Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/148

Rh I38 hands it received often a degree of delicacy in the work- manship which has not been equalled in the gems of any other country. The best specimens are due to the influence of Greek art in the 6th century B.C. or somewhat later. The subjects engraved are Greek in origin, and the habit of iiiscribiiig the names of the subjects is an early Greek habit, but with this difference, that the Greeks would be correct in the naming, while the Etruscan artists are perhaps as often wrong as right. The name of Tydeus, for instance (TYTE), is assigned in one case to a ﬁgure scraping himself with a strigil, and in another to a fallen warrior, who other- wise would be identiﬁed as Capaneus. Again a ﬁgure washing his hair is called Peleus, and Achilles sulking becomes Theseus, to the exercise of imicli iiigemiity in times past. With these and other examples it should no longer be necessary to cast about for an unusual form of the legend of the Seven against Thebes, when ﬁve only of their names are found beside five ﬁgures on what is the most celebrated of existing scarabs—a carnelian in the Berlin Museum (Winckelmann, Alle DenIcnu'iler, No. 105). Another scarab of ﬁrst importance is a banded onyx in Florence represent- ing the Salii carrying their shields, inscribed Angils and Aloe. For Etruscan scarabs see ETRURIA, vol. viii. p. 640. While the Phoenicians have left actual specimens to show with what skill they could adopt the systems of gem en- graving prevailiug at their time in Egypt and Assyria, the Israelites, on the other hand, have left records to prove, if not their skill, at least the estimation in which they held engraved gems. “ The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron and with the point of a diamond” (J erein. xvii. 1). To pledge his word Judah gave Tamar his signet, bracelets, and staff (Gen. xxviii. 18); whence, if this passage be com- pared with the frequent use of “seal” in a nietapliorical sense in the Bible, and with the usage of the Babylonians already cited from Herodotus, it may be concluded that among the Israelites also every man of mark at least wore a signet. Their acquaintance with the use of seals in Egypt and Assyria is seen in the statement that Pharaoh gave Joseph his seal as a badge of investiture (Gen. xli. 42), and that the stone which closed the den of lions was sealed by Darius with his own signet and with the signet of his lords (Daniel vi. 17). Then as to the stones which were most prized, Ezekiel (xxviii. 13), speaking of the prince of Tyre,- mentions the sardins, topaz, and diamond, the beryl, onyx, and jasper, the sapphire, emerald, and carbnncle, stones which again occur in that most memorable of records, the description of the breastplate of the high priest (Exodus xxviii. 16-21, and xxxix. 8). Twelve stones grouped in four rows, each with three specimens, may be arranged on a square, measuring a palm, not a span, so as to have the rows placed either vertically or horizontally. If they are to cover the whole square, then they must be cut in an oblong form, and if the names engraved on them are to run lengthwise, as is the manner of Assyrian cylinders, then the stones, to be legible, must be grouped in four horizontal rows of three each. There is in fact no reason to suppose that the gems of the breastplate were in any other form than that of cylinders such as abounded to the knowledge of the Israelites, with this possibility, however, that they may have been cut lengtliways into half-cylinders like a frag- mentary one of sard in the British Museum, which has been mounted in bronze, and, as a remarkable excep- tion, has been set with three small precious stones now missing. It could not have been a seal, because of this setting, and because the inscription is not reversed. It reads: “ Nabu. . . . [son of] Iddina-Nergal (fl). . . . son of Nabu-zira-iddin. . . . Khi (1)-su-ba. . . . ,” according to Mr Pinches. The names of the twelve tribes, not their stand rd. a l een t ough. v h v been £’.n(7l"1 -ed GEMS they communicated to the Etruscans, under whose skilful ' in this fashion, just as on the two onyx stones in the pre- ceding verses (Exodus xxviii. 9-11), here there can be no question but that actual names were incised. On these two stones the order of the names was according to priniogeni'- ture, and this, it is likely, would apply to the lire-istplate also. The accompanying diagram will show ll‘.V the stone-', AMET HYST _l§;___— -:—: __ Jewish Iligh Priest's Breastplate. supposing them to have been cylinders or half cylinders may have been arranged consistently with the descriptions of the Septuagint. In the arrangement of Josephus the jasper is made to change places with the sapphire, and the amethyst with the agate, while our version differs partly in the order and partly in the names of the stones, but probably in all these accounts the names had in some cases other mean- iiigs than those which they Iiow carry. From the fact that to each tribe was assigned a stone of different colour, it maybe taken that in each case the colour was one which belonged prescriptively to the tribe and was symbolic, as '11] Assyria, where the seven planets appropriated each a special colour (see Braiidis in the Berlin Hermes, 1867, p. 259 M1,, and De Sacy, Revue Arclzéologique, 1869, and compare lie- velatioii xxi. 13, where the twelve gates are grouped in four threes, and 19, 20, where the twelve precious stones of the walls are given). The precious stones which occur among the cylinders of the British Museum are sard, emerald, lapis lazuli (sapphire of the ancients), agate,_ onyx, jasper, aml rock crystal. Both ./Elian (Var. 11231., iv. 34) and Diodorus (i. 75) speak of an object known as an image of truth worn round the neck of the judge, who of course was a priest, in ancient Egypt; but how far this may have suggested or corresponded with the Jewish breastplate is not to be made out. The records of gem engravers in Greece begin in the island of Samos, where Mnesarchus, the father of the philo- sopher Pythagoras, earned by his art more of praise than of wealth. Thence also came Tlieodorus, who made for Poly- crates the seal of emerald (Herodotus, iii._ Ill), which, ac- cording to the curious story, was cast in vain into the deep sea on purpose to be lost. That the design on it was a lyre, as is stated in one authority, is unlikely, now that Benndorf’s ingenious reading of Pliny (Nat. I1i'st., xxxiv. 83) has shown that the portrait statue of Theodoriis made by himself was in all probability a ﬁgure holding in one hand a graving tool, and in the other, not, as previously supposed, a quadriga so diminutive that a ﬂy could cover it with its vinas. but a s rab vith the engraving of a