come in a wide variety of colours and appearances-stripped, spotted and variegated-but their distinctive bands of colour hint at the layers and hidden depths inside us all. Each individual agate forms by filling a cavity in host rocks. Agates were treasured during the Stone age-they have been unearthed in archaleological digs of settlements in France that date back 22.000 years. The Egyptians used them to divert storms, and for a time agates were believed to make their wearers invisible, quench thrist and protect from fevers. A hundred years before Christ, Mithridates the king of Pontus (in what is now Turkey) owned thousand of bowls. Collecting agate bowls was also popular during the Byzantine Empire in the Middle Ages, as well as among European royalty during the Renaissance. SEE SPECIFIC TYPE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION