gems, glyptic, engraved gems, agate, cameo, intaglio, pyrite

There has been a long human association with pyrite, the golden-yellow iron disulphide (FeS₂) mineral commonly called fool’s gold. Ötzi, the so-called ‘Iceman’, whose 5,000-year-old body was found in 1991 high in the Ötztal Alps (between Austria and Italy), carried on him a piece of pyrite for striking to make sparks to produce fire. The name pyrite comes from the Greek word for fire, πυρίτης (pyritēs). The stone has borne various names at various times and places—often simply firestone or its equivalent in other languages, but there were numerous more localised names. In Cornwall, England, for example, miners knew it as mundic (see, e.g., Borlase 1758). In a jewellery context, it has generally been known as marcasite in English, until after around 1800 when the term pyrite was used for the cubic form of iron sulphide and marcasite for its orthorhombic form (Blackburn & Dennen 1997). The term marcasite ultimately comes from the Arabic marqazat or Persian marqashota via the Spanish marcasite. In the 1491 Hortus Sanitatus, the section de lapidibus lists pyritides and says the name used for it by the Arabs was markasita (Anonymous 1491).