816 REPORT — 1903. 



All peoples value for magical purposes small stones of peculiar form or colour 

 Ion"' before they can wear them as ornaments ; e.g. Australians and tribes of New 

 Guinea use crystals for rain-making, although they cannot bore them, and it is 

 a powerful amulet in Uganda fastened into leather. Sorcerers in Africa carry 

 a small bag of pebbles as an important part of their equipment. So was it in 

 Greece. The crystal was used to light sacrificial fire, and was so employed in the 

 Church down to the fifteenth century. The Egyptians under the twelfth dynasty 

 used it largely, piercing it along its axis after rubbing off the pyramidal points of 

 the crystal, sometim.es leaving the natural six sides, or else grinding it into a 

 complete cylinder. From this bead came the artificial cylindrical beads made later 

 by the Egyptian, from which modern cylindrical glass beads are descended. 



The beryl, a natural hexagonal prism, lent itself still more readily to. the same 

 form, e.g. the cylindrical beryl beads found in Rhodian tombs. The Babylonian 

 cylinders found without any engraviog on them on the wrists of the dead in early 

 Babylonian graves had a similar origin. It has been universally held that 

 Babylonian cylinders, Egyptian scarabs, and Mycenean gems were primarily 

 signets ; but as the cylinders are found unengraved, and as many as 500 scarabs 

 are found on one mummy, and as Mycenean stones are often found without any 

 engraving, it is clear that the primary use was not for signets but for amulets. 

 The Orphic Lithica gives a clear account of the special virtue of each stone, and it 

 is plain that they acted chiefly by sympathetic magic ; e.g. green jasper and tree 

 ao-ates make the yegetation grow, &c. The Greeks and Asiatics used stones 

 primarily as amulets, e.g. Mithridates had a whole cabinet of gems as antidotes to 

 poison. To enhance the natural power of the stone a device was cut on it, e.g. the 

 Abraxas cut on a green jasper, the special amulet of the Gnostics. The use of the 

 stone for sealing was simply secondary, and may have arisen first for sacred purposes.^ 

 Shells are worn as amulets by modern savages, e.g. cowries in Africa, where these 

 or some other kind of shells were worn in Strabo's time to keep oif the evil eye. 



Red coral was a potent amulet worn by travellers by sea, as at the present day 

 in Mediterranean lands, and if pounded up it kept red rust from corn. Pearls are 

 a potent medicine in modern China. Seeds of plants are medicine everywhere ; 

 for example, tho ratti (Abrus precatoria) is used in India for rosaries, and also in 

 Africa ; the seed of wild banana is especially valued in Uganda, &c. The claws 

 of lions are Avorn as amulets all through Africa, and ore ' great medicine,' and 

 imitations of them are made. So with teeth of jackals, which are imitated in 

 wood if the real ones are not to be had, and boars' tusks in New Guinea. When 

 gold becomes first known it is regarded exactly like the stones mentioned. Thus 

 the Deba3, an Arab tribe, who did not work gold, but had abundance in their 

 land, used only the nuggets, stringing them for necklaces alternately with perforated 

 stones.- Magnetic iron and hematite were especially prized, the power of attraction 

 in magnetic iron, as in the case of amber, causing a belief that there was a living 

 spirit within. Hence iron in general was regarded with peculiar veneration, and 

 not because it w<is a newer metal, as is commonly stated. 



It is thus clear that the use of all the objects still employed in modern 

 jewellery has primarily arisen from the magical powers attributed to them, by 

 "which tiiey were thought to protect the wearer. 



TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1.5. 

 The following Report and Papers were read : — 



1 . Report of the Committee on Arcliceological and Ethnological Researches 

 in Crete. — See Reports, p. 402. 



' Cf. Herod, ii. 38. ? Strabo, p. 778. 



