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Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems

Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems Page of 453 Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
208                                         JASPIS.
variety of a paler tint. Pliny adds to this that it was found both, in Numidia and in Arabia ; and as he classes it amongst his gems (60), it may have been our Eed Jasper. But his Haematites, the mineral (lapis), as distinguished from it (xxxvi. 37), was a red oxide of iron, very useful for all complaints of the eyes, and the cure of dysentery : which Orpheus (650) records was formed out of the blood of Uranus that fell to the earth when he was mutilated by Saturn. If steeped in water it readily dissolved and turned again into blood. It was sovereign for the eyes, because " the ancient god (Heaven) from whose veins it had flowed could not endure that mortals should, through blindness, lose the sight of his desirable countenance." Nevertheless, as Pliny's notice of the gem Hematites is entirely taken from Theo-phrastus and Orpheus, he evidently was not acquainted with the actual gem as being then used in jewelry.
There was very good reason why the Romans should have so greatly admired the Eed Jasper when once introduced. The texture is extremely fine, and the colour a pure vermilion, both taking and retaining the highest polish, sometimes traversed by parallel straight black lines like fine hairs ; another and a rarer variety deepens into a crimson. The source of these fine stones has been lost : it was probably Arabia. Eed Jaspers are indeed found plentifully in Sicily, but of a coarser grain, and their red in varying shades, verging more into a chocolate ; the true an­tique vermilion is only now to be discovered in specimens from Mexico. The Egyptians employed largely for amulets and sym­bolical figures a pale red sort, exactly resembling unpolished coral, which may bo the second class of the Hasmatitis of Theophrastus.
3. A very dark-green, opaque, close-grained, much used by the Egyptians for all their intagli, from the times of the Pharaohs down to the Arabian conquest. The Basilidan Abraxas gems are for the most part cut in this material, which is evidently Pliny's Achates, found near Thebes, and destitute of either white or red veins. This stone seems to have been especially dedicated to the religious ideas (whether ancient or freshly developed upon an Indian stock) of the Egyptians, inasmuch as no fine works in the Greek or better Roman style ever occur in it. A most rare
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