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

Starting with a round piece of gold with delicate geometric shape, ornaments of this necklace are linked by a gold chain continued in the repeating order of blue sapphire and green emerald pendants.


The gold used in the early Byzantine period was of astonishing high purity with an average of around 92%-93%. Gold with high purity is soft and easily malleable and therefore, the goldsmith of that time would typically shape the gold into desired shape by hand and hammer. It is possible that the chain of the necklace is made by the goldsmith who twisted the gold into the shape of wire and that the strip of the twist can still be detected.

It was a common practice in Egypt and West Asia to decorate jewelries with colored stones as color blocks and it was a typical practice to combine sapphires with gold jewelries in the Byzantine period. However, equally popular was a kind of purple stone called amethyst. Without the handy technology we currently possess, if we put ourselves in the shoes of a Byzantine artisan who could only distinguish different stones by looking at them with their naked eyes, it becomes quite a challenge to tell the difference between a sapphire and an amethyst. And if you start to wonder whether the two beautiful stones are used in similar ways, then you are on the right track. It was a common practice 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 sapphire necklace in front of you!

The pendents made from emeralds also add a stroke in painting out the Early Byzantine Period. The emeralds on the necklace are in the shape of hexagonal prisms, resulted 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 a popular choice of design for people in both Roman and Byzantine Period.