The stone called sardonyx looks a lot more fragile than it actually is. It’s luminous like glass, but hard like steel, which explains why so much of it has survived from ancient times.
Fame being a relative word, one might describe Medusa’s Gaze: The Extraordinary Journey of the Tazza Farnese by Marina Belozerskaya as a biography of the most famous sardonyx object in the world, the Tazza Farnese, an ancient libation bowl made to hold offerings to the gods.
At least one of the many people who inherited it aimed to change that function. Around the time Romanos II, son of Constantine VII, was ruler over Byzantium, someone drilled through its middle to transform it into a Christian chalice. But try as one might, even a hole could not conceal the fact that the Tazza started life as a thoroughly pagan objet d’art.
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