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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
The Museum of Classical Archaeology at the University of Michigan has recently acquired a small collection of engraved stones, with a few metal objects; most of them are amulets of the kind conventionally called gnostic — a description which, as is now recognized, is usually misleading. The collection was assembled in the Levant, chiefly in Syria. One of the stones, the occasion of this note, is now a mere fragment, probably a little more than half its original size. It is a piece of haematite, 27 mm. high, 10 mm. wide, and 5 mm. in thickness. When entire it was rectangular, as is shown by the fact that a borderdesign, a sort of feather pattern, is preserved at the top and right side, and makes a right angle at the upper right-hand corner. After the left side of the stone was broken away the remaining fragment was rounded off at the bottom, perhaps to remove a rough edge and make the piece into a more convenient shape. The fact that the fragment was preserved and re-shaped is not without interest as showing how tenaciously their possessors clung to amulets of this kind. Something of the same sort happened to a rather elaborately carved haematite which came into my own collection from Egypt. It was originally a fairly broad oval, but at some time a splinter was broken off the right side, after which loss the rough edge was ground down and an approximately oval shape restored. In the University's collection there is still another haematite which, after a part of the stone had been lost, was set in a protecting mounting fitted to its altered shape. All collectors, of course, are aware that haematite is peculiarly liable to splintering fracture.
1 Symbolae Osloenses, XIX, 76–77, Fig. 2. Owing to the difficulty of communicating with Norway, I have so far presumed upon Professor Eitrem's well-known generosity as to reproduce his cut without his express permission. It is twice the size of the original stone; the cut of the Michigan stone is one and one-half times the size of the original.
2 Eitrem refers to Marcellus 20. 66 for the colic-charm cited above, but in using his memoranda he has apparently exchanged the references for two similar passages. Drexler's article is to be found in Philologus LVIII, 608 ff.; Cumont lists and illustrates the ring in question in his Textes et Monuments, II, 452, Fig. 406.
3 The sources can be conveniently consulted in A. B. Cook, Zeus, III, 103–106.
4 A poor drawing of this stone is given in C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Remains, Pl. M 7.
5 Mém. Acad. Imp. de St. Petersbourg, 6me Série, 1836, Pl. I, 27. The stone is described on pp. 21–22. διώχι represents διώκει.
6 On this subject see A. v. Domaszewski, Die Religion des römischen Heeres, pp. 11–13 [reprinted separately from Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst, XIV, 1895].
7 The bronze eagle was published by Dussaud, R. (Rev. archéol., 1903, 1, 134–142Google Scholar) in a section of an article on Syrian mythology devoted to the eagle as a solar symbol. Cumont discusses the same topic in pp. 60–63 of his Études syriennes, and in the earlier pages of the same study he illustrates the use of the eagle as a funerary emblem. H. Seyrig judiciously remarks (Syria, XIV, 1933, 255) that the Graeco-Roman tradition of the eagle as the symbol of Zeus persisted alongside the solar significance that it had in the Orient.
8 As to the eagle with garland on funerary monuments, see Figs. 10, 11, 24 of Cumont's article in Études syriennes; Fig. 27, a gem, shows two eagles with garlands held in their beaks. In Furtwängler's Beschreibung der geschnittenen Steine im [Berliner] Antiquarium there are listed specimens showing the eagle with garland in beak, palm-branch in talons (3288, 3290); garland in beak, thunderbolt in talons (3289); eagle between two Roman standards, garland in beak (3291). These combinations show how imprudent it would be to derive the mana of the eagle exclusively from any single source.
9 Damigeron (de lapidibus, 21, ed. Abel) says “Medius lapis niger est; tritus autem emittit croceum colorem.” He goes on to describe some of its powers, but does not mention its use as a remedy or prophylactic for colic. A colleague in mineralogy, Professor C. B. Slawson, informs me that Damigeron's description would fit limonite, an iron ore nearly related to haematite. I have seen several amulets cut on this stone, though they are not common. Pliny (N. H. 37. 71) speaks of Median zmaragdos, certainly a green stone, though probably not emerald. The stone described by Eitrem (his Fig. 3) is a carnelian, and there is a similar one in the British Museum (56256) on heliotrope (bloodstone). But I have notes of six other representations of Herakles with the lion, all on red jasper, and I am sure that I have seen others without recording them. Red jasper was certainly the favorite material for Herakles amulets.
10 Alex. Trall., Book 8 ad fin. (II, 377, Puschmann's edition).