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Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems

Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems Page of 384 Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
148                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
upon a chocolate colour. The true antique vermilion is now only to be discovered in the specimens brought from Mexico. The paler sort, already mentioned as extensively employed by the early Egyptians for making charms, and exactly resembling unpolished Coral, was possibly the secondary Hœmatitis of Theophrastus, and, with more certitude, Pliny's Corallis.
3. A dark-green, opaque, close-grained Jasper, occa­sionally clouded with red, in great request with the Egyp­tian engravers for religious intagli from the epoch of the Pharaohs down to the Arabian Conquest. The Basilidan talismans affect this material above all others. It could have been no other than Pliny's Mohchites, exhibiting as it does the peculiar dark-green of the mallow-leaf; that stone, too, being specially recommended by its virtue as an amulet. In fact, this Green Jasper appears to have been exclusively dedicated to the embodiment of Egyptian theosophic ideas (whether ancient or freshly developed upon a newly-imported Indian stock) ; for it is a rule with­out an exception, that no artistic works either in the Greek or Roman style ever present themselves upon such a ma­terial. A most rare variety (now only found in India) exhibits a pleasing opaque, sap-green : and on this sort is engraved the celebrated signet of Cleopatra (Marlborough), displaying her head, crowned with the phoanicopterus, in profile ; on the reverse, the bust of her patroness, Isis, within a shrine. The rarity of this beauti­ful kind is indicated by the importance of the subjects for which it has been selected by the ancients ; for another example (Bale) offers the portrait, deeply engraved in the Egyptian manner, of some African prince, wearing the peculiar, Chinese-like hat seen upon king Arcesilaus, of Cyrene, in the well-known Etruscan vase-painting, the " Silphium-merchants " (Berlin). Fragments may be seen
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