Gregory Orlov was a Russian statesman in the 18th century, during the period of the empress Catherine the Great. He also was her lover. But what we’re going to speak about is the gift he gave the empress in 1773, the popular Urlub Diamond. Orlov Diamond is a diamond in weight of 189.62 carats in a form reminds egg. It’s a white diamond with some green-blue lighting. This diamond is the symbol of Russian nobility in the period before The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Today this diamond owned by Diamonds Fund of Kremlin.
But how the diamond discovered and arrived in Russia? Now the story becomes interesting.
One of the explanations is that the origin of the diamond is in a rock stole from a temple in India. According to this explanation, the rock decorated one of the gods’ statues in this temple. The rock was “the eye” of this statue and it weighed 189 carats. It’s unknown what happened with this rock, but there’s an explanation it was stolen by a French soldier who joined the Hindi religion in order to get close to this diamond and steal it. It’s unknown what was happened with this diamond in those years.
One day, a diamond which is very similar to Urlub Diamond discovered in Amsterdam and was owned by Iranian millionaire called Shefrer. Urlub bought this diamond for 400,000 Gilden and took it to Russia, where he gave it to Catherine the Great. When Catherine got the diamond, she asked Troytisnki, the national jeweler, to place it in the royal scepter. The work on the scepter ended in 1784.
It’s not sure that Orlov Diamond is the diamond stole from the Indian temple, and some people think Orlov Diamond was the “Great Mogul,” which is another diamond that no one knows how it’s found. Orlov Diamond is very similar to the descriptions of the “Great Mogul” diamond, especially because it has a form of half an egg. The story of “The Great Mogul” has no end, and the story of Orlov Diamond has no start, what leaving a place for many speculations. Many experts are sure that the Orlov Diamond is the “Great Mogul.”
