Amber - The Legend About Two Suns

A very long time ago, there was not one sun, but two. One was enormous and heavy. The sky could not hold it, and the Sun fell into the sea, hardening as it fell. It smashed against the sharp rocks at the bottom, breaking into small pieces. Since then, the waves have raised them from the bottom of the sea and tossed large and small pieces of the solar stone onto the coast.

The largest deposit of amber in the world is in the Kaliningrad Oblast.

Since ancient times, people have appreciated the properties and beauty of this stone .

More then six thousand year ago, people made beads from amber, figurines in the shape of the Sun, the Moon, animals, hatchets, teeth, keys, and amber objects with magical powers. It was a common belief that amber guarded people from evil spirits, the evil eye, witchcraft, and diseases.

Amber was very valued in the 17th and 18th Century, considered on par with gold.

The amber articles were brought to Russia for diplomatic gifts. All the Russian tsarinas had personal items made from amber; a snuff-box, a mirror frame, toiletries, sets for table games, and so on.

Modern science considers amber to be the fossilized resin from ancient coniferous trees, which grew 50 million years ago on the continent, located in the area of the Baltic Sea.

Amber is found in an extraordinary diversity of colors, forms, degrees of transparency, and sizes. The largest known piece of amber in Russia is 4.280 kg, and can be found in the collection of amber in the Kaliningrad museum.

In our own time, amber is one of the favorite materials for jewelery making artists.

Amber was common in the life of inhabitants of the Baltic Sea coast in the Neolithic Era, in the 4th millenium B.C. They learned how to shape it with flint and bone tools, grinding, sawing, boring, and creating different ornaments and amulets in the shape of humans and animals. Even back in ancient times, amber was an important item in trade, enjoying popularity far beyond the borders of the Baltic region. Thanks to archaelogical excavations, and knowledge from written sources, we now know about successful established trade routes, along which amber from the Baltic coast came into the countries of ancient civilization. Information about "The Gold of the North" is found in ancient written sources. Thus, in Homer's Odyssey (8th Century B.C.), amber is menton in a number of songs as precious material for making womens' adornments and trim finishings on kings' palaces. Amber was especially highly valued during the Roman Empire. Not only were ornaments made from it, but also everyday objects: small pliable vessels for wine, bottles for fragences, and so on. In the time of Emperor Nero, amber was even used for decoration of the amphitheatre, where gladiators came to fight: it was intertwined in the network of barriers, strewn onto the arena and stretchers, and inlaid on the weapons.

In Old Russia, in the 10th and 11th Centuries, they also knew about amber and valued ardornments made from it. This has been confirmed by excavations in cities of Old Russia: Great Novgorod, Pskov, Ryazan, and Smolensk, where amber adornments and workshops for processing amber were found. In Russia was called Alatier. At the beginning of the 13th Century the Teutonic Order conquered the East Baltic States which were rich with amber. They declared reserves of amber to be their property by virtue of victory in war, and established a monopoly on the collection and trade of Baltic amber. The punishment for the coastal inhabitants for hiding even the least piece of amber from the authorities was torture and execution by hanging and quartering.