In the Hebrew Bible, the name for lapis lazuli was sappir, 1 sappheiros in Greek. Lapis lazuli is the correct birthstone for the 2nd sign of the zodiac, Taurus, and the partially concurrent month of April.Ī confounding question crosses our mind: how in the world did this April birthstone escape our knowledge? One of the gems on Aaron’s breastplate, lapis lazuli is the 2nd Foundation Stone in Revelation. Lapis lazuli is the April birthstone that never came to be. The first foundation was jasper the second, lapis lazuli … However, this famous stone is not the world’s largest-that honor belongs to the “Lone Star” a 9,719.5 carat blue sapphire that has been validated by the gemologist community but has never been displayed to the public.The foundations of the city’s wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The most famous sapphire, the 563-carat Star of India, was mined in India and is now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Sapphires are mined all over the world, from Australia, Sri Lanka, Kenya, China, and the United States. The most valued sapphire color, however, is that deep dark blue that is the well-known September birthstone color. One extremely rare color type, the orange-pink corundum, is known as the Padparadscha sapphire. Any gemstone-quality corundum that isn’t red is considered a sapphire, so sapphires can actually come in many colors besides blue, including pink, yellow, and even green. Where do sapphires come from? In reality, a gemstone-quality sapphire is simply one variety of the mineral corundum, which is also the mineral that rubies are derived from. This gem was so rare that in the Middle Ages, European gemologists began referring to blue specimens of corundum, a recently discovered gem at the time, with the ancient name of sapphire.
This blue gem of lazurite came only from a mine in northern Afghanistan, and was given mystical and magical properties in ancient Egypt and medieval Europe. The term sapphire originally applied to lapis lazuli, an extraordinarily rare and prized stone of the ancient world. Finally, the Ten Commandments themselves were said to have been engraved on giant sapphire tablets.
Ancient Hebrew texts claim that Noah’s Ark was illuminated with a giant sapphire used as a window, and the same stone was said to be placed in the Jewish High Priest’s breastplate, the original source of the notion of birthstones. Sapphires have a long and precious history in the ancient Jewish tradition. The September birthstone derives its name from the Greek word “sapphirus” meaning blue, a word which itself comes from the Hebrew “sappir” which means to shine.
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