THE GOLD OF THAT LAND: Biblical Minerals & Rocks  

6. Antimony

See "STIBIC STONE, STIBNITE."

    The Revised Standard Version renders "pûwk" in Jeremiah 4:30 as antimony, but the context points to kohl, a black eye-paint made with stibnite (antimony trisulfide).

    Native antimony, element 51 in the periodic table of elements, is a soft whitish to steel grey metal which occurs as granular masses in marble veins. Fresh trigonal crystals have a metallic luster that tarnishes to darker grey. Native antimony is much rarer than its ores, but a few examples of antimony artifacts are known from Iran and Assyria. Extraction of metallic antimony from stibnite was unknown until the middle ages.

    Metallic antimony resembles zinc in appearance, but is so brittle that it shatters into powder when struck with a hammer. Antimony is used as a hardening agent in alloys, especially type metal.

Sources:

Hurlbut, 1952, op. cit.; 170, 343.

Los Alamos National Laboratories. http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/51.html

Lucas & Harris, op. cit.; 195-199.

Ralph, Jolyon, 1993-2004. http://www.mindat.org/min-262.html

Tennisen, Anthony C., 1974. Nature of Earth Materials. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.; 113.