The modern philological theory is that the early Latin stibium and the late Latin antimonium have the same etymological origin. Stibium was the Latinised form of the Greek stimmi. Stimmi declined as stimmid—and this may have found its way into the Arabic through a conjectural isthimmid to the known Arabic name uthmud, which via athmud and athmoud became Latinised again into antimonium.
Al-Kohol.
The antimony known to the ancients as stibium or stimuli was the native sulphide which Eastern women used for darkening their eye-lashes. 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
