Its name comes from the Greek “alabastros” (earlier albatos) which designated a vase without handles, alabaster being used to make perfume vases without handles. Alabaster is an evaporite mineral.
It is a massive aggregate of fine-grained variety of gypsum, its softness make it easy to work and its attractive appearance (perfect witheness and finely grained) enable it to be carved into ornemental objects.
Since antiquity the name alabaster also referred to microcrystalline limestone, sometimes called “onyx-marble” which can be confusing.
This limestone alabaster, which is a carbonate, sometimes called Egyptian alabaster or calcite alabaster, is made of calcite or compact aragonite but is not a marble because its formation is quickier (only few years for alabaster/billions years for marble). Calcite alabaster is found as either a stalagmitic deposit, from the floor and walls of limestone caverns, it is often yellow and when broken it shows crystallized flat surface which shine, this is the reason why it seems more luminous than the gypsum alabaster.