This is a tale built on history and legend. Nefer and her father are imagined, but the emerald mines of Egypt's desert were real, and the stories of Cleopatra's love for emeralds have been told for two thousand years.
The mountains of the Eastern Desert were the color of a lion's back, and in the afternoon they shimmered with heat. Nobody lived there who didn't have to. But in a narrow valley between the cliffs, a whole village of miners worked, because hidden in the rock were the only emeralds in all of Egypt.
Nefer was eleven. Her father was a miner, and every evening he came out of the dark tunnels gray with dust, with a few small green crystals wrapped in a cloth. Most were pale and cloudy, the color of shallow water. But once in a long while, there was one that glowed.
"Who are they for?" Nefer asked one night, holding one up to the lamp.
Her father smiled. "For the queen."
The Green Queen
"They say she loves green above every other color," her father said, settling down beside the fire. "Green is the color of the Nile when the flood comes, the color of new wheat, the color of life coming back after the dry season. And our queen, Cleopatra, wants to wear life itself."
"Is it true she wears our emeralds?"
"That's what the traders say. They say she wears them in her hair and at her throat, and sews them into her gowns. They say the walls of her palace in Alexandria glitter green when the lamps are lit."
Nefer's eyes went wide. "Our emeralds? From this valley?"
"From this valley," her father said proudly. "And they say something else. When important visitors come from Rome or from faraway kingdoms, the queen gives them a gift to take home: an emerald, carved with her own face."
"Why her face?"
"So that every time they look at it, they remember her," said her father. "An emerald never fades, and neither does a queen who knows how to be remembered."
The Stone That Rests the Eyes
Nefer looked at the little crystal in her palm. The green was so calm it was almost cool to look at.
"It makes my eyes feel rested," she said.
Her father laughed. "Then you're as wise as the old physicians. People believe green stones soothe tired eyes. The Romans will tell you that craftsmen who cut tiny gems all day rest their eyes by looking at an emerald."
The Brightest One
Many months later, her father came out of the tunnel at sunset, and he was not walking. He was running. He knelt in front of Nefer and opened his hand.
In it lay an emerald unlike any she had ever seen. It was not pale or cloudy. It was deep and bright and alive, like light through the leaves of a palm tree.
"This one," he whispered, "will go to Alexandria."
Nefer never saw the queen. She never saw the palace or the sea. But for the rest of her life, whenever she saw green light through leaves, she imagined a stone from her valley glittering in a queen's hair, far away by the sea.
The Legend and the Truth
Egypt's emerald mines in the Eastern Desert, near the Red Sea, were among the oldest known sources of emerald in the world. They were worked under the Greek rulers of Egypt, Cleopatra's own family, and later by the Romans, and archaeologists still study the ruins of the miners' settlements today. Centuries later the area became known as "Cleopatra's Mines."
Legend says Cleopatra treasured emeralds and gave visiting dignitaries emeralds engraved with her likeness. Historians can't prove these stories, but they've been told for two thousand years, and they made emerald forever a stone of queens. Egyptian emeralds were usually paler and more included than the brilliant Colombian emeralds discovered many centuries later.
đź’ˇ Read more legends and true stories of emerald in The Legends of Emerald.
🛍️ A Stone Fit for a Queen
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