Feature
Gems & Gemology, Winter 1985, Vol. 21, No. 4
The Pearl in the Chicken: Pearl Recipes in Papyrus Holmiensis
K. Nassau and A. E. Hanson
There are 75 recipes for the treatment of gemstones in an Egyptian papyrus copied from a work that was compiled about 200 B.C. This includes 10 recipes involving pearls, among which are two that involve feeding the pearl to a chicken. New experiments are described which confirm the validity of one such process. The other eight recipes are discussed briefly.
