Pharaoh's Gem Brighter Than a Thousand Suns

Tamas Feher from Hungary writes "An Italian archaeologist accidentally found that the central gem in Tutankhamun's regal necklace is not amber, but a mere piece of yellow glass. Kinda cheap for the famous Egyptian pharaoh, best known for his splendid golden mask. Except that piece of glass is much older than civilization. Where did it come from, StarGate? Kind of. Scientists now think a meteorite much larger than the Tunguska event fell from the sky and exploded over the Sahara in prehistoric times. The tremendous heat of the 1000 A-bomb sized fireball melted large chunks of desert sand into perfect glass. The memory of such an apocalyptic event may have made sand-glass gems a desirable symbol, meant to emphasize the pharaoh's heavenly powers."

Comments

"accidentally found"?

[The MAZZTer]

That suggests to me he dropped and broke it. :)

Re:"accidentally found"?

[TubeSteak]

Why isn't diamond cheap yet?

Diamonds are cheap... for anything besides jewelry. And that's mostly oligopoly pricing + labor costs (it's expensive to mine diamonds & pay professionals to cut diamonds by hand).

Industrial quality (mined) diamonds are cheap as shiat & are actually outnumbered by synthetic diamonds (around since the 1950's but not mass produced till later).

Until recently, nobody had a viable way of creating gem quality 'synthetic' diamonds. There are currently three companies that can do this & their diamonds are vastly cheaper than mined diamonds.

The various diamond importers don't care so much about the synthetic industrial grade diamonds, because those types of stones were too small/imperfect to be used for gems anyways. However, they are shitting bricks over man-made gem quality stones because the 'fakes' are cheaper to produce and are literally perfect.

So, in summary: The price of gem quality diamonds will be coming down, no matter what the big mining cartels have to say about it.

Re:"accidentally found"?

[PopeRatzo]

My wife wears one of those man-made gem-quality diamonds. She says she was never comfortable with really expensive jewelry, and said she'd rather us take a nice vacation or buy a car instead of me buying her a diamond, so that's what we did. The gem she wears really is perfect, and a jeweler friend of ours said it was "magnificent". I won't shed any tears for the diamond industry, bloody monsters that they are, nor for the diamond merchants who in the 20th century somehow convinced everyone that diamond rings were required to demonstrate love. Let them find honest income.

Re:"accidentally found"?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're available at a slight discount from "natural" diamonds, usually. Despite the fact that the pricing should be about 10:1, they know that it's in their best interest to keep prices as high as possible... just cheap enough to be a "bargain" compared to natural diamonds, but still overpriced enough to make the manufacturers a shit-ton of money.

Lightning?

[kninja]

Doesn't lightning strike the desert? I know it doesn't rain that often in the Sahara, but still, I find that at least as plausible as a huge meteorite.

Re:Lightning?

[Valthan]

I'm sure there has been lightning strikes, but this glass was formed over an enormous area of land, and a lightning strike wouldn't make glass of this magnitude in depth and area, it would have to be something that would be much hotter and a hell of a lot bigger than lightning.

But you know...

[p0tat03]

Looks like Naquadah to me...

Re:But you know...

[Anarke_Incarnate]

or Naquadria :). I bet it was Nihrti's doing

weird logic in summary

[wwest4]

If the explosion happened "before civilization" then it might be hard for there to be any memory of the "apocalyptic event" that created the glass. We're talking 800,000 years here... even before the advent of oral legend (Mmmmmmm.... oral legend).

Volcanoes

[Tx]

Just thinking of possible alternate sources of prehistoric yellow glass, I know volcanic glass is usually black (obsidian), but surely there are some situations in which molten lava melts sand of various compositions that happen to be in its path, and therefore could conceivably result in other colors of glass? And I know there are no volcanoes in Egypt, but it could have been brought from elsewhere, the Egyptians were known to do a bit of trading now and again. Since they don't actually seem to have any actual evidence for the meteorite theory, it seems just as plausible.

Re:Volcanoes

[DuChamp Fitz]

Clearly you're ignoring the obvious source. Pterydactls with frickin' laser beams attached to their beaks.

Re:Volcanoes

[Government Drone]

Depends; are they African or European pterodactyls?

Or..

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual gem was replaced with a piece of yellow glass by grave robbers who did a very good job of concealing their tracks.

Re:Or..

[hey!]

Graverobbers did indeed conceal their tracks -- to hide caches of treasure from competitors.

Inside the tombs, they didn't waste time. They smashed open sarcophogi and ripped mummies apart looking for jewels and amulets. Anybody visiting subsequently would have found the fact of the robbery clear enough -- by the absence of any scrap of economic value.

The value of gems

[YetAnotherBob]

is in thier rarety. Glass was a gemstone before it could be made in quantity. This necklace may be OLD. Glass, Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, it's all the same. The jewlery industry is trying very hard right now to find some way to discount the value of man made stones, or we may soon see the value of all gems erode as the value of glass did once.

wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean the FAARGATE!?!??

We don't vant to get sued. Just be sure it has a mohawk and a wheelchair.

Asimov (and Hollywood) got it wrong

[jamie]

The other day I was skimming through a book I very much enjoyed as a boy: Asimov on Astronomy.

Chapter 2 is about asteroids and comets that may impact the Earth, and how much damage they would do. He concludes with:

In the future, perhaps, things may be different. The men in the space stations that will eventually be set up about the Earth may find themselves, among other things, on the watch for the Earth-grazers, something like the iceberg watch conducted in northern waters since the sinking of the Titanic (but much more difficult of course).

The rocks, boulders, and mountains of space may be painstakingly tagged and numbered. Their changing orbits may be kept under steady watch. Then, a hundred years from now, perhaps, or a thousand, some computer on such a station will sound the alarm: "Collision orbit!"

Then a counterattack, kept in waiting for all that time would be set in motion. The dangerous rock would be met with an H-bomb (or, by that time, something more appropriate) designer to trigger off on collision. The rock would glow and vaporize and change from a boulder to a conglomeration of pebbles.

Even if they continued on course, the threat would be lifted. Earth would merely be treated to a spectacular (and harmless) shower of shooting stars.

Asimov was writing in 1966 but still should have known better. The kinetic energy of a shattered object is the same as the intact object. The only difference is that the energy will all be shed in the atmosphere instead of mostly in the lithosphere. Human suffering might be ameliorated somewhat but unless the trajectory of the pebbles is changed, the atmosphere is still getting superheated with disasterous local, and possibly global, effects. If you're standing under the shooting-star display, then like any nearby sand, you're getting cooked.

Yes, this ruined the ending of Deep Impact for me. Yes, I'm a geek.

Re:Asimov (and Hollywood) got it wrong

[stg]

Just a slight detail - the book he mentioned isn't science fiction, it's just science. Asimov did a lot of non-fiction, too.

Re:Asimov (and Hollywood) got it wrong

[DaveV1.0]

While it is true that the kinetic energy of the components of a shattered object will be the same as the inital whole object there are several things you have neglected.

1. Because the resulting pieces will be of varying size and shape, some will be below the size to successfully reach the surface before burning up.
   
2. Not all the resulting component pieces will have the same tragectory, thus
   1. some pieces will miss the target
   2. the kinetic energy will be spread out over a larger area.
3. Because the resulting pieces will be smaller and spread over a larger area, the resulting damage will be less pronounced. Think of the damage caused by getting a large tattoo. If those thousands of small pin pricks were converted into a single strike the damage would be much greater. Which would create more damage to you: three handfulls of pebbles dropped on your head, or a single rock of equivelent mass of those same three handfulls?
   

Not to mention that in your own post you show that Asmiov states "or, by that time, something more appropriate". This indicates to me that the best tool available at the time was a nuke and Asimov understood that it may not be the best tool but was the only one available and that in the future there may be better tools.

Re:Not 800,000 years

[AKAImBatman]

From Wikipedia:

The color of "natural glass" is green to bluish green. This colour is caused by naturally occurring iron impurities in the sand. Common glass today usually has a slight green or blue tint, arising from these same impurities. Glassmakers learned to make coloured glass by adding metallic compounds and mineral oxides to produce brilliant hues of red, green, and blue - the colours of gemstones. When gem-cutters learned to cut glass, they found clear glass was an excellent refractor of light. The earliest known beads from Egypt were made during the New Kingdom, about 1500 BC and came in a variety of colours. They were made by winding molten glass around a metal bar and were highly prized as a trading commodity, especially blue ones because they were reported to have magical powers.

The Egyptians also made small jars and bottles using the core-formed method. Glass threads were wound around a bag of sand tied to a rod and the glass was continually reheated to fuse the threads together. The glass had to be kept in motion until the required shape and thickness was achieved. The final step was to allow the rod to cool then to puncture the bag and remove the rod. The Egyptians also formed the first coloured glass rods which they used to create colourful beads and decorations, they also worked with cast glass. [2]. By the 5th century BCE this technology had spread to at least Greece. In the first century BC there were many glass centres located around the Mediterranean and at the eastern end of the Mediterranean glass blowing, both free-blowing and mould-blowing, was discovered.

Considering that the Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to master glassworks, it seems somewhat unlikely that the Pharaoh's prized gem would be mere glass. Unless, that is, there were other legends or sources of value attributed to the gem. Given the unusual color of the glass (for the period), it seems quite reasonable that it being formed by "the light of a thousand suns" was the source of its value.

impact crater anyone?

[Intangion]

i wonder if they are aware of this HUUUUGE 19 mile wide impact crator nearby ;)

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060303_big_c rater.html

i mean this crater is sooo damn big that it wasnt even noticed till it was seen by satalites

theres on in europe like that too
its sooooo damn huge, an entire town is built in it, and an entire cathedral was built using a special rock that only forms from extreeeme compression and no one even knew it was a crater until some scientists realized the cathedral was built from that rock

when they are tooo big its hard to notice

like when you capture a lizard and it escapes and crawls onto the back of your arm, and thinks its safe cause it cant see your face ;)

your so big compared to him that it doesnt even realize its still on you ;)

Re:impact crater anyone?

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

The european crater you referred to is probably the Nördlinger Ries in Germany. Gene Shoemaker was on holiday in Nördlingen with his wife, when they discovered the stones used to build the local St. George Cathedral contained suevite and came up with the impact crater hypothesis. In 1961 he and Edward Chao proved it was actually an impact crater.

Re:I *prefer* man-made gems

[random coward]

I agree with you. However in 200 years when synthetic pure white diamond is used commercially in very large crystals, when corundums(i.e. saphires) are used for windows, our great grandchildren will wonder about us wearing what is to them just glass. I wonder what jewelry will be like when our physical scarcity matches our current digital scarcity. How will we adapt to such abundance?

this just in: sarcophagus is solid fucking gold

[192939495969798999]

It turns out that while Tut's sarcophagus initially appeared to be ordinary gold, it is in fact solid fucking gold. "Yeah, I couldn't believe it", Dr. Packenwood said, "but when we finished running all the scientific experiments on the coffin, it turned out to be 200 lbs of solid fucking gold!"

Re:Not 800,000 years

[Vellmont]

Given the unusual color of the glass (for the period), it seems quite reasonable that it being formed by "the light of a thousand suns" was the source of its value.

Well, that's assuming that someone saw the meteor strike, wasn't killed by it, and the legend was passed down through the generations. That's quite a lot to swallow with their being no evidence for any of it.

The distinguishing feature of the glass is that it isn't man made. Given that glass beads were common in Egypt in 1500 BC, and Tut ruled around 1300 BC, I'd say they must have known this wasn't just normal man-made glass. Perhaps they found it in the desert, but knew of glass as only a man-made substance. Finding something in the middle of nowhere in large chunks that couldn't possibly be made by a person, but which you've only seen before as being made by a person is pretty amazing. It'd be like finding big chunks of pure iron in the middle of knowhere. You've seen Iron before, but it's something that's created by people. I could easily see that such a find would make this glass special.

In fact, the earliest known uses of Iron around 4000 BCE come from meteorites. From wikipedia:

The first signs of use of iron come from the Sumerians and the Egyptians, where around 4000 BCE, a few items, such as the tips of spears, daggers and ornaments, were being fashioned from iron recovered from meteorites.

Which brings up the possibility that this glass was found before glassmaking became common, so it had a special value assigned to it. The point I'm trying to make is that no one had to see the actual meteor impact to know that this was special glass.

Re:I *prefer* man-made gems

[pla]

Man-made gems can be more ethical as well since they don't finance activities which further human suffering.

I see we have incompatible opinions on marriage... ;-)

One word..

[novus ordo]

DeBeers. They have the world's monopoly on diamonds and are quick to buyoff any new mines and ventures to control the supply. They are shitting bricks(diamonds?) and spending millions into detecting the ever more sophisticated synthetic diamonds. With all the effort they force on you to make the "perfect" diamond it will cost more than just buying one from them.