Editor’s Note
The Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the world’s most legendary and priceless gems, resides in the Tower of London as the centerpiece of the late Queen Mother’s Crown. Its exact value remains incalculable, and its history is as complex as its brilliance is renowned. This article explores the story behind this contested jewel.
The most precious diamond in the world is securely stored behind bulletproof glass in the Tower of London, where millions of tourists admire it each year: it sparkles there on the “Queen Mother’s Crown,” the crown of the late “Queen Mum” Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who died in 2002. The Koh-i-Noor is not only one of the most legendary and famous diamonds but is also so incredibly valuable that its price has never been precisely determined. Reportedly, this magnificent piece, discovered in India in 1294 and cut from an original 186 carats down to 105.6 carats, is worth at least one billion euros.
An incredible 3,016.7 carats! That was the weight of the legendary Cullinan diamond when it was discovered in 1905 in the South African Premier Mine (now the Cullinan Mine), named after the then-mine owner Sir Thomas Cullinan, and gifted to British King Edward VII. However, the rough diamond did not remain in one piece; it was cut in Antwerp and polished into nine large and 96 smaller diamonds. Cullinan I is the largest of these stones, weighing 530.4 carats, nicknamed “The Great Star of Africa,” and like the other large diamonds, it is part of the British Crown Jewels.
Given the myths, rumors, and stories surrounding this precious piece, the Hope Diamond undoubtedly also ranks among the most famous gemstones in the world: weighing 45.52 carats, deep blue, and with an estimated current value of around 250 million euros, the Hope Diamond was once owned by, among others, the Sun King Louis XIV. Anyone wishing to admire this fascinating piece of jewelry must travel to Washington, D.C.: there, the high-carat gem is kept in the Smithsonian Museum.
Mined in 1999 in Botswana, Africa, by De Beers – the world’s largest diamond trader – diamond cutters spent two years cutting, polishing, and perfecting the original 132.5-carat stone until the most famous pink diamond was finally “born.” In 2017, the hammer fell at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong for a record sum of almost 67 million euros. However, the buyer, a Hong Kong jewelry chain, initially did not transfer the sum. The story threatened to repeat itself: four years earlier, during an auction in Geneva, a bidder had won it for the then-world record sum of 62 million euros. At that time, the money did not flow, and the auction house took the stone back.
This treasure was only extracted from the legendary South African Cullinan Mine in 2013 and therefore cannot fascinate with a long history. Nevertheless, Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau auctioned it… (Note: The original text appears to be truncated here. The translation stops as the sentence is incomplete.)
In their unprocessed state, diamonds, which consist solely of pure, cubic crystallized carbon, still appear rather unremarkable. Raw diamonds can only reveal their true beauty when they are cut, polished, and finished by experts. The cut also determines whether you end up holding a diamond or a brilliant in your hands. According to the hardness scale for minerals introduced by Friedrich Mohs in 1822, diamonds, which can only be cut with another diamond, occupy the top position with the highest hardness of 10. These gemstones form at an approximate depth of 150 to 300 kilometers in the Earth’s mantle and are transported to higher layers of the Earth by rising magma.
