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Gems
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Lapis
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Color:
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Dark blue, and often sparkles with golden pyrite inclusions.
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The beautiful blues in paintings from the Renaissance are thanks to the blue of lapis lazuli, the blue rock loved by the ancients, from Mesopotamia, to Egypt, to Persia, to Greece and Rome. The ancient city of Ur has a thriving trade in lapis as early as the fourth millennium B.C. The name is international, from the latin, lapis, which means stone, and from the Arabic, azul, which means blue. When lapis was first introduced to Europe, it was called ultramarinum, which means beyond the sea. Ground lapis was the secret of the blue in ultramarine, the pigment which painters used to paint the sea and the sky until the nineteenth century. Lapis was also popular in inlays..
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