Emerald is one of four “gems” with diamonds, rubies, sapphires. For superior qualities an emerald will be rarer and more expensive than a diamond.
Green variety of the beryls group. The color is due to chromium or vanadium. Some emeralds should be called "green beryl" if they do not contain any of these elements.
It is a hard stone (8 on the Mohs hardness scale), but fragile, shock-sensitive.
Emerald is used since antiquity, in Egypt, between 3000 and 1500 BC, exploited in the mines of Cleopatra. Celts and Romans also exploited them in Austria at the Habachtal site.
In the Muslim tradition, the throne on which the pen and table of the Qur'an rests is in emerald.
One of the most famous legends is that the Emerald, carried on the front by the archangel Lucifer, fell into the ocean during his fight with Saint Michael. It was discovered and offered to the Sheba Queen, who had it carved into a chalice. To appease conflicts, the Queen offered this cup to King Solomon. Over the centuries and continents, it was lost. The Knights of the Round Table were then tasked with finding this mysterious cup that became the Holy Grail.
The emerald mines of Colombia were discovered by the Spanish in the 16th century.
Studies conducted in France on ancient jewellery by the CNRS, have shown that the emerald mines of Afghanistan, which were believed to have been discovered in the late 1950s, were exploited as early as the eighteenth century.
Emerald can be distinguished with the Chelsea filter. It will have a pink to red color, depending on its vanadium content.
To learn more about the mineralogy of the Emeralds, see Mindat.org->
