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Sapphirus, Lapis-lazuli

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294
SAPPHIRUS.
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, was made out of the stone Sapphirus."
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 sec from the terms in which Theophrastus describes it) ; in fact, it was almost the only stone known to them having beauty of colour to recom­mend it.
This 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-stones, pendants, and charms. But this Egyptian sort appears to be of a very inferior vein, dull and pale in colour. Still rarer was the material amongst the contemporary Assyrians to judge from the scarcity of cylinders in Lapis-lazuli, though a few such do exist ; whence it may be concluded that tho Egyptians had worked mines of it in their own territories (the Ethiopian above quoted) from the earliest times.
Although Pliny says it was in his times considered as unfit for engraving upon in consequence of its substance being full of crystalline points (the spots of pyrites that appear like gold), yet we have works in it of every period of antiquity. True it is that for such have been selected portions of the pure unmixed blue, mentioned by Epiphanius as the sort most admired. These, too, have in many cases preserved their colour and original polish to an astonishing degree, proving the vastly superior hardness of this species over that known to the Egyptians. Greek intagli in this stone are extremely uncommon, yet a large scarabeoid recently brought from Athens (now in the Ehodes Collection), is engraved with a kneeling Venus robing herself, in the purest style of the age of Phidias. The Praun gems boasted a noble head of Alexander, on a large circular disk of the deepest violet, the reverse also engraved with full-length figures of Apollo and Venus : tho work of which is pronounced by Stein-buchel to be contemporary with that monarch. Both intagli and camei of the Roman times are frequent in this material, in' spite
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