Diamond Mines: Ancient Adamas Page 33



	THE ANCIENT ADAMAS	15

	In view of the hardness of the sapphire, so great that it will scratch every other precious stone except the diamond, it is therefore contended that this was the stone known to the earliest Greek writers as adamas.¹ This may be so, and it cannot be doubted that, even at a much later day, a white corundum or a pale yellow topaz or a good rock crystal often passed for a diamond in the hands of collectors or in the sharp practice of gem selling. Whatever may have been the blundering of the Greeks or the application of adamas, there is, nevertheless, no sufficient reason in this for questioning the probability that genuine diamonds were found in the gravels of India many centuries before the Christian era. As far back as tradition goes the largest stones were particularly prized by the native princes, and were strictly exacted in tribute from the diamond-bed washers. But the smaller stones were less jealously guarded, and may readily have found their way into the hands of traders with the other peoples of Asia or with Egypt. It seems most probable that the Jews derived their first knowledge of precious stones from the Egyptians chiefly, for the Hebrew names of the stones are of Egyptian derivation.² Thus there is no approach to certainty for the assumption that the stones called diamonds in the English version of the Hebrew Scriptures were not rightly named, or that allusions to the diamond in other ancient writings were wholly unreliable or mistaken. The main support for the questioning of the mingling of diamonds with the other gems noted by the ancient writers is the apparent failure to uncover diamonds in the excavations on the site of ancient temples and cities where other precious stones are brought to light. Thus emeralds and other gems in various settings have been exhumed from the volcanic overflow that ¹ "History of Stones," Theophrastus. Edited by Sir John Hill, London, 1746. " Elem. de Min.," Lessing, II, 61. "The Great Diamonds of the World," Streeter. ² " Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," Schaff-Herzog.