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274
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NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
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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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