![]() Ancient Etruscans used sapphires as far back as the 7th century B.C.īesides being the September birthstone, the sapphire was said to represent the purity of the soul. Worshipers visiting his shrine in Delphi to seek his help wore sapphires. Ancient Persians called sapphire the “Celestial Stone.” It was the gem of Apollo, Greek God of prophecy. The word sapphire has its roots in ancient languages: from the Latin sapphirus (meaning blue), from the Greek word sappheiros for the island of Sappherine in the Arabian Sea where sapphires were found in ancient Grecian times, in its turn from the Arabic safir. ![]() The Logan Sapphire Brooch, the second largest sapphire known (at 422.99 carats), is on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. It mostly yields small stones for industrial use. In the United States, a major source is the Yogo Gulch Mine in Montana. Kashmir, in India, used to be a well-known source of the cornflower-blue stones. Found in alluvial deposits of weathered basalt, Australian sapphires typically are blue stones with a dark and inky appearance. The biggest source of sapphires world-wide is Australia, especially New South Wales and Queensland. For example, yellow sapphires get their color from ferric iron, and colorless gems have no contaminants. Different kinds of impurities within the crystal cause the various gemstone colors. Sapphires also occur in other natural colors and tints – colorless, gray, yellow, pale pink, orange, green, violet and brown – called fancy sapphires. ![]() The most valued shade of blue is the medium-deep cornflower blue. They range from very pale blue to deep indigo, with the exact shade depending on how much titanium and iron lies within the crystal structure. Typically, sapphires appear as blue stones. That makes sapphire second in hardness only to diamond. ![]() All corundum, including sapphire, has a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale. And all other gem-quality forms of corundum are called sapphires. Both are forms of the mineral corundum, a crystalline form of aluminum oxide. September’s birthstone, the sapphire, is a relative of July’s birthstone, the ruby.
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