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The Arabic Aristotle relates many wonderful tales of stones found by Alexander the Great during his Asiatic campaigns (327-323 B.C.). While these are all apocryphal, there can be no doubt that it was subsequent to these campaigns that western Europe was first made familiar with many of the precious stones of Persia and India. One of the stones reported by "Aristotle" bore the name elbehacte or baddare, rendered in a Hebrew version dar (pearl?). This was the stone that attracted men, as the loadstone attracted iron. A quantity of these stones were found on the seashore by the soldiers of Alexander's army, but the men were so fascinated by their aspect as to be unable to gather them up. Therefore Alexander ordered that the soldiers should veil their faces, or close their eyes, and, after covering the marvellous stones with a cloth, should take them away without once looking at them. Hereupon Alexander gave commands that a wall should be built around "a certain city." Possibly we have here a distant echo of the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem.
Two other strange stones are described, one of these appearing on the surface of the water only during the night, while the other shows itself during the daytime and sinks beneath the surface as soon as the sun sets. The "day-stones," according to the legend, were quite useful to Alexander in his campaigns, for if they were attached to the necks of horses or beasts of burden, the horses would not neigh, and the other animals would be equally mute as long as they bore the stones, so that the passage of the army would not be revealed to the enemy. The "night-stones," on the other hand, produced an entirely opposite effect, for when wearing them the animals uttered their respective cries unceasingly. We are not told that Alexander ever used them to provide an animal symphony as martial music for his soldiers.
Referring again to the subject of amber, as the objects placed in Roman sepulchral urns were always chosen because of some supposed religious or talismanic quality, there is considerable significance in the fact that an urn of this type, preserved by Cardinal Farnese, contained a piece of amber carved into the figure of an elephant. Coming down to modern times, there is record that the Macdonalds of Glencoe handed down as heirlooms four amber beads said to cure blindness, and there seems reason to conjecture that this substance was sometimes credited with being an antidote for the poison of snake-bites, as a small perforated stone used as late as 1874 in the Island of Lewis for this purpose appears to be a semi-transparent amber. Indeed, amber set as a jewel to cure rheumatism is said to be offered for sale in London to-day, and the writer has learned that the late Rev. Henry Ward Beecher long carried amber beads with him to ward off this malady. |
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Precious Stones Guide Vol 8
>> About the Precious Gem Stones Found By Alexander the Great
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