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marine, which was so extensively used by the Egyptians in their public buildings. Our sapphire seems to have been rather a product of southern India and Ceylon, and would hardly have been exported from the Indus valley.
Dionysius Periegetes refers to the “underlying rocks which gave birth to the beauteous tablets of the golden hued and azure sapphire stone which they detach from the parent rock, ” which seems to indi- cate lapis lazuli rather than our sapphire.
Goodchild ( Precious Stones, p. 240), also thinks that this stone was almost certainly the sapphire of Theophrastus and other ancient writers. He says, “It has been known from very remote times, being much used by the Egyptians, and to a lesser extent by the Assyrians. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, says the Tables of the Law given to Moses were inscribed on lapis lazuli. The Romans used it to some extent as a material for engraving on.’ ’
Lassen is of the same opinion. Beckmann (Hist, lnv., 1, 467) writing in the 18th century, says that the real lapis lazuli came from Bokhara, particularly at Kalab and Badakshan; that it was sent thence to India, and from India to Europe. Some came also through Russia via Orenburg, but less than formerly. (The first route corresponds with the Periplus. ) “I consider it as the sapphire of the ancients” — - quoting Pliny, Isidori Orig. XVI, 9; Theophrast. de Lapid. ; § 42; Dioscorides, V, 157; Dionys., Orb. Desc.,, 1105; Epiphanius afc xii gemmis, § 5; Marbodeus de Lapidibus, 55.
Tavernier, ( Travels in India, II, xxv) speaks of a “mountain beyond Kashmir producing lapis,” which Ball ( Economic Geology of India, 529) locates near Firgamu in Badakshan, 36° 10' N., 71° W. For a. fuller description see Holdich, Gates of India, 426, 507.
Ultramarine was probably not the ceeruleum of the Romans, which was rather copper ochre. Their blue glass was rather cobalt.
39. Seric skins.— Pliny (XXXIV, 41) says, “of all the dif- ferent kinds of iron, the palm of excellence is awarded to that which is made by the Seres, who send it to us with their tissues and skins; next to which, in quality, is the Parthian iron.” And again (XXXVII, 77) “the most valuable products furnished by the cover- ings of animals are the skins which the Seres dye.”
These passages are sufficient answer to those who have doubted this statement in the Periplus. (Vincent, II, 390; Muller I, 288, opposed to whom see Fabricius, p. 151. ) There is no more reason why furs should not have been sent overland across Asia in the 1st century than in the 16th to the 19th, when the trade was most important. Con- sider, for instance, the difficulty even to-day, in getting Russian sables
