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Naxium, Emery

Murrhina, China-Agate Page of 453 Naxium, Emery Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
246                                         NAXIUM.
Although the use of this mineral is coeval with the first inven­tion of gem-engraving, which indeed in its proper sense cannot be effected without its aid, yet the earliest mention of it by a spe­cific name is that in Dioscorides (a contemporary of the Triumvirs), who has (v. 165), " The Smyris is a stone with which gem-engrav­ers polish the gems." Theophrastus (44) mentions the use of the mineral, but appears not to have had any distinctive deno­mination for it, his words merely being, " And again, the stone wherewith they engrave signets is the same as that of which whetstones are made, or else similar to it, and the best kind is brought from Armenia."
The very chapter in which Theophrastus had given some details of the process is unfortunately one of the most corrupt in the whole treatise ; but it may be gathered from what remains that he expresses his surprise that the substance in question can be cut up and shaped by a steel tool, and yet can bite upon gems that the steel would not touch.
Ακόνα with the Greeks, as Cotes with the Latins, were terms used indifferently to denote the substance with which steel-tools were sharpened and hard-stones engraved, inasmuch as a piece of compact Emery was employed in both cases and in much the same manner as a file, not as now in powder applied by another mechanical contrivance. Dioscorides prescribes (v. 167) "the dust rubbed off a Naxian whetstone by the steel sharpened upon it." Pliny, after stating (xxxvi. 10), "For polishing marble statues, and also for engraving and filing down gems, the Naxium long held the first rank ; thus are called the whetstones (cotes) produced in the isle of Cyprus," and (xxxvii. 32) " the Peridot is the only precious stone that yields to the file, all the others arc
Murrhina, China-Agate Page of 453 Naxium, Emery
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