Odem Reuben Red Pitdah Simeon Green Bareketh Levi White, black and red Jophek Judah Sky-blue Sappir Issachar Black (like stibium) Yahalom Zebulun White Leshem Dan Sapphire-color Shebo Gad Gray Ahlamah Naphtali Wine-color Tarshish Assher Pearl-color (?) Shoham Joseph Very black Yashpheh Benjamin Colors of all the stones In the attempt to determine the identity of the stones enumerated in Exodus xxviii and xxxix, as adorning the breastplate of the high-priest, we must bear in mind that this “breastplate of Aaron” and the one described by Josephus, and brought by Titus to Rome after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., are in all probability entirely distinct objects. The former, if it ever existed, except in the ideal world of the authors of the Priestly Codex, must have been composed of the stones known to and used by the Egyptians of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, B.C., some of them being, perhaps, set in the “jewels of gold and jewels of silver” borrowed by the Israelites from the Egyptians just before the Exodus; on the other hand, the most trustworthy indications regarding the stones of the breastplate of the Second Temple, made perhaps in the fifth century B.C., should be sought in the early Greek and Latin versions of the Old Testament, and in the treatise on precious stones by Theophrastus, who wrote about 300 B.C. The Natural History of Pliny, that great storehouse of ancient knowledge, and other early writers, may also be used with profit. [Illustration: TITLE PAGE OF THE EDITION OF MARBODUS ON PRECIOUS STONES, PUBLISHED IN COLOGNE, 1539. Shows the figure of the High-priest and the names and tribal attributions of twelve stones of the Breastplate.]