127 g Rhodonite skull – Tithonos

Eos, the Goddess of the Dawn, fell in love with Tithonus, a prince from the royal house of Troy, and took him to herself. She asked Zeus to grant him immortality, and Zeus granted it. Only one thing she had forgotten: to ask for eternal youth. Thus Tithonus continued to live and aged, year after year, century after century, for death, which ends all decay, remained barred to him. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite tells how the dreaded old age finally lay wholly upon him. He could move neither his limbs nor lift them, and Eos laid him in a chamber and closed the shimmering doors. There his voice flows on unceasingly, yet nothing of his former strength remains. Later storytellers report that he became a cicada, forever living and begging for death. This skull bears the face of one to whom death was denied. Over the forehead and crown still lies the rose-red of the dawn, finely graduated from deep raspberry red through salmon pink to pale, cream-white speckled pink. But on the nose, teeth and chin the skin has worn away. Ochre-brown and black-speckled the countenance lies there, as if the tooth of time lays it bare layer upon layer. Yet the decomposition lags, and precisely in this it shines in its own form. He lies heavier in the hand, than his size would suggest, as if he bore all the years in him that Tithonus was not allowed to die. Homer calls Eos the “rosy-fingered,” rhododáktylos. The same rose bears the name rhodonite: in 1819 the mineralogist Christoph Friedrich Jasche named mangan-silicate after the Greek rhódon, Rose. It was first described from the Kaiser Franz mine near Elbingerode in the Harz. Material: Rhodonite (manganese silicate) with ochre-brown patches, cream-white speckles and black, manganese-oxide inclusions Origin: Brazil Dimensions: 5.0 x 3.7 x 3.2 cm Weight: 127 g Special features: Rose-red to raspberry-red skull cap in finely graduated, cream-white speckled color phases; ochre-brown, black-speckled zones around the nose, teeth and chin as well as on the left rear side of the skull, there with a dark-brown spot; isolated pale gray translucent areas on the left lower jaw; unusually heavy for its size

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