windows. It was used for this purpose in Byzantine churches and later in medieval ones, especially in Italy. Large sheets of Aragonese gypsum alabaster are used extensively in the contemporary Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which was dedicated in 2002 by the Los Angeles, California Archdiocese. The cathedral incorporates special cooling to prevent the panes from overheating and turning opaque. The ancients used the calcite type, while the modern Los Angeles cathedral is using gypsum alabaster. There are also multiple examples of alabaster windows in ordinary village churches and monasteries in northern Spain. Calcite alabaster Calcite alabaster, harder than the gypsum variety, was the kind primarily used in ancient Egypt and the wider Middle East (but not Assyrian palace reliefs), and is also used in modern times. It is found as either a stalagmitic deposit from the floor and walls of limestone caverns, or as a kind of travertine, similarly deposited in springs of calcareous water. Its deposition in successive layers gives rise to the banded appearance that the marble often shows on cross-section, from which its name is derived: onyx-marble or alabaster-onyx, or sometimes simply (and wrongly) as onyx. Egypt and the Middle East Egyptian alabaster has been worked extensively near Suez and Assiut. This stone variety is the "alabaster" of the ancient Egyptians and Bible and is often termed Oriental alabaster, since the early examples came from the Far East. The Greek name alabastrites is said to be derived from the town of Alabastron in Egypt, where the stone was quarried. The locality probably owed its name to the mineral; the origin of the mineral name is obscure (though see above). The "Oriental" alabaster was highly esteemed for making small perfume bottles or ointment vases called alabastra; the vessel name has been suggested as a possible source of the mineral name. In Egypt, craftsmen used alabaster for canopic jars and various other sacred and sepulchral objects. The sarcophagus of Seti I, found in his tomb near Thebes, is on display in Sir John Soane's Museum, London; it is carved in a single block of translucent calcite alabaster from Alabastron. Algerian onyx-marble has been quarried largely in the province of Oran. Calcite alabaster was quarried in ancient Israel in the cave known today as the Twins Cave near Beit Shemesh. Herod used this alabaster for baths in his palaces. North America In Mexico, there are famous deposits