Lapis Lazuli, often shortened to just lapis, is a beautifully blue mineral, prized since ancient times for its color. As early as between 7000 and 6000 BC, lapis lazuli was mined in regions of modern-day northeastern Afghanistan, and nowadays mines in northeast Afghanistan continue to be a major source of lapis lazuli, with Afghanistan still being the world’s largest exporter today.

Lapis lazuli beads and other artifacts have been found in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, Syria, and the rest of the Mediterranean, dating back, in some cases, as far as 5000 BC! It was also used, in much later times, to make the highly coveted blue dye known as ultramarine. This widespread use of lapis lazuli rocks, considering how far away Afghanistan is from these areas, speaks to a far more sophisticated system of trade networks than what one would suppose to be around in ancient times. Jewelry made of lapis lazuli has also been found at Mycenae, attesting to trade relations between the Mycenaean Greeks and these other civilizations.

The Roman writer Pliny the Elder described lapis thusly: “opaque and sprinkled with specks of gold”, and was often called sapphire (sapphirus in Latin, sappir in Hebrew). However, lapis and the gemstone more commonly known as sapphire were not linked. For example, the Old Testament makes many references to sapphires, like in Exodus: Exodus 24:10: “And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone…” (KJV). However, sapphire stones were unknown in ancient Israel until Roman occupation, so this description more closely resembles lapis. Indeed, in the vulgate Latin translation of this passage, the words used are “quasi opus lapidis sapphirini”, referring more unambiguously to lapis.

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