Antimony reached the ancient world as stibnite, a soft grey sulfide mineral with a metallic sheen that grinds easily to a black powder. That powder is kohl, used as eye paint in Egypt and across the Near East from at least the third millennium BCE, and it gives the element its symbol: Latin stibium, from Greek stimmi, from an Egyptian word.
The eye paint was cosmetic and also practical, reducing glare and, according to a body of modern work on Egyptian samples, offering some protection against eye infection. Not all ancient kohl was antimony; a great deal of it was galena, a lead sulfide, and the two were not distinguished.
The alchemical symbol usually given for antimony is a circle surmounted by a cross, the same figure used for the orb of the world and the reverse of the sign for Venus. Its regulus, the star-patterned crystalline metal obtained by reducing stibnite with iron, was regarded as significant precisely because the star appeared: a visible sign in the metal itself, which invited reading. Isaac Newton, whose alchemical papers run to roughly a million words, worked extensively on the star regulus of antimony.
Antimony expands slightly on freezing, which is rare among metals and useful. Type metal, the lead-tin-antimony alloy used for movable type from Gutenberg onward, fills the mould completely as it solidifies and takes a sharp face. Every book printed from cast type before the twentieth century depended on that property.