LIBYAN GOLD TEKTITE SPHERE
ORIGIN:
Product Details
- CRYSTAL/MINERAL
- LIBYAN GOLD TEKTITE
- location
- Libyan/Egyptian Border, Sahara Desert
- Sphere Diameter
- 5.1cm (2.0in)
- SKU
- 142851
- GEOLOGICAL FORMATION
- Libyan Gold Tektite is a natural glass, almost pure Silica, found in one place: a remote stretch of the Great Sand Sea in the Sahara, on the border of Libya and Egypt. The colour runs from pale yellow to a clear, golden lemon, and the best pieces are translucent enough to let light pass right through. Surfaces are usually pitted and smoothed by millions of years of wind and sand.
It formed about 29 million years ago. The most widely supported explanation is that a Meteorite airburst or small impact generated enough heat to melt the desert sand, which cooled quickly into glass. Libyan Gold Tektite is more than 98 percent Silica, which makes it one of the purest natural glasses known. The pale yellow colour comes from trace Iron, and the glass is notably low in water, a sign of the extreme temperatures involved.
As glass, it has no crystal structure, no cleavage and measures around 6 on the Mohs scale.
The scatter field covers a wide area of desert, but the material is scattered thinly and hard to reach. Clean, translucent pieces of good size are uncommon. It was also used by early peoples: a carved scarab of Libyan desert glass was set into a pectoral found in Tutankhamun’s tomb.
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LIBYAN GOLD TEKTITE SPHERE
Sale priceAED 67,000.00