garments
and utensils of the Indian nations were ornamented with gems, and no
doubt this custom was of the greatest antiquity. With what stones they
were acquainted we do not know, as the names given them both in
Scripture and in other early accounts, do not correspond with ours.
Indeed, the only stone of whose identity with the one described in the
Holy Writ, we are somewhat certain, is the sapphire, as it bears the
same name in Hebrew,
and is described as a trans-
parent blue stone,' like
unto the vault of heaven,' which shows that this could not have been
the sapphire of the Greeks and Romans, which is described as intermixed
with gold.
The
twelve stones which were in the breastplate of the High-Priest were—the
sard, the topaz, the carbuncle, or ruby, the emerald, the sapphire,
the diamond, the ligure, the agate, the amethyst, the beryl, the onyx,
and the jasper; also the two onyx stones on the shoulder-knot were
engraved with the names of the twelve tribes, to each of which one of
these stones was consecrated. The translations, however, of the Hebrew
names differ in many Oriental versions from the authorized text 5 but
in the next Chapter will be found some information upon this
interesting subject.
The
monarchs of the East, with their fondness for display and pomp, no
doubt then, as now, decorated their horss-trappings, their thrones, and
their persons with gems, long even before they knew how to cut them;
and the/ attributed, as they even now attribute,
