Zendaya Wore a 2,700-Year-Old Artifact on the Red Carpet. Archaeologists Lost Their Minds. And I Thought About Something Else.

My phone rang. Late. My mom.

“Did you see that news? The actress from Dune — she wore earrings and everyone’s furious about it.”

“Zendaya.”

“Yes, her. She wore some thousand-year-old antique. Said it was from Iran. Archaeologists are saying she shouldn’t have done it, and she’s not even responding. What’s going on?”

I put my phone down. “It’s more complicated than you think.”

White Dress, Gold Earrings, 2,700 Years

Early August 2026. London.

The media launch for Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey — a cast so stacked it made your head spin. Zendaya stood in front of the cameras in a white gown, wearing gold earrings to match her role as Athena in the film. The flashes went off.

Classic. Elegant. Perfect. Everyone loved the look.

Until someone noticed — what was hanging from her ears wasn’t modern jewelry at all. It was an artifact. Two ancient Iranian gold plaques, roughly 2,700 years old, modified into earrings.

The archaeology world exploded.

Who Brought It From the Ground to the Red Carpet

The earrings belonged to a London antique jewelry house called Baren Company. They explained that the artifacts came from the “Ziviyeh treasure” discovered in northwestern Iran in the late 1940s, with complete provenance records. In 2025, Baren purchased them from another London dealer, Glenn Spiro. The setting was “reversible” — no permanent damage to the original pieces.

Baren added that the loan to Zendaya for the Odyssey promotion was meant to “celebrate the extraordinary artistry of ancient Persian goldsmiths and remind people of Iran’s rich cultural heritage.”

Sounded nice. But academics weren’t buying it.

Emiline Smith, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow specializing in art crime, put it bluntly: taking a 2,700-year-old artifact out of its archaeological context, turning it into a commodity, and putting it on a celebrity’s ear for a red carpet — this was “re-commodifying looted artifacts and making it even harder to trace their origins.”

Susan Babe, a professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art, was even harsher: “Not a single person involved had the awareness beforehand that this was inappropriate. The stylists responsible for dressing celebrities lack cultural literacy and cultural sensitivity.” She used one word — “hijacking.” Hijacking cultural heritage and using it as decoration.

“It’s Like Hammering a Nail Into a Masterpiece”

Baren Company said the mounting method “would not cause permanent damage to the original pieces.”

One media outlet fired back with a line I still remember: “That sounds like saying ‘I just hammered a nail into a masterpiece painting.'”

Hammering a nail into a masterpiece — sure, it’s not “permanent damage.” But would you do it? No. Because you know that painting doesn’t belong to you.

So why, when it comes to artifacts thousands of years old, does “no permanent damage” suddenly become the only standard that matters?

Oscar Muscarella, an American archaeologist who spent his career studying the Near Eastern antiquities market, had long doubted the authenticity and provenance of the Ziviyeh treasure. Without proper archaeological documentation, many objects attributed to the treasure still have “uncertain origins.”

An object allegedly from Iran, 2,700 years old, with incomplete archaeological records — privately collected, bought, modified, worn by a Hollywood star. Every step was legal. Every step was questionable.

And then there was the background that made it even more uncomfortable: while Zendaya was walking the red carpet wearing Iranian artifacts, the United States was bombing Iran with billions of dollars in military aid.

Art historian Babe said the timing was infuriating. “While the West continues to frame Iran through the lens of security, sanctions, and geopolitics, Hollywood consumes Iran’s ancient civilization as a visual resource and a fashion accessory.”

Zendaya never responded. At the premiere the next day, she wasn’t wearing the earrings. The controversy cooled, but the conversation didn’t stop.

I Thought About Something Else

That night, after my mom hung up, I looked up where moissanite came from. In 1893, French chemist Henri Moissan discovered a silicon carbide crystal in a meteor crater in Arizona. Not dug out of a tomb — found inside a meteor that had crashed into Earth 50,000 years ago. He gave his name to the stone.

I looked at moissanite’s numbers.

Hardness: 9.25. Diamond is 10. But toughness and impact resistance are better. Fracture toughness: 3 to 5 MPa√m. Diamond is 2.0.

Refractive index: 2.65 to 2.69. Diamond is 2.42. Light reflects more fully inside — it looks brighter.

Dispersion: 0.104. Diamond is 0.044. In plain English: the colored sparkle it throws off under light is more than double diamond’s. Brighter. More eye-catching. More unapologetic.

Price? For the same carat weight and visual effect: moissanite runs a few hundred RMB. Diamond runs hundreds to thousands of dollars. The difference is dozens of times.

Looking at those numbers, a ridiculous comparison came into my head:

Someone hammered gold into plaques 2,700 years ago and buried them. Someone dug them up in 1947 and put them into private hands. Someone bought them in 2025, modified them, and put them on a celebrity for a red carpet. Archaeologists lost their minds because — this object should never have left where it came from.

Moissanite? Crashed to Earth with a meteor 50,000 years ago. Discovered in 1893. Recreated in labs later. Now it can be cut into any shape you want, worn by anyone who wants to wear it. Nobody asks “which tomb did it come from.” Because it was grown, not dug up.

Zendaya’s 2,700-year-old artifact earrings — if you take away the labels — “7th century BC,” “Ziviyeh treasure,” “Iranian cultural heritage” — they’re just two gold discs. They’re valuable because their labels tell a story.

Moissanite isn’t called diamond. It doesn’t have a “2,700 years” label. It has one physical fact — it sparkles more than diamond.

Artifact vs. Stone — Which One Has More “Value”?

Someone pays a fortune for a piece of 2,700-year-old history, wears it on her ears, gets called out by archaeologists. Someone pays a few hundred for a stone grown in a lab, wears it on her finger, gets complimented by strangers.

One belongs behind museum glass. One glows naturally under any light.

What happened to Zendaya’s earrings? No follow-up. She didn’t explain. Baren Company didn’t add more. Those two Iranian gold plaques from 2,700 years ago — back in a collection, or maybe on the next red carpet. As long as “wearing history” comes with no consequences, it’s just money translated into time.

Moissanite? Still being bought, still being worn, still being turned under the light — silicon carbide from a 50,000-year-old crater, splitting ordinary light into rainbows.

How much is history worth? How much is a self-lighting stone worth? I don’t know. But I know one thing — some stones have value because someone else told you their story. Some stones have value because they generate their own light.