phire"
or "jacinth" is not easy to determine, as this name seems to have been
used indifferently for both stones ; with the Arabs, under the form yakut, it
became a generic term for all the varieties of the corundum gems. The
sapphire was engraved in Greek and Roman times and is, perhaps, the leshem stone
of the Second Temple. For the Mosaic breastplate we are forced to seek
for some stone known in ancient Egypt, where the sapphire does not seem
to have been introduced at an early date. If we could accept the
suggestion of Brugsch that the Egyptian neshem stone, reputed to have wonderful magic virtues, was the same as the Hebrew leshem, a brown agate would have been the seventh stone in the original breastplate, as Wendel gives very strong reasons for rendering neshem in
this way. The color designations were very freely used in Egyptian, and
therefore a reddish or a yellowish brown agate may have been used. The leshem bore the tribal name Joseph.
VIII. Shebo.
This is uniformly rendered in
the
ancient versions and in Josephus by "agate," a composite stone highly
esteemed in very ancient times, and hence worthy of a place among the
stones of the breastplate; at a later period, as Pliny notes (xxxvii,
54), it became so common that it was but little regarded. Nevertheless
the fact that the various kinds of agates were believed to have many
talismanic and therapeutic virtues, the great variety of coloration
observable in these stones, and the curious figures and markings
disÂplayed by many of them, served to make them favorite objects. The
etymology of the word shebo suggests that it designated more
especially a banded agate, and that set in the proto-breastplate was
most probably one with gray and white bands, as this variety often
appears in Egyptian work. There would have been no lack of con-
