The Legend of Artaban, the Fourth King

The Legend of
Artaban,

the Fourth King

Who was the fourth wise man?

Was there one?

There is a legend, however, that there was a ‘Fourth Wise Man’, whose name was Artaban.

It is not my intention to publicize or to give credit to this story. Apparently, it is an imaginary creation in a short novel, or long short story, by Henry van Dyke. This story has no mention in the Holy Bible. 

It tells about a "fourth" wise man (accepting the tradition that the Magi numbered three), a priest of the Magi named Artaban, one of the Medes from Persia. Like the other Magi, he sees signs in the heavens proclaiming that a King had been born.

Artaban was a Persian King whose study of the planets and the stars led him to predict the birth of the King of kings. It is said that he sold everything he possessed and purchased ‘a large sapphire blue as a fragment of the night sky, a flawless ruby redder than a ray of sunrise, and a lustrous pearl as pure as the peak of a snow mountain at twilight’ which he intended to carry as tribute to this King of kings. He then set out for Jerusalem, where he had arranged to meet up with the three other Wise Men, or Magi, Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar, to find this newborn King. Apparently, he never made it, and instead, sold his precious gem and gave the proceeds to the poor.