Sardonyx History

Sardonyx can be traced back four thousand years to Ancient Egypt. For most of its history, this stone has been used to create cameos and intaglios. In Ancient Rome, women wore sardonyx necklaces with cameos of Venus in hopes of harnessing the power of the goddess of love. It was also common for soldiers to wear sardonyx rings and carvings containing images of Mars, the god of war, into battle as a means of protection. Sardonyx was also a popular stone for Roman seals and signet rings that were used to imprint wax emblems on official documents because hot wax doesn’t stick to this stone.Sardonyx is an agate whose banding is straight and parallel. Much like agate, it is dyed to enhance or change its colors. Dyeing agate was an art practiced by the Romans from early on, but it reached perfection in the 1820s in Oberstein, Germany…