Mystery Of The Hope Diamond

A lump of lead from a dusty drawer in a Paris museum has enabled French experts to solve a long-standing mystery. 

The size of a pigeon's egg, the piece turned out to be a casting of the legendary Blue Diamond, the centre-piece of the crown jewels of pre-revolutionary France. The diamond, bought by Louis XIV in the 17th century, vanished when looters stole King Louis XVI's treasures in the heat of the revolution in 1792. The find in the Paris Museum of Natural History has in turn enabled researchers to prove that the long-lost blue diamond is one and the same as the Hope Diamond, a star exhibit of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

It had long been suspected that the Hope, which was given to the Smithsonian in 1958 by the jeweller Harry Winston and which is said to carry a fatal curse, came from the Diamant Bleu that was looted in Paris in 1792. This has now been confirmed by François Farges, the chief mineralogist with the Paris museum. He has concluded that the Hope is the cut-down heart of the 69-carat Indian diamond that the Sun King bought in the mid-17th century.

The Hope diamond changed hands many times. It came to Paris and was owned for a time by Pierre Cartier, the jeweller, before reaching the United States in 1911. The tale of a curse arose from the real or imagined sticky ends of some of its owners, including Louis XVI and Tavernier. The king ended up of course on the guillotine. The adventurer who brought it to France was said to have stolen it from a statue of the goddess Sita. He was later torn to pieces by wolves in Russia, according to the legend.

(excerpts from an article by Charles Bremmer-Times Online)