The antimony known to the ancients as stibium or stimuli was the native
sulphide which Eastern women used for darkening their eyelashes.
Probably it was used by Jezebel when, expecting Jehu at Samaria, “she
painted her eyes and tired her head.” The Hebrew expression is “she
put her eyes in paint,” and the Hebrew word for the paint is Phuph;
(2 Kings, c. 9, v. 30). In Ezekiel, c. 23, v. 40, a debauched woman
is described who painted her eyes, and in this case the Hebrew word
employed is Kohol. The Septuagint translated both Phuph and Kohol by
stimmi. The method is still used by Arabic women. They have a little
silver or ivory rod which they damp and dip into a finely levigated
powder called ismed, and draw this between the eyelids. Karrenhappuch,
one of Job’s daughters, meant a vessel of antimony. The writer of
the Book of Enoch says that the angel Azazel taught the practice to
women before the Flood. He “taught men to make swords, and knives, and
shields, and coats of mail, and made known to them metals, and the art
of working them; bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony,
and the beautifying of the eyebrows, and the most costly and choicest
stones, and all colouring tinctures, so that the world was changed.”
Some of the early Christian fathers condemned the vanity. “Inunge
oculos non stibio diaboli, sed collyrio Christi,” writes Tertullian.