The modern name originated from the Latin words: Lapis – meaning stone and Lazuli – meaning blue.  The root word Lazuli is an older form of Allazward or Arabic word L’azulaus both meaning sky, heaven or blue.  The French word Azur and the English form Azure came from the same roots.

Historical Presence:

3^rd Millennium B.C. – ancient records states Puabi was the fist Sumerian Queen dressed in gems and precious metals, her royal robes were made of gold and silver, studded with Lapis Lazuli

2^nd Millennium B. C. – Assyrian tablets states the gem as an article of tribute.  The Babylonian goddess in preparation on her descent into the underworld adorned herself with ornaments of lapis lazuli and wore great lapis lazuli necklace.

19^th Century – powered lapis lazuli prescribed as an astringent

King’s natural history of gems – medicinal, heals when powdered, mixed with milk and smeared over the sores, boils and ulceration

Chinese – for centuries used to make cosmetic to paint eyebrows

20^th Century – shelters wearer from physical danger and psychic attacks.  Treats disorders of the throat, bone marrow, thymus and immune system, said to rectify RNA/DNA damage.

Hebrews – used to adorn ceremonial robes

Egyptians – used the gem to make amulets, scarabs and cylinder seals.  Funerary masks of the pharaohs included inlaid lapis and high priests wore lapis images of Mat, Goddess of Truth

15^th Century B.C. – in Berlin Museum holds a papyrus for the curative powers of three precious stones; Lapis Lazuli, Malachite and Red Jasper strung as beads for a child’s necklace.  The cure was affected reciting a specific formula over the child – the incantation called upon the disease to be drawn from the patient, through the beads into the air and water.

1^st Century Romans – Pliny states “Sapphiros contains spots of gold; sometimes blue and rarely tinged with purple.”  Greek and Romans powered the blue gem and used as general tonic and an effective purgative

Middle ages – used as medicinal stone and source of pigment for illuminated manuscript.

Powered and mixed with oils produced an intense blue paint known as ultramarine

13^th Century – Albertus Magnus refers to lapis lazuli as “a blue stone with little golden spots, as a cure for depression and quartern fever – an intermittent fever which returned on each 3^rd day

14^th Century – Chevalier Jean de Mandeville states “Lapis Lazuli, the magnet stone is found in parts of Armenia, it is a blue stone slightly shiny and opaque, protects against illness that causes fainting due to a weak heart; prevents conception when carried a man or a woman