to be a loan word; it may derive from the Egyptian term mfkꜣt, referring to malachite or turquoise, both of which are a greenish blue; it may instead derive from lupakku, a term appearing in the Amarna letters, referring to a mineral of unknown colour which was sent in tribute to Akhnaten from Ashkalon. In classical rabbinical literature there is some debate between whether Nofekh was red or greenish blue; Exodus Rabbah and the second Jerusalem Targum favour it being red, while the Babylonian Targum and first Jerusalem Targum favour it being green. Sapir (סַפִּיר = in the masoretic text) / Sapphiros (in the Septuagint) – despite appearing to refer to sapphire, sapphire was essentially unknown before the era of the Roman Empire and its use in Greek texts is believed to be a mere transliteration of the Hebrew. Once it became more known, it was treated as merely being a form of hyacinth or of jacinth. It is more likely that the term Sapir referred to a mineral of similar colour to sapphires, and that the name gradually came to refer to the latter mineral, on account of its colour; scholars think the most likely candidate is lapis lazuli, a stone with a deep, ocean-blue colour which was frequently sent as a gift to Akhenaten from Babylon. Theophrastus mentions the stone sapphirus as being "dark" and having the "colour of verdigris", as well as being "speckled as of with gold". By all accounts, his description fits the lapis-lazuli. Yahalom (יָהֲלֹם = in the masoretic text) / Iaspis ἴασπις (in the Septuagint) – in some other places the Septuagint instead has Beryllios where the masoretic reads Yahalom. The word Yahalom appears to be connected with the Hebrew meaning strike hard, and possibly with the word hallamish meaning flint; hallamish is connected to the Assyrian word elmeshu, referring to a precious stone which was hard, and possibly white, or at least with an insignificant colour, and from which whole rings were sometimes made. A few scholars have suggested that Yahalom may refer to diamonds, owing to their hardness, though the skill of cutting diamonds had not been discovered before the classical era. Although the Septuagint's Onychion is the Greek term for onyx, onyx was not mined prior to the era of classical Greece. "Onyx" is derived from the Greek for fingernail, due to the pink-white veining.{{#tag:ref|The Oxford English Dictionary, Webster's New