Which Jewel this Yule?

Jewel tones will always be a natural Christmas element, for historical and precious reasons, and both perhaps. There has always been this niggling belief inside of me that Biblical symbolism has a physical and metaphysical meaning and that the two do hold hands quite nicely when we understand... or just get to know something. I think the clues for understanding do reside in tangible history. One needs to know a lot of history though, to get even a little glimpse of what it all means.
In ancient times lapis lazuli was known as sapphire.
Cylinder seals were often made of lapis lazuli and were picture stories. Seal impressions and texts in cuneiform told the story.

L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Christian Origins at the University of Texas wrote an article entitled 'The Book of Revelation- Understanding the Book of Revelation.'
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/revelation/white.html
Quote from the article...
"Now we see another important component of how Revelation works by thinking about its sense of the time-line of the story. The various visions of Revelation are not a linear progression, so that the events in chapter 12, for example, do not follow in time after the events in chapter 11. Quite the contrary. In the way they set up, the events described in chapters 12-13 are meant to explain how those circumstances in chapters 5-11 came about. So the time-line of the story moves in a kind of cyclical fashion so that we keep coming back to the "present situation" as it stood for the ancient readers of Revelation."

So, are the cylindrical Babylonian seals that 'tell a story' ( See 'Babylon Myth and Truth' Exhibition for an example-  http://www.smb.museum/smb/babylon/show_text.php?page_id=2&child_id=76&lang=en) the tangible real life item for the symbolic language of the seals in the Revelation?

We'll have to ask White.