Mount
Zabarah, in Nubia, before the beginning of our era, and that the
emerald was known and used in Egypt, there does not seem to be any
reason for rejecting the usual translation "emerald." Still it must be
admitted that smaragdus often designates other green stones
than the emerald. The suggestion has been made (by Myers and Pétrie)
that the passage in Revelation iv, 3, where the rainbow is likened to
the smaragdus, indicates that the writer used this name for
rock-crystal; but this conjecture is scarcely satisfactory, since it
confuses the prismatic effects of light which has traversed the
crystal with the crystal itself. There can be little doubt that a stone
of brilliant coloration, like the emerald, not a colorless one, like
rock-crystal, would be used as a simile of the rainbow. Whether the
Mosaic breastplate already contained the emerald is another question,
and it seems rather more likely that green feldspar, freely used in
ancient Egypt for amulets, and known as uat, was the third
stone of the proto-breastplate. The Authorized Version makes "the
carbuncle" the third instead of the fourth stone. Upon the bereketh was engraved the name Levi.
IV. Nophek.
This name is rendered
by
the
Septuagint and Josephus, and ' ' carbunculus " by the Vulgate. This
designation, signifying literally "a glowing coal," was used for
certain stones distinguished by their peculiarly brilliant red color,
such as the ruby and certain fine garnets. While it is quite possible
that the Oriental ruby may have been in the breastplate seen by
Josephus, it is almost certain that it could not have been in the
original breastplate of Mosaic times, since there is absolutely no
proof that this stone was known in ancient Egypt. Hence we are inclined
to believe that in the thirteenth century b.c. the name nophek designated
