Tears of the sun: amber in Greek myth

To the ancient Greeks, amber was sunlight you could hold. Their story of where it came from is one of the saddest and most beautiful in mythology.

Phaethon and the chariot of the sun

Phaethon was the son of Helios, the sun god. He begged to drive his father's chariot across the sky for one day. He could not control the horses, the earth began to burn, and Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt. He fell into the river Eridanus.

Sisters who wept amber

His sisters, the Heliades, stood on the riverbank and mourned for so long that they turned into poplar trees. Their tears kept falling, hardened in the sun, and became amber. The Roman poet Ovid tells the story in his Metamorphoses.

The word that became electricity

The Greeks called amber elektron, the shining one. They noticed that rubbed amber pulls feathers and straw towards it. Two thousand years later, in 1600, the English scientist William Gilbert borrowed the word to name that force: electricity.

Every drop of amber carries a little of that story. See our amber pendants, or read Lithuania's own amber legend, Jūratė and Kastytis.