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Updated: June 8, 2025
The first consisted for the most part of lapis-lazuli, real and artificial, of which the most prized was "the lapis-lazuli of Babylon." Among the gifts was "a ram's head of real lapis-lazuli, 15 pounds in weight."
Nofré smiled, and said with a look of imperceptible raillery, "Is it possible, O mistress, that a single one of your fancies has not been fulfilled at once? If you want a jewel, you give the workman an ingot of pure gold, cornelians, lapis-lazuli, agates, and hematite, and he carries out the wished-for design. It is the same way with gowns, cars, perfumes, flowers, and musical instruments.
Later than these men, there were few mosaic workers of high standing; in Florence the art degenerated into a mere decorative inlay of semi-precious material, heraldic in feeling, costly and decorative, but an entirely different art from that of the Greeks and Romans. Lapis-lazuli with gold veinings, malachite, coral, alabaster, and rare marbles superseded the smalts and gold of an elder day.
Here are scarabæi in gold, cornelion, chalcedony, heliotrope, torquoise, lapis-lazuli, porphyry, terra cotta, and other materials; many of them having royal names and inscriptions engraved. Two objects claim our first attention, on account not only of their value, but their associations. They are placed together in a glass-case, marked No. 3.
Some of the furniture seems new; but many old presses, inlaid with marbles, agates, and lapis-lazuli, such as Italian families preserve for generations, have an air of respectable antiquity about them. Nor is there any doubt that the young Napoleon led his minuets beneath the stiff girandoles of the formal dancing-room. There, too, in a dark back chamber, is the bed in which he was born.
The unsurpassed malachite pillars combine in the grand altar-screen with columns of lapis-lazuli: the latter are said to have cost per pair £12,000 sterling.
This Legend is cut in hieroglyphs on the walls of a small chamber in the tomb of Seti I about 1350 B.C. When Rā, the self-begotten and self-formed god, had been ruling gods and men for some time, men began to complain about him, saying, "His Majesty hath become old. His bones have turned into silver, his flesh into gold, and his hair into real lapis-lazuli."
In this gleaming light, near the mirror, which was surrounded by porcelain flowers, amid flasks gilded and enamelled, a rosy Cupid was drawing a bow with a golden arrow, a marble cat lay at the feet of a statuette, which held a dove rat its bosom; on a small desk of lapis-lazuli as blue as the sky, a bronze statuette personifying the Dew was inclining gracefully an amphora above an open book, skeins of various colored silks were hanging at little looms.
The images of the Goddess Hathor, which stood on the house-altar, were of an imitation of emerald, which was called Mafkat, and the other little figures, which were placed near their patroness, were of lapis-lazuli, malachite, agate and bronze, overlaid with gold.
This was repeated till the child closed her window, went to bed, and blew out the candle. Once in bed she fell asleep, happy in heart though suffering in body, she had Brigaut's letter under her pillow. She slept as the persecuted sleep, a slumber bright with angels; that slumber full of heavenly arabesques, in atmospheres of gold and lapis-lazuli, perceived and given to us by Raffaelle.
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