חַשְׁמַן ḥašman: Amethyst(?),

The Hebrew word חַשְׁמַנִּים occurs only in Psalm 68:32. It was often translated as ‘envoys’ or ‘ambassadors’, but that interpretation seems to have been inspired only by the context and has no etymological basis whatsoever. On the basis of possible cognates in Egyptian and Akkadian scholars nowadays understand it as referring to precious objects, such as objects of bronze or dyed cloth, or the detergent natron. It is a more attractive option to identify חַשְׁמַנִּים with amethysts. This proposal is new, but its advantage is that amethyst was highly valued and that it was mined in Egypt, in an area close to Kush (see Ps 68:32b). It implies that חַשְׁמַנִּים is a cognate of Egyptian ḥsmn, ‘amethyst’, just like Akkadian ḫašmānu. In Egyptian, there are only relatively early attestations of ḥsmn, ‘amethyst’, but if Psalm 68 is an old composition the occurrence of a cognate in 68:32 is explicable.