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CHAPTER III.
PRECIOUS STONES AND THEIR USES IN BYGONE TIMES.
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ISTORY
and tradition testify to the fact that Precious Stones were valued and
preserved thousands of years ago. In India, where the most costly were
chiefly found, this was especially the case. Other lands, it is true,
possessed Precious Stones, and handed them down from generation to
generation, but probably knew less of their true worth or nature. Their
transparency and dazzling beauty, their hardness and crystalline forms,
must naturally haye always excited wonder, and induced men to treasure
them as amulets, if not to use them as personal ornaments. We know that
in the time of Solomon, the love of grace and luxury induced the rich to desire the possession of Precious Stones, and even to seek for them in foreign lands.
In
Egypt, in ancient times, many stones were worked as scarabœan gems ;
and we know that among the Jews the robes of the High Priest were set
with Precious Stones. It is often difficult, in reading an ancient
author, to know precisely what stone he intends to indicate, and
ordinary translations of technical words are by no means to be trusted.
This remark applies, for example, to the names of the stones of the
breast-plate of the Jewish High Priest, as rendered in our Authorized
Version. The names which the Hebrews gave to these stones indicate that
they derived their knowledge of them from the Egyptians, who in common
with other ancient races, knew but little of what
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