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Emeralds – What you Did and Didn’t Know

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In honor of St. Patrick’s Day yesterday, we decided to focus on our favorite green gem: the emerald. The term emerald was first translated from Sanskrit as “marakata,” meaning “the green of growing things.”

Here’s a few other historical tidbits on this most mesmerizing gem according to Jewelsforme.com:

The Chaldeans believed the stone contained a goddess.

In the Islamic faith, an amulet of an emerald might be engraved with a verse from the Koran.

The ancient Egyptians believed the emerald stood for fertility and rebirth.

In Ancient Rome, Nero supposedly watched gladiator fights through a large transparent emerald as he found the color to be calming.

In some legends of King Arthur, the Holy Grail is described as being fashioned from an emerald.

In China, Thursday was the day for wearing green and emeralds for good luck.

The Romans once considered light-colored Emeralds to be unripe, and believed that an Emerald becomes a darker shade of green as it matures.

It was known that Emerald was a favorite gem of Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt, and the Emerald mine in Upper Egypt, rediscovered a hundred years ago near the Red Sea, was one of the earliest Emerald occurrences in the human history.

Legend has it that Hernando Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, tried to bring huge chunks of Emerald that he took from the Aztecs back home with him. However, one of his ships was shipwrecked, and delicately carved Emeralds in the shape of flowers and fish and other rare Emeralds, including an Emerald the size of a man’s palm, became lost forever.

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