SerpApi.Org
Zendaya, one of the stars of The Odyssey, is facing backlash for a recent fashion choice.
The 29-year-old, who plays the Greek goddess Athena in Christopher Nolan’s IMAX epic, was pictured wearing 3,000-year-old Iranian gold artifacts while at a London photocall promoting the blockbuster.
The gold medallions were obtained from Barron London, a jewelry dealer in the luxurious West End district of Mayfair that specializes in antique jewelry. London jeweler Glenn Spiro remounted the medallions with diamonds and 18-karat gold as part of his “Materials of the Old World” series.
Yet some critics accuse the star of misappropriating artifacts that were potentially first sourced from the black market.
Dr. Z the Archaeologist, a popular online content creator who holds a doctorate in archaeology, criticized the earrings.
Dr. Z, whose real name is not publicly known, said Spiro’s “Old World Series” uses real artifacts sourced from the Middle East, North Africa, and West Africa, but the artifacts were acquired by Spiro’s son through undisclosed means.
“These artifacts are likely looted from Iran, and they are gracing the ears of an American actress from a country that just bombed Iran,” she said in a July 13 Instagram post. “The point of these earrings is not to showcase legitimate ancient artistry. It is to fetishise the past.”
Dr. Z questioned why replicas weren’t used instead and said the decision to use real jewelry stems from elitism.
“This display is about class signalling,” she said. “Fellow creators, please let's not hype this type of commodity fetishism. You are aware that it drives the antiquities black market, which hurts cultural groups and local people.”
The pair of gold disc medallions originates from the Ziwiye hoard, a collection of ancient artifacts rediscovered outside Ziwiyeh Castle, a fortress dating back to the seventh century B.C.
The Ziwiye hoard was initially looted by traveling shepherds in 1947. The remaining pieces were then smuggled out of Iran and sold on the black market, notes a 2015 archeological research paper.
Ziwiye hoard artifacts are now scattered across public and private collections, including the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Historian Carla Ionescu said much of the information about Zendaya’s controversial earrings is limited.
“They have been described as a pair of ancient Iranian gold medallion plaques, broadly dated to the 1st millennium BCE and attributed to Ziwiye,” she said in a July 16 Substack piece. “Their precise findspot, ownership history, export history, original function, and relationship to the alleged Ziwiye Treasure have not been publicly documented.”
Ionescu said Ziwiye artifacts have a complicated history, with the topic a subject of decadeslong archaeological debate.
“The objects associated with Ziwiye emerged onto the antiquities market under circumstances that were never properly documented through modern archaeological excavation,” she said. “Scholars have long debated which pieces genuinely came from the site and which were later attributed to it because they resembled the artistic style.”
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Ionescu noted that “Ziwiye” can refer to a place, an attribution, and even an artistic tradition.
Nolan’s movie adaptation of the ancient Greek Homeric epic has proved to be a massive success. The film has already grossed $264 million in its first week, and sits at 95% on online movie-rating site Rotten Tomatoes.
