ANTIQUITY OF THE PEARL
of
Job. It would seem therefore, that although used as jewels, they were
not regarded as of great value in the East prior to about 400 years B.
C, at which time the last of the sacred Jewish books is supposed to
have been written. True, royalty wore them in Egypt and the people of
Persia and Arabia used them very generally for personal adornment; but
they were abundant in those countries and there had been no demand for
them beyond their borders, therefore, though beautiful, they were
common and not appreciated fully. Upon the influx of foreign invaders
from shores that yielded no such gems their status changed rapidly. The
greedy avidity with which Greeks and Romans seized them, and the demand
for them from the West which came later, gave these natives of
pearl-producing shores a new idea of the value of their pearls and the
trinkets became gems.
It
was a condition similar to that which arose nineteen hundred years
later when the Spaniards invaded America. At their first coming the
natives gave them freely large quantities of pearls and gleefully
traded magnificent gems
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