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Updated: May 25, 2025
Some are anklets and armlets, and consist merely of plain gold rings, both solid and hollow, bordered with plaited chainwork in imitation of filigree. Others are for wearing on the wrist, like the bracelets of modern ladies, and are made of small beads in gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, and green felspar.
Every joint was plainly visible in the mosaic of the pavement, which represented the reception of Heracles into Olympus, the feast of the gods, and the astonishment of the amazed hero at the splendor of the celestial banquet; and hundreds of torches were reflected in the walls of polished yellow marble, brought from Hippo Regius; these were inlaid by skilled artists with costly stones, such as lapis lazuli and malachite, crystals, blood-stone, jasper, agates and chalcedony, to represent fruit-pieces and magnificent groups of game or of musical instruments; while the pilasters were decorated with masks of the tragic and comic Muses, torches, thyrsi wreathed with ivy and vine, and pan-pipes.
Behold those numerous steeds bathed in blood, those bottoms of cars and long quivers, and diverse kinds of standards and banners and those huge conchs, of the combatants, and those yak-tails perfectly white, and those elephants with tongues lolling out and lying on the field like hills, and those beautiful with triumphal banners, and those slain elephant-warriors, and those rich coverlets, each consisting of one piece of blanket, for the backs of those huge beasts, and those beautiful and variegated and torn blankets, and those numerous bells loosened from the bodies of elephants and broken into fragments by those falling creatures, and those hooks with handles set with stones of lapis lazuli fallen upon the Earth, and those ornamental yokes of steeds, and those armours set with diamonds for their breasts and those rich cloths, adorned with gold and tied to the ends of the standards borne by horsemen, and those variegated coverlets and housings and Ranku skins, set with brilliant gems and inlaid with gold, for the backs of steeds and fallen on the ground, and those large diamonds adorning the head-gears of kings, and those beautiful necklaces of gold, and those umbrellas displaced from their positions, and those yak-tails and fans.
Early next morning, just after we had discovered that under the cliff was water like liquid lapis lazuli and flat-topped rocks rising just above it on which you would not have been in the least surprised to find mermaids combing their hair, or sirens sitting, and that it was a simple matter to climb down and be mermen, the clergyman-volunteer arrived with reports of the first night.
Well, upon the walls of the tomb of the Princess Arjamand are about two acres of surface covered with such mosaics as fine and as perfect as if each setting were a jewel intended for a queen to wear turquoise, coral, garnet, carnelian, jasper, malachite, agate, lapis lazuli, onyx, nacre, bloodstone, tourmaline, sardonyx and a dozen other precious stones of different colors.
The church within is one gorgeous mass of precious marbles and mosaics and silver and gold and jewels. On the tabernacle of the altar, in gold and malachite, on the screen of the altar, with its pilasters of lapis lazuli and its range of malachite columns fifty feet high, were lavished millions on millions. Bulging from the ceilings are massy bosses of Siberian porphyry and jasper.
It was a very fine scarab of the eighteenth dynasty fashioned of lapis lazuli and engraved with the cartouche of Amenhotep III. It had been suspended by a gold ring fastened to a wire which passed through the suspension hole, and the ring, though broken, was still in position.
It was finished five centuries afterwards by Nebuchadnezzar, who left a part of its history on two cylinders, which have lately been excavated on the spot, and thus deciphered by Rawlinson. 'The building, named the Planisphere, which was the wonder of Babylon, I have made and finished. With bricks, enriched with lapis lazuli, I have exalted its head.
The walls were covered to the ceiling with rows of goblets, vases, &c., of polished jasper, agate and lapiz lazuli. Splendid mosaic tables stood around, with caskets of the most exquisite silver and gold work upon them, and vessels of solid silver, some of them weighing six hundred pounds were placed at the foot of the columns.
The second and third divisions contain some remarkable figures, including bronze groups of Osiris-ioh, or the moon, with the lunar disk; a walking figure of Anubis, with a jackal's head; the ibis-headed Thoth, and Har-si-esi with a hawk's head, each pouring a flood of water upon the earth; various hawk-headed and other deities, in the beautiful lapis lazuli, blue porcelain, and green felspar, including Isis suckling her son Horus, and walking with a throne on her head; Nephthys walking; a porcelain Horus with the mystic lock; a blue porcelain plate, representing a procession of female deities; a snake-headed deity, also in blue porcelain; and a porcelain Thoth carrying a scarabaeus.
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