Human Crafts – 2000 Years Ago

A rather recent & newly smoothed Colombian emerald cabochon resting on a Roman period mosaic floor fragment found rolling around the beaches of Israel…

The emerald is beautiful old green material which was smoothed out from a pretty beat up antique faceted emerald.
But!! The emerald is not the main story of this post. The main focus is actually the archeological mosaic floor fragment the beautiful emerald is resting on.

This rare and black mosaic floor fragment, survived from Herod I’s period of reign, the Roman client king of Judea (c. 4 BCE).
This exceptional fragment spend most of its existence rolling around the Mediterranean Sea and can be noticed by the smooth surface created by the sea waters for 2000 years.

From personal experience, similar such fragments are usually of a light off-white color (type of limestones) tesserae’s, seldom you are lucky enough to find some with mixture of tesserae colors (fragments from rare illustration works that didn’t survive). All-black tesserae fragments are almost non-existent, especially for this region.

So instead of focusing on the beautiful emerald this time.., I ask to concentrate on the beautiful smooth finished, semi-curved black tesserae’s which make up this archeological find. Imagine…, a person just like us living 2000 years ago crafted this with his/her hands. Actually pretty mind-blowing that the white cement still holds this rare fragment together for such an historic period. It also plays a beautiful role adding a great visual (white on black) contrast to the work.

In short…, two beautiful & rare treasures of nature with historical significance.
For anyone interested, this 2.35 carat Colombian emerald cabochon will be added to our gemstone boutique shortly, Mosaic fragment not for sale.