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SUPERSTITIONS AND RELIGIOUS USES
the
Greek records, the substance itself was unknown in Europe until
comparatively recent times. Mention is not made of it by the Greeks
until about 300 B.C., though Hindu legends disclose a knowledge of it
centuries earlier. When dealers advertise today they appeal chiefly to
the commercial instinct. In the old days appeals were made to
superstition.
The
use of stones for the decoration of images of the gods and in religious
ceremonies, more especially in those connected with the burial of the
dead, can be traced back to a remote antiquity. While this employment
of mineral substances for religious purposes is practically universal,
the earliest recorded instances come from Egypt. Precious stones have
been used everywhere as especially appropriate offerings at the shrine
of a divinity, for the worshipper naturally thought that what was most
valuable and beautiful in his eyes must also be most pleasing to the
divinity he worshiped.
According to Charles William King the first undoubted application of the name to the diamond is found in Manil-ius, a.d. 16; and Pliny, a.d. 100,
speaks of the rarity of the stone—"The most valuable of gems, known
only to Kings." The "diamond" in the breastplate of the high priest,
Exodus XXXIX, n, was probably some other stone, for it bore the name of
a tribe, and methods of engraving the true diamond cannot have been
known so early. The stone can hardly have become familiar to the Romans
until introduced from India, where it was probably found at a very
early period.
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