Lapislazuli Mine in the Andes of Chile

OVALLE, CHILE - APRIL 1, 1995: A jewellery chain made of Lapis Lazuli lies on a raw Lapis Lazuli rock in the Flores de Los Andes mine, located at 3,700 meter high in the Andes, on April 1, 1995, near Ovalle, Northern Chile. The Lapis Lazuli stone is extracted by the mining company Las Flores de los Andes S.A. who owns the biggest deposit in the South American Hemisphere. In the four summer months some 40 workers extract the gemstone using dynamite, pickaxe and excavators. The gemstone Lapis Lazuli is a relatively rare, semi-precious stone that has been describes as �Blue Gold�. It has been cherished for more than five thousand years, since antiquity, for its intense blue colour. Lapis Lazuli is being used as jewellery, paintings, ornaments and decorative items as well as in architecture. It was also used in the death mask of ancient Egypt Pharaoh Tutankhamen, as ultramarine pigment for tempera paint, while Cleopatra is said to have used powdered lapis as eye shadow.(Photo by Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photo/Getty Images)