It was quite unlike anything I had ever seen, and did not resemble any stone or gem that I knew.

I took it to be some unique mother-stone, or matrix of some gem.
It was wrought all over, except in a few spots, with fine hieroglyphics, exquisitely done and coloured with the same blue-green cement or pigment that appeared on the sarcophagus.

In length it was about two feet and a half; in breadth about half this, and was nearly a foot high.

The vacant spaces were irregularly distributed about the top running to the pointed end.

These places seemed less opaque than the rest of the stone.