The parent substance lime, calcium oxide, is one of the oldest worked materials of human culture: burnt from limestone in kilns, it made mortar and plaster for building, was spread on fields, and served in tanning and in the preparation of pigments. Limestone and marble themselves are calcium carbonate, the stone of temples and statuary. The metallic element is a late discovery with no alchemical or mythological identity of its own, but through lime, chalk and marble it underlies a vast swathe of pre-modern craft and architecture, and through bone and shell it is woven into the very structure of living bodies.
Lime mortar bound the Roman Empire's greatest monuments, including the dome of the Pantheon and the Colosseum, and modern materials scientists have found that Roman concrete, mixing lime with volcanic ash, contains self-healing mineral structures that let cracks reseal themselves over centuries, a durability modern concrete still struggles to match. Lime also appears in scripture as whitewash: the Gospel of Matthew condemns hypocrites as whitewashed tombs, outwardly bright with lime yet full of decay within, a Judaean burial custom of coating tomb exteriors with lime that both marked graves as ritually impure to avoid and let the image carry its moral force.