|
|
||
|
|
||
|
326 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES, &c.
|
||
|
|
||
|
URIM and THUMMIM:
My record of Sacred Jewels would be sadly incomplete did it close without a few words concerning that most ancient and most virtuous of them all, being at once decoration, periapt, and talisman, Aaron's Breastplate. It was a decoration, from the costliness of its nature ; a periapt, for it was suspended round his neck by golden chains ; a talisman, for it ensured the divine protection to the tribes whose names were thereon engraven.
This magnificent sacerdotal ornament, still represented in the piviale or immense circular disk serving as a morse for the vestments of the Pope, was in its primary form doubtless no other than one of those square vitrified tablets, enamelled blue, embossed
with the image of a deity seated within his shrine, and which were worn
as his distinctive badge by the Egyptian priest, when performing his
sacred functions. iElian (xiv. 34), in fact, states that the
high-priest of the Egyptians, who was at the same time the supreme judge, when
administering justice, wore suspended round his neck an image, called "
Tsuth," made of the Sapphire-stone (our lapis-lazuli) : and of this so
precious material the tablets now extant are evident imitations.
Epiphanius, following some ancient tradition, records that when the
Jewish high-priest entered the Holy of Holies on the three great days,
Pascha, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, he wore suspended over the breastplate the " Declaration," as he translates the mystic words " Urim and Thummim."
|
||
|
|
||