Lapis lazuli
Deep-blue metamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense color.
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Pigment
Colored material that is completely or nearly insoluble in water.
Pigments of prehistoric and historic value include ochre, charcoal, and lapis lazuli.
Ultramarine
Ultramarine is a deep blue color pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder.
Badakhshan
Historical region comprising parts of modern-day north-eastern Afghanistan, eastern Tajikistan, and the Tashkurgan county in China.
Lapis lazuli was traded exclusively from there as early as the second half of the 4th millennium BC.
Gemstone
Piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments.
However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli and opal) and occasionally organic materials that are not minerals (such as amber, jet, and pearl) are also used for jewelry and are therefore often considered to be gemstones as well.
Johannes Vermeer
Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life.
There is no other 17th-century artist who employed the exorbitantly expensive pigment lapis lazuli (natural ultramarine) either so lavishly or so early in his career.
Mehrgarh
Neolithic archaeological site situated on the Kacchi Plain of Balochistan in Pakistan.
Ornaments of sea shell, limestone, turquoise, lapis lazuli and sandstone have been found, along with simple figurines of women and animals.
Fresco
Technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster.
Blue was a particular problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli, the only two blue pigments then available, works well in wet fresco.
Cylinder seal
Small round cylinder, typically about one inch in length, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay.
Many varieties of material such as hematite, obsidian, steatite, amethyst, lapis lazuli and carnelian were used to make cylinder seals.
Shortugai
Shortugai (Shortughai), in Darqad District of northern Afghanistan, was a trading colony of the Indus Valley Civilization (or Harappan Civilization) established around 2000 BC on the Oxus river (Amu Darya) near the lapis lazuli mines.
Ur
Important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern "Tell el-Muqayyar" (تل ٱلْمُقَيَّر) in south Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate.
Imports to Ur came from many parts of the world: precious metals such as gold and silver, and semi-precious stones, namely lapis lazuli and carnelian.