Orpiment 1 Piece Raw Minerals Crystals Stones Rocks Collecting (1)

Description

Origin : Gold Bar Mine, Eureka County (Nevada)

Size : 9.3 gr - cm 2.8 x 2.2 x 1.4

Orpiment 1 Piece 9.3 gr - cm 2.8 x 2.2 x 1.4 Raw Minerals Crystals Stones Rocks for Collection, ony a piece, as in photo.

Orpiment is a mineral belonging to the mineralogical class of sulphides, chemically an arsenic sulphide.
The name derives from the Latin aurum = gold and pigmentum = pigment in allusion to the colour: the ancients in fact believed that the mineral contained gold. In ancient times it was used to prepare colors for painting but also as a medicine, and was burned in the air to obtain arsenic dioxide, a very toxic substance. Medieval alchemists, trying to obtain silver from metals, fused orpiment with copper, obtaining a gray colored alloy that remotely resembled the noble metal.
It mainly presents itself with a leafy, columnar, massive and fibrous appearance or more rarely in small squat and tabular prismatic crystals, sometimes twinned.
Its genesis is hydrothermal, from cold springs, in volcanic fumaroles or as an alteration of arsenic sulphides, particularly realgar. It is found together with antimonite, arsenic, calcite, barite and gypsum. In various metal deposits, in addition to the aforementioned minerals, it is also found together with metal sulfides such as enargite and pyrite.
It can be found in Macedonia, Switzerland, Romania, France. In Italy: in Val Malenco, in the province of Cuneo, Imperia, Udine, in the mercury mines of Monte Amiata (GR) and as a product of realgar in the solfatara of Pozzuoli. It is also found in Peru, Nevada, Jacutia, Turkey and Iran.