Until not later than 500 d.C., Porphyry was almost exclusively mined from quarries located in the Egyptian desert and, due to its hardness and bright red colour (its name comes from the Latin word lapis porphyrite), was a symbol of prestige and royal dignity. It was used by the most ancient civilizations (such as Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptians, Etruscans, and Romans) in the construction of monuments, tombs, sarcophagi, and palaces of Pharaohs and Emperors.
Dante mentions it in the Divine Comedy as part of the stairway leading to the mountain of Purgatory: "The third, resting above more massively, appeared to me to be of porphyry, as flaming red as the blood that spurts from veins".
During the Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari (in "Dell’ Architettura") talked about its hardness, which put the tools of all contemporary sculptors such as Leon Battista Alberti and Michelangelo Buonarroti, to a hard test.
