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Sapphirus, Lapis-lazuli

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274
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
this story incredible. This gem is admirable and very beautiful, and agreeable to the eye, on which account they set it in bracelets and necklaces, especially for the wear of princes. It is likewise medicinal, for being powdered it heals the sores following pustules and boils if smeared over them, being applied mixed with milk to the ulcera­tions. It is written also in the Law that the vision seen by Moses in the Mount, and the Law given unto him, were made out of the stone Sapphirus " (i. e. were inscribed on Tables of Lapis-lazuli).
Before the true precious stones were introduced from India, the Lapis-lazuli held the highest place in the esti­mation of the primitive nations of Asia and Greece (as we see from the terms in which Theophrastus describes it) ; in fact, it was almost the only gem known to them having beauty of colour to recommend it.
This again was the only stone of any intrinsic value known to the Egyptians under the Pharaohs; hence it abundantly occurs in their jewelry that has come down to us, worked up into signet-tablets, pendants, and charms. But this Egyptian sort appears to be of a very inferior vein, dull and pale in colour. Still scarcer was the material amongst the contemporary Assyrians, to judge from the rarity of cylinders in Lapis-lazuli, though a few such do exist; whence it may be concluded that the Egyptians had worked mines of it in their own territories (the Ethiopian above quoted) from the earliest period, of their kingdom. This stone had the popular name of Syrtites, says Isidorus, because it was picked up in abundance upon the Syrtes or quicksands of Cyrene on the African coast. There may be some foundation for this story, for even now rolled masses
Parapamisus, the territory of the Ariani, as abounding with quarries of the Sapphirus and Coral. This last is a manifest absurdity unless he possibly means the Corallis, or the true antique Red Jasper.
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