and
imperfect stones styled piadehs, foot soldiers ; the next, a better
class of stones called sawars, horse soldiers; and so on through layers
of amirs, bakshis, and vazirs until a single stone was reached,
transcending all in size and beauty, which the miners polished
dutifully, and took in tribute to their sovereign.1
With the expansion of Greek commerce and the entry of Greek mercenaries into the employ of satraps in Asia Minor (about 500 b.c), the
riches of the Orient were made known, and precious stones began to pass
into Europe. Herodotus, 484 B.C., was first of the early Greek writers 2
to mark particularly the displays of precious stones in palaces and
temples — the signet rings of Darius, the magnificent emerald in the
ring of Polycrates, and the marvellous show of the emerald column in
the temple of Hercules in Tyre, gleaming like a pillar of green fire at
night. This fiery column has a certain likeness to the traditional
stone as big as an ostrich egg, to which homage was paid as the "
Goddess of Emeralds" by the people of the Manca Valley in Peru.
Sceptics would clip the marvel of both by substitution of beryl, or
aquamarine, or colored glass ; but this trimming of legend does not
question the extraction of true emeralds from mines in Upper Egypt, or
the superb yield of the deposits in Peru and New Grenada.3
The
conquests of Alexander the Great (334-323 B.C.) made the Greeks
familiar with the precious stones of India as well as of Western and
Central Asia. His successors revelled in profuse displays of jewelled
rings and bracelets, and wine cups and candelabra, in luxurious
banquets. Pliny tells a glowing tale of a statue of Arsinoe, wife of
Ptolemy Philadelphus (283 B.C.), four cubits in height, made of topazon.4
The true topaz was undoubtedly known to the ancient Egyptians, and is
still obtained at Risk Allah near the old emerald mines of Jebel
Zabara; but the Oriental topaz is presumed to have been the yellow
sapphire ;
1 " Oriental Accounts of Precious Minerals," Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, August, 1832. '2 Rawlinson's "Herodotus."
3 Brun's "Travels." Rawlinson's "Herodotus," II. 44. Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico." 4 "Historia Naturalis," XXXVII, 32.
