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The identity of the Amiantos or Karystian stone of the Ancients with Chrysotile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

John W. Evans
John W. Evans*
Affiliation:
Imperial Institute
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Extract

Flexible mineral fibres appear to have been well known to the Greeks, who spun them into thread, which they wove into cloth or employed as wicks for lamps.

Pausanias, who lived in the second century of the present era, tells us that Kallimachos made for the statue of Minerva in the Acropolis at Athens a lamp of gold, the wick of which was of ‘karpasiau flax’, which he states is the only flax inconsumable by fire. Some have interpreted the words ‘karpasian flax’,——as meaning mineral flax from the Karpasos, the north-eastern promontory of Cyprus, but apart from the fact that there is no record of the occurrence of asbestiform minerals in that locality, it seems clear that the word is derived from (feminine in the singular, but neuter in the plural ), which properly signifies cotton, being identical with the Sanskrit , though it has been used for a fine variety of flax produced in Spain, as well as for other European plants.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical magazine and journal of the Mineralogical Society , Volume 14 , Issue 65 , May 1906 , pp. 143 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1906

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References

Page 143 note 1 Pausanias, chap. 26.

Page 144 note 1 Strabo, Bk. x, chap. I, par. 6.

Page 144 note 2 ‘Carystos aquas calentes habet (Ellopias recant), et Carystias ayes quae flammas impune involant, carbasa etiam quae inter ignes valeut.’ An editor has unnecessarily altered ‘valent’ to ‘lavant’. C. Julius Solinus, ‘Polyhister,’ chap. 11, par. 15.

Page 144 note 3 plutarch, Bk. ii, 434 a (edition 1796, vol. iv, p. 772).

Page 144 note 4 (loc. cit.). Literally, ‘run through in the quarries.’

Page 144 note 5 Teller, Friedrich, ‘Der geoloische Ban der Insel Euboea.’ Denksehr. k. Akad. Wissensch. Wien, Math.-Naturw. Classe, 1880, vol. xl, p. 153 Google Scholar.

Page 144 note 6 Apollonius Alexandrinus Minor or Dyskolos, chap. 36. The word does not appear to occur elsewhere ; it has been translated ‘coloured’ instead of ‘skin-like’.

Page 145 note 1 (loc. cit.).

Page 145 note 2 Dioscorides, Bk. v, par. 156.

Page 145 note 3 ‘Amiantus, alumini similis, nihil igni deperdit.’ Caius Plinius Secundus, ‘Historia Naturalis,’ Bk. xxxvi, chap. 31.

Page 145 note 4 op. cit., Bk. xix, chap. 4. See also Bk. xxxvii, chap. 54.

Page 145 note 5 Gaudry, J. A., ‘Géologie de l'Île de Chypre,’ Mém. Soc. Géol. de France, 1862, sér. 2, vol, vii, p. 269 Google Scholar ; Oberhummer, Eugen, ‘Die Insel Cypern : Part 1, Quellenkunde und Naturbesehreibung,’ München, 1903, p. 188 Google Scholar.

Page 145 note 6 Bergeat, Alfred. ‘Zur Geologie tier massigen Gesteine der Insel Cypern,’ Min, petr. Mitt. (Tsehermak), 1892, vol. xii, p. 293 Google Scholar.

Page 146 note 1 Bulletin of the Imperial Institute, 1905, vol. iii. p. 281.

Page 146 note 2 loc. cit. and ‘Studien zur alten Geographie von Kypros,’ Abhand. aus dem Gebiet der klassischen Altertums-Wiseenschaft, W. von Christ dargebracht, München, 1891, p. 102.

Page 146 note 3 Possibly Paleandros represents a play on words oh the original name of the village which had, it need scarcely be said, no connexion with old age. The form ‘Paleandros’ is used by Mariti, G., ‘Voyage dans l'isle de Chypre,’ 1791, vol. i, p. 27 Google Scholar.

Page 147 note 1 Bellamy, C. V. and Jukes-Browne, A. J., ‘The Geology of Cyprus,’ Plymouth, 1905, p. 63 Google Scholar.

Page 147 note 2 G. Mariti, loc. cit.

Page 147 note 3 Emmerling, L. A., ‘Lehrbuch der Mineralogie,’ 1793, vol. i, p. 39 Google Scholar; and Hafiy, R. J., ‘Traité de Minéralogie,’ 1801, vol. iii, p. 247 Google Scholar.

Page 148 note 1 Merrill, George P., ‘Notes on asbestos and asbestiform minerals,’ Proc. U.S. National Museum, 1895, vol. xviii, pp. 281, 292Google Scholar. He employs the form ‘amianthus’, but there is no philological warrant for the insertion of the h.