The Identity of the Breastplate Stones: Odom

I. Odem. The etymology of this word clearly indicates that we have to do with a red stone, most probably the carnelian. We know that in ancient Egypt hieroglyphic texts from the Book of the Dead were engraved upon amulets made from this stone, and it was also used for early Babylonian cylinders. Fine specimens of carnelian were obtained from Arabia. The Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, as well as Josephus, in the "Wars of the Jews" (V, 5, 7), and Epiphanius, all translate sardius, the ancient designation of carnelian; in his "Antiquities," however, Josephus renders odem by "sardonyx." The Egyptian word chenem was used to designate red stones, and seems to have been applied indifferently to red jasper and red feldspar as well as to carnelian; indeed, the first-named material was more freely used in early Egyptian work than the carnelian. It is, therefore, probable that in Mosaic times odem signified red jasper, while for the fifth century B.C. "carnelian" would be the better rendering. This modern name of the sardius, signifying the "flesh-colored" stone, first appears in the Latin translation of a treatise by Luca ben Costa, who wrote in the tenth century A.D. The name of Reuben is said to have been engraved on the odem stone, which occupied the first place on the breastplate.