31 (1997): 167–81; Hughes-Brock 1985, esp. nn. 28–33; G. printing, with bibl. added [Princeton, 1999]). Compare also the Bonfante, “The Word for Amber in Baltic, Latin, Germanic, and biblical Ezekiel’s vision, in which the metaphor for brightness is Greek,” Journal of Baltic Studies 16, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 316–19; M. amber: “Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of E. Huld, “Greek Amber,” in From the Realm of the Ancestors: An fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas, ed. J. Marler from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, (Manchester, CT, 1997), pp. 135–39; A. Grilli, “Eridano, Elettridi e as the colour of amber” (Ezekiel 8:2). Brilliant amber is via dell’ambra,” in Studi e ricerche sulla problematica dell’ambra employed metaphorically by the second-century A.D. satirist I (Rome, 1975), pp. 279–91; A. Grilli, “La documentazione sulla Lucian of Samosata, alluding to a desirable one’s appearance: provenienza dell’ambra in Plinio,” in Acme (Annali della Facolta “Her entire body devoid of the least hair … has more brilliance di lettere e filosofia dell’Universita degli Studi di Milano) 36, no. 1 than amber or glass from Sidon.” See Different Desires: A (1983): 5–17; and works by J. M. Riddle, including “Pomum Dialogue Comparing Male and Female Love Attributed to Lucian of ambrae:Amber and Ambergris in Plague Remedies,” in Quid Samosata, trans. A. Kallimachos (© 2000), Diotima: Materials for Pro Quo: Studies in the History of Drugs (Hampshire, UK, 1992), the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World, http:// pp. 3–17, 111–12, and “Amber in Ancient Pharmacy: The www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/lucian.shtml (accessed Transmission of Information about a Single Drug,” in October 10, 2009). Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine (Austin, TX, 1985). F. Barry, “Painting in Stone: The Symbolic Identity of Coloured 53. Huld 1997 (n. 52, above), p. 135. See n. 69 for other ancient and Marbles from Antiquity until the Age of Enlightenment,” Ph.D. modern names based on amber’s magnetic properties. diss. (Columbia University, 2005), analyzes the history of the 54. Iliad 6.513, 19.398. appreciation of luster and brilliance in marble and other stones. As noted in n. 51, I. J. Winter (in Winter 1994 and Winter 55. Tacitus, Germania 45. 1999) has written extensively on the subject of shine, light, and brilliance as positive attributes of physical matter in 56. Another old German word for amber is the Oberdeutsch Mesopotamia. She underlines (Winter 1994, p. 123) the Agtstein (from aieten, “to burn”). See Blüemner, RE, vol. 3, part importance of light and “light bearing,” and notes that the 1, s.v. “Bernstein”; and J. Barfod, “Von der Heilkraft des quality of emanated light is of the highest value: “In all cases, it Bernsteins,” in Barfod et al. 1989, pp. 84–87. is apparently the combination of light-plus-sheen yielding a 57. E. Schwarzenberg, Crystal (private publication, 2006), p. 36: kind of lustrousness that is seen as particularly positive and “Even after Aristotle had taught Greece to conceive of auspicious, so that persons and things that are holy, ritually diaphaneity as light in potential, and of light as the presence of pure, joyous or beautiful are generally described in terms of fire in the transparent [Aristotle, De Anima 2.7], diaphanous light.” In Sumerian, the word for “pure” carries the physical bodies were not thought of as passive, as just allowing light’s manifestation of “shine.” B. André-Salvini, “L’idéologie des passage, but as contributing actively to its propagation.” pierres en Mésopotamie,” in Caubet 1999, illuminates how in Egypt, brightness was immediately associated with the 58. In early Greece, as earlier in Egypt and the Near East, gods and brightness of the sun, and thus with life. Wilkinson 1992, n. 2, some heroic figures are described with adjectives translated as sums up: “The shining appearance which associated precious “bright,” “golden,” “shining,” “luminous,” and “glistening.” E. metals with the celestial bodies was a quality which may well Parisinou, Light of the Gods: The Role of Light in Archaic and have been seen as symbolic in other areas such as the high Classical Greek Cult (London, 2000); and W. D. Furley, Studies in polish given to some stone statues and the varnish given to the Use of Fire in Ancient Greek Religion (New York, 1981) provide wooden objects.” useful discussions of the iconography of light and fire and their Tjehnet, an Egyptian word meaning “dazzling”—that which is divine connections. Although neither work discusses amber, brilliant or scintillating, such as the light of the sun, moon, and many references are apt. “In the epics of Homer, the gods are stars, glistening with a light symbolic of life, birth, and described as bright, shining, luminous”: Lapatin 2001, p. 55, immortality—was employed as an epithet of brilliance and who cites A. A. Donohue, Xoana and the Origins of Greek bestowed on many gods, including Hathor, Thoth, and Horus, Sculpture (Atlanta, 1988); J.-P. Vernant, “Mortals and Immortals: whose light-filled appearances were likened to celestial light The Bodies of the Divine,” in Mortals and Immortals: Collected (extracted from F. D. Friedman and R. S. Bianchi in Friedman Essays, ed. F. Zeitlin (Princeton, 1991), pp. 27–49; and R. L. 1998, pp. 15, 28–29). Tjehnet applies to precious metals and Gordon, “The Real and the Imaginary: Production and Religion faïence or, more correctly, glazed composition. It was not a in the Graeco-Roman World,” Art History 2 (1979): 5–34. cheap substitute material for precious and semiprecious Divinities shine with an otherworldly radiance, and declare stones but was valued in itself for amulets of the living as well their presence with brilliant light and the blaze of flame and as the dead. The light-filled material could promote the fire; see also Steiner 2001, p. 96–101. Demeter, in divine deceased’s rebirth and help to impart life. Hathor is named in epiphany, floods the halls “with radiance like lightning”: Late Period and Ptolemaic texts as Tjehnet, the Scintillating Homeric Hymn to Ceres 276–80 (H. Foley, ed., The Homeric Hymn One. In Italy, from the Bronze Age onward, faïence beads and to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays, 3rd pendants are often joined with amber in necklaces and other 26 INTRODUCTION