gems, corundum, lapis lazuli, jewelry, ancient jewelry, archaeology, archaeogemolgy, coins, numismatics, spinel, balas ruby, Afghanistan.12, Tajikistan.12

Nice description of jewelry from Central Asia. On gems: There is reason to believe that down to the reign of Eucratides it was from the Altai that the Graeco-Bactrian kings drew their principal supplies and the knowledge which we derive from Herodotus and Strabo, as to the wealth in gold of the steppe tribes, makes it probable that there was a continuous westward flow of the precious metal until the disturbances created in Central Asia by the movements of the Hiong Nu in the second century. Herodotus’ account of the Massagetae with their golden trappings is well known; and of the Aorsi, the powerful tribe which monopolized the camel-borne trade between India and Mesopotamia across Armenia and the Median hills—Strabo records that they were famous for their wealth of golden ornaments. The accounts of the embassy of Zemarchus, sent by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian to the Turcoman Khan Dizavul in the sixth century, show that in a later age the same luxury prevailed, for the Khan received the ambassador seated upon a golden couch supported on four wheels. There can be little doubt that during the Achaemenian period, Persia, as mistress of all lands up to the Jaxartes, received her share of the golden stream, and the abundance of the precious metals suggested by such a treasure as the present was a natural result of her imperial position. There may have been subsidiary sources of supply derived from the beds of auriferous rivers, for modern travellers have remarked that the hill tribes still wash the mountain streams for gold dust, and Colonel Yule relates the fact of the Galchas of Karatigin. In short, the region of the Oxus must always have been known as rich in gold, and the old belief in the winged guardians in the great mountains to the north, surviving in later times in an altered form, may have given rise to Sir John Maundeville’s tale that Bactria was a land of gryphons, which ate men when they could get them, and when they could not, carried off the oxen at the plough. The precious stones in which the oriental eye takes such keen delight were largely to be found within the limits of Bactria, or were doubtless obtained without difficulty from other parts of the empire. The balas ruby, a red stone only inferior to the Burmese variety, has been mined from days of which there is no exact record on the right bank of the Oxus, in the district of Ish Kasham on the borders of Shighnan. The very name ‘balas’ is derived from Balakshan, a corruption of Badakshan, the territory in which these districts are comprised. The same country possessed the even more famous mines of lapis lazuli, that deep-blue stone which has also taken its name from a far oriental site. For ‘lazuli,’ which is the same word as azul or azure, is derived from Lajwurd or Lazurd, the place in the upper valley of the Kokcha River in Badakshan where the mines are situated. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century there was still an export to Bokhara and China, but the production was small compared to that of old days before Gengiz Khan crippled the whole life and industry of the province. The lapis and the ruby mines are mentioned by the Arab geographers Istakri and Ibn Haukal in the tenth century, but their reputation in Europe is due to Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveller of the Middle Ages. The last authority noted the abundance of turquoises in Kerman, whence their importation into Bactria would be an easy matter. Ouseley speaks of a turquoise mine at Shebavek, a hundred miles west of the city of Kerman, not far from Parez, where Abbott mentions another of the same stones. In Khorassan were the renowned mines of Naishapur whence the turquoise is still extracted, while far north of the Oxus at Khojend it was also to be obtained.""