Lyngurium

Lyngurium or Ligurium is the name of a mythical gemstone believed to be formed of the solidified urine of the lynx (the best ones coming from wild males). It was included in classical and "almost every medieval lapidary"[1] or book of gems until it gradually disappeared from view in the 17th century.[2]

As is usual in bestiaries, the lynx in this late 13th-century English manuscript is shown urinating, the urine turning to the mythical stone lyngurium.

Properties and history

As well as various medical properties, lyngurium was credited with the power to attract objects, including metal; in fact it seems likely that what was thought to be lyngurium was either a type of yellow amber, which was known to the Ancient Greeks, but obtained from the distant Baltic coast, or less likely forms of tourmaline.[3] The first surviving description of Lyngurium is by Theophrastus (died c. 287 BC), and most later descriptions derive from his account.[4] Theophrastus said it was:[5]

...carved into signets and is hard as any stone, [and] has an unusual power. For it attracts other objects just as amber does, and some people claim that it acts not only on straws and leaves, but also on thin pieces of copper and iron, as Diocles maintained. The lyngurium is cold and very clear. A wild lynx produces better stones than a tame animal, and a male better ones than a female, there being a difference in the diet, in the exercise taken or not taken, and, in general, in the natural constitution of the body, in as much as the body is drier in the case of the former and more moist in the case of the latter. The stone is discovered only when experienced searchers dig it up, for when the lynx has passed its urine, it conceals it and scrapes soil over it.

Lapis lynxurius

In the 1st century AD Pliny the Elder discusses the stone, but makes it clear that he does not believe in it, or at least its supposed origin:[6] "I for my part am of the opinion that the whole story is false and that no gemstone bearing this name has been seen in our time. Also false are the statements made simultaneously about its medical properties, to the effect that when it is taken in liquid it breaks up stones in the bladder, and that it relieves jaundice if it is swallowed in wine or even looked at".[7] He also mentioned the belief that the hiding of the solidified urine was because lynxes had a "grudge against mankind", and deliberately hid what they knew to be highly beneficial objects for man.[8] This idea was apparently also mentioned by Theophrastus in a different, lost, work On creatures said to be grudging, and was still alive in the 15th century: "she hidith it for envy that hire vertues shulde not helpe vs".[9] Another version was that the lynx swallowed the stone and "withholt in his throte wel depe that the grete vertues there-of ne shulde nought be helpyng to vs" ("withholds it in his throat knowing that the virtues thereof should not be helping us").[10]

The belief that male urine produced better stones related to a general ancient and medieval idea that inorganic materials could be gendered into generally superior male forms and their weaker female forms.[11] The 11th century Islamic scientist Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī was critical of a popular belief, not mentioned in other sources, that the stone could make people change gender.[12]

The meaning and origin of the word seems to have been confused early on with a geographical origin, either in Liguria in northern Italy, or a part of Sicily which produced amber.[13] A version of the name, apparently started by Flavius Josephus was ligure, and under this name the Vulgate Latin Bible described the seventh stone on the Priestly breastplate in the Book of Exodus, called either amber or jacinth in modern translations, though one 19th-century Danish translation used lyncuren.[14]

Renaissance scepticism

Although "the first English zoology" The Noble Lyte and Nature of Man (1521) written or at least printed by Lawrence Andrewe, still said that the lynx's "pisse baketh in ye sonne and that becommeth a ryche stone", by 1607 the clergyman Edward Topsell, though repeating many fabulous medieval beliefs about zoology, rejected lyngurium: "Latines did feigne an etimology of the word Lyncurium and uppon this weake foundation have they raised that vaine buildinge".[15] The death of belief in lyngurium generated a few attempts to find more scientific explanations, and a considerable amount of scholarly squabbling, but the absence of physical specimens was soon fatal.[16]

See also

Notes
  1. Walton, 364, quoted
  2. Walton, 377
  3. Earle R. Caley and John F.C. Richards, Theophrastus: On Stones (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University, 1956), page 110, line 12 of the commentary: "Watson identifies the lyngounon of Theophrastus with tourmaline, but evidently his opinion is partly based on the attractive properties of heated tourmaline which had recently been discovered. This identification is repeated by various later writers. For example, Dana states that lyncurium is supposed to be the ancient name for common tourmaline. However, the absence of tourmaline among surviving examples of ancient gems is clearly against this view."
  4. Walton, 364–365, 377–378 (see in particular note 39 on 365 for further references and possibilities), abstract & throughout; Eichholz, 103–104; Harris, 49 and note
  5. Walton, 364, quoted
  6. Sharples, 81–82; Walton, 367
  7. Walton, 367, quoting Pliny
  8. Walton, 367
  9. Walton, 369–371, 371 quoted
  10. Walton, 369
  11. Walton, 365–367; Harris, 47–48
  12. Walton, 367
  13. Sharples, 81; Whatmough, 243; Walton, 371
  14. Walton, 371
  15. Walton, 376, 375, both quoted
  16. Walton, 375–378

References
  • Eichholz, D. E., "Some Mineralogical Problems in Theophrastus' De Lapidibus", The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 17, No. 1 (May, 1967), pp. 103–109, Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association, JSTOR
  • Harris, Nichola Erin, The idea of lapidary medicine, 2009, Rutgers University, Ph.D. dissertation (book forthcoming), available online as PDF
  • "Sharples et al.", Sharples, Robert W., Huby, Pamela M., Fortenbaugh, William Wall, Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources on biology, Human Physiology, Living Creatures, Botany Series, Volume 64 of Philosophia Antiqua: A Series of Studies on Ancient Philosophy, 1995, BRILL, ISBN 9004094407, 9789004094406, google books
  • Walton, S.A., Theophrastus on Lyngurium: medieval and early modern lore from the classical lapidary tradition, 2001, Annals of Science, 2001 Oct;58(4):357-79, PDF on Academia.edu
  • Whatmough, Joshua, review of Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch by Hjalmar Frisk, Classical Philology, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Oct., 1962), pp. 241–243, University of Chicago Press, JSTOR
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