INTRODUCTION: ORIGIN, USE, AND MATERIALS. 9 
variety of sard known as prase, and even jade, appears in catalogues as “ mother of 
emerald” or “root of emerald,” a more proper designation of the coarser beryls. 
Pliny describes two Persian stones which may be the Amazon stone, one the tanos, 
“a disagreeable green, foisted among the smaragdi,” and the other the eumithres, 
“or gem of Belus, of the color of a leek-leaf, and a favorite in their superstitions.” 
(King, ‘Gems or Semi-precious Stones,”’ p. 128.) 
TOOLS FOR CUTTING. 
The seals in soft material of an early age, such as shell, serpentine, and marble, 
could easily have been cut with flint, which was in familiar use in chips, flakes, 
knives, and saws. But when they came to engrave quartzite material as hard as 
flint, such as agate, syenite, or quartz crystal, it would be necessary 
to employ a harder tool. While it would be possible to engrave 
quartz with quartz, as we polish diamond with diamond, this would 
be a very tedious process. The harder substance would be found 
probably in corundum or emery, whether in chipped points or in 
powder. The crude corundum, not in the nature of gems, is a 
rather frequent stone and was in very early use in Egypt and later 
in Greece. We may presume that all of the early fine work in hard stone was 
done with this substance, as diamond was probably unknown. ‘The powder could 
be used for piercing the holes, and any sand would do for the holes in the softer 
materials, such as shell, serpentine, or even the feldspar of Amazon stone. 
All the early seals were thus cut with the free hand. It is not unlikely that the 
holes piercing the cylinders were perforated by a copper tool, used with emery, 


and revolved by the aid of the string of a bow, or simply rolled with the hand. 
In Egypt, we have a picture of the process (fig. 22), Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch., xxvut, 
p. 280, and the inscription says, ‘“ Drilling a seal by the seal-maker” (Newberry). 
But the use of revolving metal tools for engraving the surface was earlier in Egypt 
and was introduced from Egypt into Assyria by way of Syria. It is not till the time 
of the Egyptian invasion of the eighteenth dynasty that we begin to find tools 
revolved with the bowstring thus used for engraving 
with emery powder. We can date this use in Babylonia 
first by the seals of the Kassite style. But in the Syro- 
Hittite region, somewhat later, a multitude of seals in 
hematite and chalcedony are roughly cut in this way. 
We can recognize the various types of these engraving tools. ‘The first was 
a burr, large or small, to make round holes. The second was a disk, the edge 
of which was applied to the stone; this tool being very thin for mere lines and 
quite thick for the bodies of men or animals. The third was the tube, which 

