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

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

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.

jade, jadeite, fei cui, nephrite, Burma, China, gems