Cinnabar
Archaeologists found mercury in an Egyptian tomb dating from 1500 BC. The Egyptians and the Chinese may have been using cinnabar as a red pigment for centuries before the birth of Christ. In many civilizations mercury was used to placate or chase away evil spirits. The alchemists thought that mercury, which they associated with the planet Mercury, had mystical properties and used it in their attempts to transmute base metals into gold. The Greeks knew of mercury and used it as a medicine. Mercury and mercury compounds were used from about the 15th century to the mid 20th century to treat syphilis.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS:
- Color is a bright scarlet or cinnamon red to a brick red.
- Luster is adamantine to submetallic in darker specimens.
- Transparency crystals are translucent to transparent.
- Crystal System is trigonal; 32
- Crystal Habits: individual, well formed, large crystals are scarce; crusts and crystal complexes are more common; may be massive, or in capilary needles. Crystals that are found tend to be the six sided trigonal scalahedrons that appear to have opposing three sided pyramids. It also forms modified rhombohedrons, prismatic and twinned crystals as discribed above.
- Cleavage is perfect in three directions, forming prisms.
- Fracture is uneven to splintery.
- Hardness is 2 - 2.5.
- Specific Gravity is approximately 8.1+ (very heavy for a non-metallic mineral)
- Streak is red
- Other Characteristics: silghtly sectile and crystals can be striated.
- Notable Occurances include Almaden, Spain; Idria, Serbia; Hunan Prov., China and California, Oregon, Texas, and Arkansas, USA.
- Best Field Indicators are crystal habit, density, cleavage, softness and color.
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