Agate— Archaeology and Folk-lore 
21 
of Natural History, New York, and is dated by J. D. 
Prince between 8000 and 2300 B.C., probably nearer 
the former than the latter date. It is illustrated and 
described in Journal of the American Oriental Society, 
XXVI, 1905 (pp. 93-97) , also in Bulletin of the Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History, XXI (pp. 37-47). 
Another Babylonian axe-head of agate, inscribed with 
characters of an early form, is in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York. 
Agate is first mentioned in literature by Theo- 
phrastus (372-287 B.C.) in his small treatise On 
Stones. He briefly refers to it as a beautiful stone 
which is sold at a high price, and he derives its name 
from the river Achates in Sicily, where such stones are 
said to have been found for the first time. This ety- 
mology is repeated by Pliny, and has been generally 
accepted by the ancients. A derivation of the word 
from the Semitic has been attempted recently, but is 
not convincing. 
Pliny, in his Natural History, discusses agate to 
some extent, but gives no description of it. He writes 
that "Achates is a stone which was formerly held in 
high esteem, but is not so now; it was first found in 
Sicily, near a river of that name, but has since been 
discovered in numerous other localities." We may as- 
sume that because it was found in numerous localities, 
it had lost its former appreciation. Besides Sicily, 
Pliny gives Crete, India, Phrygia, Egypt, Cyprus, the 
Oeta Mountains, Mount Parnassus, Lesbos, Messenia, 
Rhodus, and Persia as places where agate occurred. A 
number of varieties are named by him ; such names as 
iaspachates ("jasper-like agate"), smaragdachates 
("emerald agate"), haemachates ("blood agate"), and 
leucachates ("white agate") apparently refer to color 
varieties, while dendrachates ("tree agate") alludes 
to the designs in the stone and may correspond to our 
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