge from Habuba Kabira and Fatmalı-Kalecik (c. 3600–3300 BCE); earlier silver objects (Beycesultan, c. 4000 BCE) may have been of native silver.
What it led to
- Silver as a standard of value and means of payment in Mesopotamia (the silver shekel)
- Silver-lead mining in Anatolia and Greece (Laurion)
- Analytical metallurgy: assaying and refining precious metals
Built on
Made possible
- Commodity money (barley and silver standards)c. 3400 BCE
- Vase of Entemenac. 2400 BCE
- Coinage (Lydian electrum coins)c. 620 BCE
- Silver commodity money
- Silver shekel