Junyi Wu, College of the Holy Cross, Class of 2026

Starting with a delicately shaped round gold clasp, the ornaments of this necklace are linked by a gold chain continuing in a repeating pattern of blue and green gemstones.

The gold used in the early Byzantine period was of astonishingly high purity, with an average of around 92%-93%. Gold with high purity is soft and easily malleable, so the goldsmith would shape the gold by hand and hammer. The chain of the necklace may have been made by twisting the gold into the shape of a wire.


It was common in Egypt and West Asia to decorate jewelry with colored stones as color blocks on a gold chain, and it was typical to combine blue sapphires with gold in the Byzantine period. Equally popular was the purple amethyst. Without the advantages of modern optical lenses, a Byzantine artisan could only distinguish different stones by looking at them with their naked eyes, requiring considerable skill to tell the difference between a sapphire, an amethyst, and other blue or purple stones, like chalcedony. Sapphires and amethysts were also used in similar ways. It was common to polish a piece of amethyst into a “droplet shape” before putting it onto a necklace. And if you wonder what a droplet shape is, it is right there on the blue stones in the necklace in front of you!

Green gemstone pendants hang from the gold chain; these are made from emeralds.  Their shape, a hexagonal prism, results from their natural crystal form. Although it was common to cut emeralds into round spherical beads, keeping the emeralds in their natural crystal form was another popular choice for people in both the Roman and Byzantine eras.