the.com/jasper
opaque quartz that fooled ancient priests into thinking they held captured sunset.
means An opaque, fine-grained variety of quartz, usually red, yellow, or brown, prized as a semiprecious stone since antiquity.
from From Old French jaspre and Latin iaspis, borrowed from Greek iaspis — a word that wandered into Greek from the Semitic east, related to Hebrew yashpheh and Akkadian yashupu. The trail runs all the way back through the trading languages of the ancient Near East, where the stone was named long before anyone wrote down who named it first.
- name origin
- From Persian, meaning spotted or speckled stone
- breastplate stone
- Adorned the high priest's chestplate in Exodus
- picture jasper
- Patterns mimic landscapes, deserts, and stormy skies
- birthstone history
- Was March's gem before aquamarine stole it
- toughness
- Microcrystalline structure resists cracking despite moderate hardness
for instance
jasper national park — canadian rocky mountain park in alberta covering 11,000 km², established 1907
jasper johns — american artist born 1930, famous for painting the american flag and targets