piece of flawless malachite said to have been found in the mines at Gumeshevsk weighed about 3,000 pounds, and in 1855 a mass was found at Nizhne-Tagilsk that weighed around 50,000 pounds, though this was of inferior quality.116 It is quite possible that single pieces of malachite of huge size were also found in the early stages of working some of the great copper deposits of antiquity. That the mineral was available to the Egyptians is certain, since malachite was evidently the chief ore in the copper mines of the Sinai Peninsula, which were for centuries important sources of copper and copper minerals for Egypt.117 The block of smaragdos (6 χ 4J4 ft.) that is said to have been sent to Egypt by a Babylonian king is as large as some of the modern objects made of polished malachite, such as tJie table tops, bathtubs, and panels for walls or columns which can be seen in certain European museums and other buildings, but it is improbable that malachite could have been the material of the four stones about sixty feet long mentioned as being placed in an obelisk. However, in the next section, where Theophrastus mentions a large pillar of green stone, he definitely suggests that this may have been composed of false smaragdos, a term that almost certainly denoted malachite. But this statement cannot provide a definite identification, since it is apparent that Theophrastus had no first-hand knowledge of the substance from which these large objects were made. The tradition that the malachite columns now in the church of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople originally came from the temple of Diana at Ephesos118 suggests that large pillars of malachite actually existed in antiquity. It seems probable, therefore, that these Egyptian smaragdoi were composed, at least in part, of malachite, unless they were made of some common massive green rock such as serpentine, which is known to occur frequently in Egypt.119 But there is a serious objection to identifying them as serpentine or some other green rock; for the term smaragdos was apparently applied only to mineral substances of a bright green color. That
118 Μ. Η. Bauer, EdelsteinXunde (Leipzig, 1932), p. 700. These weights are given in kilograms.
117 Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, pp. 231-35; Partington, Origins and Development of Applied Chemistry, pp. 60-63.
118 Bauer, EdelsteinXunde, p. 701.
119 Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, pp. 479-80.
