578 g kyanite – Fallen nobility

“As you are, so was I; and as I am, so shall you be.” With these words, a medieval legend brings three dead men in the way of three young nobles, richly dressed and often depicted on the hunt. The oldest known text of the story dates from the 1280s. The dead do not threaten with the end; they admonish: All splendor decays. Soon people painted the encounter on church walls; in France alone researchers counted 93 such wall paintings. In books of hours it often stood at the beginning of the Office of the Dead. Who considered themselves superior spoke of blue blood. The expression comes from Spanish sangre azul, and probably refers to the veins that glimmer blue beneath pale skin. This skull bears that blue, from pale dove blue to deep midnight blue: a head for the hours after sunset. Long, fibrous bands pass through it like rapids beneath a dark water surface, and its surface shines with a slight waxy luster. However, over the forehead, the orbits, the nose and the teeth, fine rust-brown grains are distributed like dried drops of blood. Whoever claims blue blood bleeds in the end red like everyone else and takes his place beneath the earth when the time comes. Its stone is kyanite, named after the Greek word for dark blue. Kyanite shares its chemical formula with two other minerals, andalusite and sillimanite. All three consist of the same building blocks: aluminum, silicon and oxygen. Which form arises from them is determined solely by pressure and heat deep in the Earth's crust. Kyanite is the form that forms under the highest pressure, and therefore the densest of the three; accordingly heavy lies this skull in the hand. The same substance, only a different state: the three dead could not have said it more fittingly. Material: kyanite (disthen, aluminum silicate) with fine-grained rust-brown inclusions (iron oxide) Origin: Brazil Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 6.6 cm Weight: 578 g Special features: blue-green to midnight blue kyanite with fibrous-striped, flowing markings; fine rust-brown inclusions across the entire skull, especially dense around the eyes, nose and teeth; slightly waxy luster; pale chalk-white inclusion on the upper back of the head

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