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COMMENTARY
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this purpose. However, it was extensively employed in ancient times for various ornamental purposes, as is shown by the numerous specimens that have survived. In Egypt, for example, it appears to have been used ever since predynastic times for beads, amulets, and other small objects,222 and very early specimens from the Aegean region are known. But since there is no ancient or modern source of lapis lazuli in the vicinity of the Mediterranean, the stone must have been imported from a considerable distance. Persia is often given as the source, but geological investigations appear to show that it was, at the most, only a minor locality for lapis lazuli, since no important deposits or indications of ancient workings are known.223 The only definitely established source of lapis lazuli for the ancient world is the very remote mine at Serri-sang in the upper Kokcha Valley between Parwara and Lower Robat, Badakshan, which some think was the only commercial source in ancient times.224
31. onychion. Though the description of this stone seems to fit what is now called onyx, a banded chalcedony in which the layers, alternately white and dark in color, lie in planes one above the other, the word onychion has been used in the translation because there are definite indications on other grounds that οννχιον had a broader meaning than the English word onyx. There seems to be no reason to doubt that the stone was banded chalcedony, since this is practically the only kind of striped stone to be seen among surviving examples of ancient engraved stones, but the term onychion might have included striped chalcedony in which the layers are not flat but angular, wavy, or concentric, varieties to which the name agate is now assigned. The descriptions of onyx given by Pliny,225 though in some respects obscure and contradictory, definitely show that at least in his day the term not only included our onyx but striped agate also. That eye-agate, for example, was classified as a kind of onyx is very clear from his account. Pliny's
222 Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, p. 456.
223 Partington, Origins and Development of Applied Chemistry, pp. 293, 416.
224 K. Briickl, Neues Jahrbuch fiir Mineralogie, Geologie und Paliiontologie, LXXII, Abt. A (1936), 37-56; R. J. Gettens, Alumni (Revue du Cercle des Alumni des Fondations scientifiques a Bruxelles), XIX (1950), 342-57.
225 XXXVII, 90-91.
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