SUMERIA AND EGYPT

The result was that in the Copper Age (3900-2100 B.C.),Egypt is estimated to have had 80 percent of the world's yield of So much gold put the country on the gold standard. Gold rings 7.15 or 15 grams became the standard of exchange, not everyone could afford them any more than everyone today ca-ford to own much gold.

Yet, "good as gold" still has tangible meaning in many sections of the world. In parts of the Middle East people invest in gold as people in other parts of the world put their money in stocks and bonds or real estate. Bracelets, earrings, necklaces, anklets, even nose rings are a girl's dowry in marriage. A father who cannot afford such jewelry may not be able to marry off his daughter. In India and other parts of Asia, gold jewelry is also the preferred form of bank account-and the purer, the better.

Even though 22-karat gold, much less 24-karat, is soft enough that it may lose its shape with much wear, Indian women don't seem to mind. They like to have their jewelry remodeled every so often, and the cost of labor is cheap enough that they can afford it, unlike in other countries where the cost of redesigning and remodeling jewelry can be high enough to make a woman or man think twice about having it done.

The Egyptians, therefore, could be called pacesetters. At the same time, not all the Egyptian gold that glittered was real gold. Priests were not above exchanging gold idols for idols of copper colored with quicksilver and arsenic to give them a gold finish. The real idols were put to the priests' own uses, and the substitutes stood inspection-as long as no one scratched them with a fingernail to bare the copper beneath the gilt surface.