Lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli is a deep blue stone flecked with gold-coloured pyrite, from mines in Afghanistan that GIA calls the oldest known gemstone sources. Babylon and Egypt prized it, and Pliny knew it as sapphiros.
Meaning
Lapis lazuli comes from Badakhshan, in present-day Afghanistan, from mines GIA calls the world’s oldest known commercial gemstone sources: they were working by 700 BC and still produce today. GIA dates people’s use of the stone back more than 6,500 years. Pliny the Elder described it as sapphiros, an azure stone spotted like gold; the Bostock and Riley notes explain that his sapphiros was not the modern sapphire but most probably lapis lazuli, and that the gold spots were probably iron pyrites.
Origin and history
George Frederick Kunz shows how highly Babylon and Egypt valued it. A hymn to the moon god Sin calls him “strong bull, great of horns, perfect in form, with long flowing beard, bright as lapis-lazuli.” In Egypt it was cut into scarabs and cylinders, and particular chapters of the Book of the Dead were cut on particular stones: the 26th on lapis lazuli. An eye of lapis lazuli set with gold was inscribed with the 140th chapter, and the image of Truth that Egypt’s chief justice wore on a gold chain was of lapis lazuli.
A stone against melancholy
Kunz quotes a description of lapis as “a blue stone with little golden spots” that cured melancholy and the “quartern fever”. Chinese court ceremony gave it a place too: the emperors of the Manchu dynasty, Kunz writes, wore lapis lazuli on their girdles for the services at the Temple of Heaven.
Lapis and the birthstone list
When American jewellers adopted the modern birthstone list at Kansas City in August 1912, Kunz records, lapis lazuli was December’s alternate stone, after turquoise (December birthstone).
Read next
- Next in Crystal and gemstone loreTurquoiseTurquoise is a sky-blue to green stone, named “Turkish stone” in medieval French. It is sacred in Navajo (Diné) tradition and was the national stone of Persia, and from the thirteenth century European lapidaries said it saved its wearer from falls.
- Egyptian scarabs were cut from lapis lazuliScarabThe dung beetle, kheper, made into countless Egyptian amulets: the sign of the god Khepera and of new life after death.
See also
Amethyst, Rose quartz, Clear quartz, Citrine, Carnelian, Onyx.
Sources
- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, book 37, chapter 39, Translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1855, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, book 37, chapter 39 (Sapphiros)
- The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, by George Frederick Kunz, 1913, J. B. Lippincott (Project Gutenberg edition), ch. 2 (Lapis-lazuli); ch. 4 (Egyptian amulets); ch. 7 (Book of the Dead); ch. 7 (Manchu ceremonial)
- Lapis Lazuli History and Lore (GIA), Gemological Institute of America, History and lore
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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