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Murrhina, China-Agate

Murrhina, China-Agate Page of 384 Naxium, Emery Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
MURRHINA.
191
Leopold exhibited this Agate to Lamboccius with his own hands, as the most important of all his artistic treasures ; but to him also the miraculous inscription constituted its principal value.
The front of the altar in the Chiesa del Jesu, Rome, is formed of a single slab of what the archaeologists there pronounce the long-sought Murrhinum, found in the ruins of an ancient house in the Forum. ' " It answers the de­scription in Pliny very well. It is purple in colour, with strata of a dull white running through it : on the edges of the white there is a slight iridescence. It bears a resem­blance to fluor-spar, but it is not fluor, for, as Sibilio at Rome showed me, fluor-spar is easily scratched, whereas the so-called Murra cannot be scratched, more particularly in the white. This white vein is a pure horn-stone."— (H. M. Westropp.) Brückmann possessed a cameo in a similar composite, one stratum silicious, the other calca­reous. Such a mineral was doubtless classed amongst the Murrhina by the Romans, but, as certainly, did not ex­clusively engross that appellation.
Murrhina, China-Agate Page of 384 Naxium, Emery
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