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COMMENTARY
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included not only calcareous tufa and fossiliferous limestone but also certain other soft rocks suitable for building purposes. The loose usage of the term poros by ancient authors, and the equally broad interpretation of its meaning by modern archaeologists, has been pointed out by Frazer.40 Eichholz41 rightly thinks that this poros must have been a special kind found in Egypt which had the lightness of the ordinary Greek poros but was not the same. This explains the difficulty in the text, which appears to say that poros has the lightness of poros.
7. And a dar\ stone is also found in the same place, which is translucent li\e the Chian stone. Unless more than a word or two has dropped out between this and the preceding phrase, the reference is apparently to a dark or black stone found in Egypt which, at first sight, one might be inclined to identify as obsidian, since this is the only dark or black stone that exhibits any marked degree of translucency. Hill42 believed that the stone was obsidian. But this identification is unlikely, since obsidian is not native to Egypt, although small amounts evidently were imported in ancient times to make ornamental objects, such as amulets and vases.43 However, several kinds of dark-grey or nearly black stones were quarried there, as is shown by existing remains; the dark granite found at Aswan, for example, was used to some extent in the construction of buildings.44 Since Theophrastus is dealing in this section with stones found in large masses, this might well have been the stone described here, though granite is certainly not translucent, unless the allusion is to the surface appearance of the polished stone. Basalt and diorite were also quarried in ancient Egypt. In addition, the Egyptians used a particular kind of diorite-gneiss, a banded or mottled black and yellowish-white rock, and also a black and white porphyry composed of white crystals imbedded in a black matrix.45 On the whole, it seems likely that Theophrastus is allud-
40 J. G. Frazer, Pausanias's Description of Greece (London, 1913), Vol. Ill, pp. 502-
503·
41 D. E. Eichholz, Classical Review, LVIII (1944), 18.
42 Hill, Theophrastm's History of Stones, p. 24.
48 Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, pp. 473-74.
i4:Ibid., p. 73.
40 Ibid., pp. 466-67, 474-75·
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