The year is 1,200 BC. A man sweats in front of a furnace, a huge pair of bellows resting in his scarred hands. Beside him is a scorched earthen bowl packed hard with sand. He has spent hours shaping a plug of beeswax into an intricate crescent moon shape for a wealthy woman. Afterwards he tamped clean sand around the wax, delicately at first, then harder and harder as the shape became covered.

He places the bowl into the fire, resting it against an earthen wedge so that it is tilted sideways. The heat burns his face and brings tears to his eyes, but he is used to it now. The fire wanes and the man works the bellows again, forcing oxygen into the blaze with swift and powerful strokes. The small plug of beeswax, visible in the center of the sand, slumps and begins to puddle.

The man, sweating profusely now, uses long iron tongs to place a specially shaped brick into the center of the fire. Onto this brick have been dropped tiny pieces of gold- broken fittings from the ends of a sandal, a thin nugget mined from the bed of the Nile, a small house idol. The man grimaces, works the bellows furiously, and shields his eyes from the intense heat. The edges of the gold start to shine, then the smallest piece begins to glow from inside- a soft, cherry red color.

With the tongs, the man carefully rotates the bowl, allowing more beeswax to dribble out of the hole in the sand. If he knocks the bowl too hard, sand will crumble off the edges and into the design cavity, causing his pattern to become blurred. He works the bellows again, and the fresh wave of heat melts the thinner parts of the gold.

He has been doing this job since his teenage years. Apprenticing under a master goldsmith for ten years, he endured the lowest jobs and harshest abuse. But his teacher eventually died, leaving behind his reputable name and a small customer base. The man with the bellows does fine work, and he has never wanted for customers.

The beeswax has finished dripping from the sand, and the gold is molten and shimmering in the makeshift crucible. The man sets the earthenware bowl on its bottom, with the central hole facing up. Sliding the iron tongs into the holes in the brick, he gives the furnace one last blast of heat before pouring the molten metal into the mold.

The sand smokes and spits, filling the foundry with an acrid smell. The man has to pour slowly, carefully, treasuring every tiny drop of gold. Carelessness used to be rewarded with curses and blows in his learning years, but hurts him even more as the financially responsible party. He is done now, and sets the bowl aside while he goes to splash his steaming face with cold water. The crescent shape inside the sand will cool and harden over the next few minutes. The sand will be chipped away, the gold plug on top will be sawed off with a sand-covered thread, filed with a rounded bit of stone, and polished with bits of leather nailed onto a whirling pedal-operated wheel, and worn as a status symbol in the ear of the wealthy woman.

Fast-forward to the year 2008. A man stands in front of an electric kiln, a red digital screen reading the exact temperature inside. In the heat rests a perfect cylinder, stainless steel and machined to within a thousandth of an inch. This cylinder holds a silica-based plaster investment, poured as a liquid around the hand-carved wax ring. The wax has already been melted out of the investment in a steam machine, leaving a crisp and exact cavity.

The man twists knobs and lights a large oxygen-propane torch. He sets a ceramic crucible onto a heatproof plate and applies the flame, watching for the telltale glow of the white material. He has carefully weighed out his pure gold and calculated his alloy, and he drops the beads of metal slowly into the crucible, keeping the blue flame trained onto the shining round bits. Any little droplets that escape are coaxed back into the crucible. A bit of spillage equals enough money to feed a small family for a day, and this young metalsmith cannot afford to waste.

The metal melts, he stirs it quickly with a graphite rod and sprinkles in a pinch of flux. The man opens the kiln door, sweating under the blast of heat, and withdraws the steel flask with long iron tongs. He fits the flask into a vacuum chamber, pours the molten metal from the crucible, and seals the chamber. The man turns off his torch and goes to splash his face with cold water. The ring will harden and cool over the next few minutes. Then the investment will be chipped away, the sprue sawed off with a tiny thin blade, ground down with a precision Swiss-made file, and polished on a swiftly rotating motor-driven lathe, ending with the ring being placed on the finger of a young bride.

We may have added a few fancy tools and dials, but the process for casting jewelry has changed very little in over four thousand years.