gems, ancient gemology, ancient jewelry, early metallurgy, India, Indus, Harappa, treated etched carnelian, steatite, agate, assembled stones, chalcedony, jade, feldspar, amazonite, lapis lazuli, faience, frit, ivory, shell

The excavations at Harappa described in this Volume were carried out between the years 1920–21 and 1933–34. Being one of the two best known and important sites of the Indus Valley Culture, large scale work was undertaken here by the Archæological Department and the excavations have contributed not a little to our knowledge of the prehistoric civilization of India. On account of the close relation and mutual dependence of the discoveries made at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, this monograph has been planned as a complement to the three* monumental volumes on Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization edited by Sir John Marshall and the two volumes of Further Excavations at Mohenjo-daro by Dr. E. J. H. Mackay. The arrangement of Chapters and Plates follows the former work as far as possible. In Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, Sir John Marshall has most ably dealt with the Art, Religion, Disposal of the Dead, Extent and the Age and Authors of the Indus Civilization mainly on the basis of the discoveries made at the above two sites, while Dr. Mackay has fully described and illustrated numerous finds, mostly identical with those of Harappa — notably Plain and Painted Pottery and other experts have written on the Indus Script, System of Weights, Minerals and Metals, etc. To that extent, not only has it been possible for me to avoid much needless duplication and to curtail my own work, but what is more, I have derived infinite help and guidance from their masterly handling of so many difficult problems for which I am greatly beholden to them all. To Sir John Marshall I owe a very special and infinite debt of gratitude not only for the thorough guidance and inspiration I received from his great work and the instructions given by him from time to time both in the conduct of excavations and for the preparation of these volumes, but also for the very great trouble he generously undertook (at the sacrifice of much valuable time when he was fully occupied with several pressing works of his own) in preliminarily editing my work, in course of which he made numerous corrections and many valuable suggestions which I have gratefully incorporated.

beryl, emerald, Russia, Colombia, inclusions, gems

Gübelin investigates microscopic criteria for distinguishing emeralds from Colombia and Russia’s Ural Mountains, arguing that color alone provides an unreliable indication of origin. Although Colombian emeralds are associated with a velvety green and Russian stones with more yellowish hues, examples from either source may resemble those from the other, particularly in small sizes. A comparative table records their appearances through several colored filters, but the author emphasizes that interpreting these subtle differences requires considerable experience, a sensitive eye, and suitable comparison material. Seeking more objective evidence, he examined numerous emeralds of known provenance, including specimens supplied by the Colombian Consulate in Paris. He identifies minute fluid inclusions, rather than conspicuous fractures or cloudy areas, as the most useful distinguishing features. Colombian emeralds are described as containing scattered, irregular groups of delicate, frequently tail-like cavities. Their boundaries are faint, suggesting that the enclosed liquid has a refractive index relatively close to that of the host. The liquid’s composition was not established, although behavior during heating and considerations of formation led the author to suggest water. The cavities show no consistent crystallographic orientation and remain separate even when grouped. Almost every cavity is reported to contain a tiny cubic crystal, commonly adjoining a rounded gas bubble with a dark outline, so that solid, liquid, and gaseous phases coexist within one inclusion. Carbon dioxide is proposed as the gas, while the solid’s chemical identity remains unresolved. Gübelin regards the cubic form of this solid inclusion as the principal diagnostic feature of Colombian material. Russian emeralds likewise contain multiphase inclusions, but their distribution, cavity shapes, and enclosed crystals differ. Their cavities are more closely associated with fractures and moss-like internal features, lack the characteristic Colombian tails, and contain solid crystals displaying lozenge-shaped or rhombic outlines rather than clearly rectangular cubic forms. The author presents this contrast as a dependable means of separating the two sources and supplies a mnemonic linking Colombian origin with cubic crystals and Russian origin with rhombic crystals. He recommends photomicrography to document the observations and notes that the features can also be examined with a diamondscope. The concluding discussion separates geographical interest from intrinsic quality: identifying a fine emerald as Russian need not diminish its value, while knowledge of provenance may increase an owner’s appreciation of either a Colombian stone or an unusually fine-colored Ural specimen.

gems, jade, jadeite, fei cui, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs, archaeology, history, archaeogemology

The awakening of general interest in Chinese art has drawn the attention of the public also to the beauty of carved jade, the popular appreciation of which not many would have expected a few years ago. It was, however, not only throughout the ages of Chinese civilization that jade was especially prized. This semi-precious stone was venerated also in Central America before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores. The earliest dated object yet to be found on this continent is of jade—the famous Tuxtla statuette from the State of Vera Cruz, Mexico. Dr. Herbert Spinden interprets its glyphs as equivalent to 98 B.C. The carven figures of chiefs and gods of Copán, Honduras, which date from the “Great Period” of Maya art, in the early centuries of our own era, are adorned with necklaces, pendants, and ear-plugs of jade, showing that the splendid stone was then a part of the hierarchic ritual of this people. Beads and other objects of worked jade have been excavated from pre-Columbian tombs that date through the centuries up to the time of the Conquest. And in 1520, Cortés himself relates how Montezuma, seeing the Spaniards’ delight in his presents of gold objects, promised them far more valuable gifts the next day. It was jade which the Aztec Emperor then proffered, and the disillusioned Conqueror reports of “a few green stones” in complete indifference.

gemology, physical properties, gems

corundum, ruby, sapphire, Sri Lanka.12, gems

Ratnavira describes the organization, customs, and practical methods of gem mining around Ratnapura in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, emphasizing the local knowledge and manual labor supporting the industry. The district produces blue and star sapphires, rubies, cat’s-eyes, and numerous other gems. Prospective operators must obtain a license through the district’s Government Agent, with inquiries involving the local headman and police officer; the author states that permission is withheld for government-owned sites and that approval commonly takes two to three months. Sites are generally selected near previously productive ground and tested by a small excavation, with experienced workers judging their potential from associated rocks and gravels. An astrologer determines an auspicious time for opening, and prayers and offerings precede the owner’s ceremonial removal of the first spadeful. Miners are recruited from experienced villagers and work under a share arrangement in which the owner receives the majority and the remainder is divided among the workers. Miners ordinarily supply their own food; when the owner provides meals, a worker relinquishes half his share. The account notes that expenditure may nevertheless yield no return. Shallow pits are approximately four feet square and three to six feet deep, while deeper workings may measure six feet square and extend ten to twenty feet or more. Internal supports prevent loose ground from collapsing, neighboring pits may be connected by tunnels, and incoming groundwater is removed with a bucket-equipped winch. Particular rock and gravel layers indicate the approach to the gem-bearing horizon, called “illam,” while an underlying clay layer, “malawa,” marks the limit of excavation. Workers break up the illam with an iron rod and raise it in baskets. The accumulated gravel is covered with leaves and guarded until an auspicious washing day, when a customary meal of rice cooked in coconut milk precedes processing. Washing takes place beside a river or in a water-filled trench, using large baskets to remove lighter sediment and retain the heavier stones. The owner supervises recovery, after which owner and miners decide whether to auction the rough gems or sell them to a merchant and divide the proceeds according to their agreement. Stream mining follows a different procedure: a dam concentrates the current through a central opening over a fixed log, while workers use long-handled hoes to draw gravel toward them. Sand is washed away, and the remaining illam is recovered with baskets, sometimes by diving, or removed with the hoes and washed immediately.

gems, glyptic, engraved gems, agate, cameo, intaglio, Rome, Roman gems, history of gemology, rings, jewelry, history of jewelry

Rings of the classical period; rings of the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and modern times; superb decorative rings.

gems, jade, jadeite, nephrite, axes, archaeology, archaeogemology, fei cui, pyroxene jade, amphibole jade, circumcision, stone knife

Belief in thunderstones left no trace among the writers of Classical Antiquity before Epicurus (341–280 BC); indeed, one might even say not before the beginning of the Christian era, and this is an important point. Homer, who is said to have lived around 850 BC, frequently sang of the wrath of Zeus and delighted in portraying him hurling thunderbolts; yet, despite so many favourable opportunities, he never made the slightest allusion to the material projectile itself, of which the Greeks would speak only much later. Anaximander of Miletus (610–547 BC), Heraclitus (c. 500 BC), and Aristotle (384–322 BC), all of whom discussed lightning at greater or lesser length, do not say a single word about the ceraunia, or thunderstone. All the scholars of Greece and ancient Italy, up to the dawn of the Christian era, knew that peoples living on the fringes of the civilised world still used stone tools and weapons. Moreover, they also knew that certain peoples who already employed bronze or iron continued to use stone for religious purposes. “The embalmers of Ancient Egypt opened corpses by making an incision with an Ethiopian stone (Herodotus II, 86), and tombs have yielded flint knives ([1]) that can hardly have differed from those used for this purpose. Zipporah, the wife of Moses, used a stone knife (ṣûr or ṣōr) to circumcise her son (Exodus 4:25). At Gilgal, Yahweh commanded Joshua to make stone knives in order to circumcise the Israelites (Joshua 5:2–3). According to an addition found in the Septuagint, these knives were later gathered and placed in his tomb (Joshua 21:40 and 24:30). It was with a sharp stone that the priests of Baal cut themselves in order to gain the favour of their god, and that the priests of Cybele inflicted dreadful mutilations upon themselves. Stone daggers formed part of the sacred equipment of temples; on all solemn occasions they were used to strike the sacrificial victim, as when the alliance between Alba and Rome was concluded. The same customs are said to have prevailed among the Carthaginians. Hannibal struck the sacrificial lamb upon the altar with a flint knife after his famous oath to Hasdrubal and before the Battle of the Ticinus, having struck the lamb with a flint stone, holding the flint in his right hand, and calling upon Jupiter and the other gods as witnesses while dashing the victim’s head against the stone.” Among the divine stones, many were thunderstones; this was undoubtedly the case in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, where a flint stone—the god himself, Iuppiter lapis, a representation of the thunderbolt—sanctioned oaths by its presence. “Thus religion, conservative of ancient customs, continued to make use, in the full Iron Age, of the misunderstood relics of a distant and forgotten past, preserving the unconscious tradition of the ancestors of the Stone Age. When this tradition had become almost completely obscured, people began to ask where these stone tools and weapons came from. The theories concerning the nature and origin of lightning proposed by scholars during the four centuries preceding the Christian era may have suggested the answer. Epicurus (341–280 BC) already expressed an opinion that points the way toward this belief.”

gems, history of gemology, early lapidaries, Fernand de Mély

Fernand de Mély, who died on March 25 last as the result of an accident, was born in 1852 and, while still very young, had occupied himself, under the direction of Anatole de Montaiglon, with the philology, history, and art of the Middle Ages. His communications to the Société nationale des Antiquaires de France, of which he had been elected a resident member on February 4, 1903, the articles he contributed to the Bulletin de l’Académie des Inscriptions and the Monuments Piot, to the Revue de l’art chrétien, the Bulletin monumental, the Revue de l’Art, and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, show the breadth of the subjects in which he was interested. A great number of these studies are devoted to the treasures of our churches and museums, precious stones and objects of goldsmiths’ work, ivories, tapestries, paintings, sculptures, miniatures; technical, iconographic, and liturgical studies. His tireless activity continually broadened the field of his research, and the liveliness of his mind led him to publish, sometimes even before he had fully exhausted their significance, the hypotheses suggested to him by ancient texts or by the examination of objects. Gradually, his research turned toward miniaturists and the early masters; he endeavored to recover their names and published, in 1913, Volume I, devoted to miniaturists, of a work in which he intended to bring together all his discoveries: Les Primitifs et leurs signatures. As early as 1910, he had published here an important article in which he presented a kind of summary of the book he was then engaged in writing. Ten years later, the Revue archéologique published a second article that supplements the first and provides an overview of his research on our ancient monuments and the artists who worked on them: Nos vieilles cathédrales et leurs maîtres d’œuvre. He had also published in our journal, in 1890, a curious memoir on Les reliques du lait de la Vierge et la galactite. The Académie française had recognized the merit of his persistent labor by awarding him the Prix Jules Janin, and the Académie des Inscriptions the Prix Saintour. Fernand de Mély rests in the small cemetery of Le Mesnil-Germain (Calvados), very near the property to which he so loved to retire for peace and work, and part of which he had given to the City of Paris as early as 1932, with a view to establishing a preventorium for young women fatigued by administrative work.

gems, Arabic mineralogy, early lapidaries

This substantial collection brings together studies by Hellmut Ritter, Friedrich Sarre, Julius Ruska, and Rudolf Winderlich concerning Oriental lapidaries and Persian ceramic technology. The sections devoted to stone books examine Arabic and Persian mineralogical and lapidary literature, including the transmission of Greek traditions into Islamic scholarship, the identification and nomenclature of stones, and descriptions of their properties, uses, and supposed medicinal or magical virtues. Ruska’s contribution is particularly concerned with the history and textual transmission of mineralogical knowledge and the relationship between Arabic sources and earlier Greek writings. The technological portion examines Persian faience and related ceramic techniques, discussing materials, glazes, pigments, firing, and methods used to produce colored and lustred surfaces. Textual evidence is compared with surviving objects and practical experimentation in an attempt to understand historical manufacturing processes. The volume is important for the history of gemology and mineralogy because it makes Oriental source material accessible and places medieval Islamic knowledge of stones within the broader history of science and technology, while the four plates illustrate relevant manuscripts, objects, or technical material.

corundum, history.1, France.12, gems, appraisal, valuation, gem prices, early gemology, medieval lapidaries

Byrne investigates the variety, circulation and relative economic value of medieval gemstones through thirteenth-century Genoese notarial records, supplementing and qualifying conclusions drawn from royal inventories. He begins by explaining why commercial documents rarely permit precise valuations: stones are commonly recorded without weights, dimensions or reliable descriptions of quality, while prices often cover mixed consignments, settings and other goods together. Nevertheless, the records demonstrate an active Mediterranean trade in loose gems and jewellery, with pearls particularly prominent and a range of precious and ornamental materials appearing in exports, sales, pledges and personal possessions. The article’s principal evidence is a detailed Genoese contract of 1253 involving Joseph de Braudistano, acting for King Conrad of Sicily, and a substantial collection of jewels valued at £2,522 Genoese. Byrne questions whether this represented an outright purchase or, more probably, a financing arrangement secured upon royal treasure during the Hohenstaufen dynasty’s financial difficulties. The document lists 987 objects, including 100 rings, 94 mounted ornaments, 783 loose stones and ten devotional or household articles. Its contents include Oriental and European sapphires, rubies, topazes, emeralds, diamonds, pearls and numerous engraved stones, with cameos and intaglios accounting for 681 items. Byrne emphasises the distinction between valuable Oriental sapphires and the less costly stones from Le Puy, and notes that the collection’s contents broadly support established views of medieval gemstone preferences and rarity. The exceptional number of engraved gems suggests either extensive survival and circulation of antique material or an important contribution from Byzantine or medieval workmanship; their exact origins remain uncertain. To make the collection’s aggregate value intelligible without relying on misleading conversions into modern currency, Byrne compares it with contemporary salaries, wages, commodities, livestock, enslaved people and property. The sum represented approximately the annual earnings of 150 skilled craftsmen and could have purchased a major provisioned ship, large quantities of silk, cotton, wool or grain, or substantial urban and rural property. These comparisons establish the collection’s considerable purchasing power while preserving uncertainty about individual gem values. Byrne concludes that the jewels were probably dispersed as Hohenstaufen fortunes collapsed, with some of the engraved stones potentially surviving, unidentified, in later collections.