The use of copper, I have said, would be essentially transitional; and the discovery of smelting one kind of metal would lead immediately to that of others and to their commixture. Moreover, when casting and moulding began to be a general practice, unalloyed copper difficult to smelt, and when melted thick, sluggish, and pasty, would not readily run without some mixture into all the sinuosities of the mould. In this chapter I propose to notice the second chalcitic age—that of the earliest combinations of metals, their workers, and their application to weapons.

J. P. Rossignol, following the opinion of the symbolists and mysticists, as the Baron de Saint Croix,[243] Creuzer, Freret, and Lobechs,[244] assigns a Divine origin—after the fashion of the day—to metallurgy, making it resemble in this point Creation, articulate language,[245] and the discovery of corn and wine. So he understands the θεολογούμενα (subjects of a theological nature) alluded to by Strabo (x. 3, § 7). It is the old hypothesis of supernatural agency in purely natural matters, a kind of luxus-wonder, as the Germans call useless miracles, which had waxed stale, even in the days of Horace—‘parcus Deorum cultor et infrequens.’ He considers the Curetes and Corybantes, the Cabiri (Kabeiroi) of Lemnos and Imbros, and the Idæi Dactyli of Crete, the Telchines of Rhodes, and the Sinties, Sinti, or Saii of Thrace (Strabo, xii. 3, § 20) as metallurgic δαίμονες, or genii prisoned in human form, and typifying the successive steps of the art. In these days we hardly admit the intersit of a deity when human nature suffices to loose the knot; nor do we believe that our kind began by worshipping types. Man has always worshipped one thing, himself, and himself only, either in the flesh or in the ghost—that is, in the non-flesh or the objective nothing—till he arrived at the transcendental Man, the superlative, the ideal of Himself.

How little of fact is known about the mysterious tribes above mentioned becomes evident by a glance at the classics. All six are supposed to be Asiatics, worshippers of Rhea (the earth), the great mother of the gods and queen of the metal workers. Yet Strabo explains Curetes from Greek terms κόροι (boys), κόραι (girls), κουρά (tonsure), and κουροτροφεῖν (to bring up the Boy, i.e. Jupiter). Similarly their brethren, the nine Corybantes, were termed from their dancing gait and negro-like butting with the head, κορύπτοντας. They inhabited Samothrace (Samothracia alta): this venerable and holy island, in hoar antiquity a general rendezvous of freemasonry, or rather of free-smithery, forms a triangle with metallic Thasos and with volcanic Lemnos.

The three or four Cabiri[246] bear a Semitic name, Kabir = the great or the old. They seem at first to have represented Ptah-Sokar-Osiris,[247] and Herodotus (iii. 37) mentions their temple at Memphis. They became in Phœnicia the earliest boatmen or primordial shipbuilders, identified by some with the Sesennu or Egyptian Octonary; by others with the seven planets or the stars of Typho, our Great Bear;[248] and by others, again, with the seven Khnemu (gnomes) or pygmy-sons who waited upon their father Ptah-Vulcan. They inhabited Lemnos, where Hephæstus, when expelled, like Adam, from the lowest heaven, took refuge among the Pelasgi (Diod. Sic. lib. v.): hence the latter preserved their worship. Damascius (‘Life of Isidorus’) says: ‘The Asclepius of Berytus is neither Greek nor Egyptian, but of Phœnician origin; for (seven) sons were born to Sadyk, called Dioscuri and Cabiri, and the eighth of them was Esman (i.e. Octavius, No. 8), who is interpreted Asclepius.’[249]

The Idæan Dactyli (fingers or toes) who occupied ‘fountful Ide’[250] consisted of five brothers, representing the dextra or lucky hand (science, art), and five sisters for the sinistra or unlucky (witchcraft, ill omens). The names of these ‘hands’ (iron-workers) were Kelmis (fire or heat = the smelter), Damnameneus (the hammer, or who governs by strength, Thor), Hercules (force, animal or mental), and Akmon (the anvil or passive principle). Hence Pyracmon the Cyclop, one of the seven architect brothers who, according to Strabo (viii. 6), came from Lycia and built the ‘Cyclopean Wall’ in the Argolid. These Cyclopes[251] (monocular giants) worked metal, and under their magic hands,

By later writers, the Cyclopes, who

were held to be Sicilians.

The Telchines (fascinators, from θέλγειν, to charm) are mentioned as metallurgists by Stesichorus the Sicilian (nat. b.c. 632): they were the sons of Thalassa, i.e. they came from beyond the sea; they colonised Telchinis, and they made arms and statues of the gods like the Dædalides or artist families of later Athens. The Sinties (plunderers) from τὸ σίνεσθαι (to pill), who, according to Hellenicus of Lesbos (nat. b.c. 496), were pirates besides being coppersmiths (χαλκυές), and who were eventually murdered by their wives, represented the ancient Lemnians. So Homer (‘Od.’ viii. 290) speaks of the ‘barbarous Sintian men’ who received Vulcan when kicked out of Paradise. A modern school of Tsiganologues would identify them with prehistoric Gypsies, who have still a tribe called Sindi; but this theory would bring the arts from India westwards, whereas the current flowed the clean contrary way. Finally, Herodotus (i. 28), initiated in the mysteries, makes the Chalybes[252] or iron-workers, neighbours (and congeners?) of the Phrygians.

It is not difficult to see the general gist of such legends. All these tribes probably came (like Pelops, Tantalus, and Niobe) from the same place, Phrygia, the fertile plateau of Asia Minor, and its Katakekaumene or volcanic tract. It was, as far as we know, the first western centre which developed the ‘Aryan’ or non-Semitic element of the old Egyptian tongue. It also formed the point de départ of the European[253] (miscalled ‘Indo-European’) branch of the family that owned the Arya-land (Airyanem-vaejo), whose ethnic centre was the barbarous region about Ray, Heri, or Herat.[254] Hence, says Herodotus (iii. 2), the Egyptians owned the Phrygians to surpass them in antiquity. The emigrants would pass to the islands Samothrace, Lemnos, Thera,[255] the Cyclades and Crete; to Greece, Thessaly and Epirus, Attica, Argos, and the farthest south, where ‘Pelops the Phrygian,’ son of King Tantalus, colonised the Morea and founded the Pelopid race. Then they would find a home in Italy, Hetruria, and Iapygia (or Messapia), Peucetia and Daunia, and finally they would settle in Iberia, Spain, and Portugal, where the Briges or Brygi (Phrygians) have left their names in the Braganza of the present day.

These Proto-Phrygians and Phrygo-Europeans, of whom several tribes returned to Asia, were the prehistoric metal-workers. The smith (from smitan, to strike) was sacred in the dawn of history; and the Sword-maker was not inferior to him. Those who have witnessed the awe and reverence with which savages and barbarians regard a European mechanic at his forge will see exemplified the emotional feeling which led to the human becoming the superhuman.[256]

The first step in κρατέρωμα (hardening of metals) was, according to Hesychius, Μίξις χαλκοῦ καὶ κασσιτέρου (the mingling of copper and tin). The alloy was known generically as chalcos (base metal), specifically as χαλκὸς μέλαινος (black chalcos). The Latins persisted in terming it simply æs; e.g. æs inauratum (gilt bronze). Our word bronze derives from brunus (fuscous, sombre, brown); brunum æs. Hence the Low Latin (a.d. 805) brunea, brunia, or bronia, a lorica or thorax; and the Low Greek πόρτας μπρούτξινες (pronounce broutzines), ‘portals of bronze.’ The word is also derived from the Basque or Iberian bronsea.

Tin, one of the least durable of metals, at the same time readily fused and one of the easiest to treat metallurgically, was called by the Greeks κασσίτερος, and by the Latins cassiteron,[257] whence probably the Arab. قصدير, and the Sanskrit कस्तीर. The Hebrew name is בדיל (Badíl = a substitute, a separation, an alloy). Hut (white metal) in Egyptian includes silver and tin: in Coptic it is Thram, Thran, or Basensh. Kalaí (Linschoten’s ‘Calaem’) is the popular term for tin in India: the word is Arabic rather than Turkish. Tenekeh (tin-plate) in Arabic is an evident congener of the Assyrian ‘Anaker,’ and it remarkably resembles the Scandinavian Din, German Zinn, and our Tin. As we find ‘Teyne’ in Chaucer and old writers, ‘tin’ may come from its easy ‘thinning’ or beating out. The later Latins changed the plumbum album or white lead of Pliny (iv. 30) to stannum: whence our word derived through the neo-Latin. The origin of Kassiteron, Kasdír, Kastira, is disputed, and philologists remark that Cassi is a British (Keltic) prefix, as in Cassi-belanus. Tin was found in the Caucasus, in India, in Southern Persia (Drangæ Country); in Tuscany, in Iberia (Spain and Portugal),[258] in Sweden, Saxony, Bohemia, Hungary, and notably in England. There are still deposits near the modern Temeswar (Pannonia), and the granite hills of Gallicia and Zamora are not exhausted. It is now produced in Russia, Greenland, the Brazil, and the United States. Wilkinson would fetch the alloy of ancient Egypt from Spain, India, Malacca, or even from Banca,[259] between Sumatra and Borneo; the Banca tin-mines, long worked by the Chinese were first visited by the Portuguese in 1506. But compounds of tin and copper were common in Egypt at the time of the Sixth Dynasty (b.c. 3000). Tin is mentioned as early as b.c. 1452 in the Book of Numbers (xxxii. 22), with gold and silver, ‘brass’ (copper, especially pyrites), iron, and lead[260] (‘oferet’). In b.c. 760 the prophetic books, called from Isaiah (i. 25) and from Ezekiel (xxii. 18, 20), make tin an alloy of silver.

The Egyptians would derive their metals in the first place from Upper Egypt; and their first Kheft or mines of gold (khetem) and copper lay in the Thebaid. Secondly, they would resort to the land of Midian on the eastern flank, and running south of the long narrow gulf, El-Akabah: this grand range of Ghats or Coast Mountains was in those days a noted mining centre, and it has still a great industrial future. Thirdly, by means of the Phœnicians, who apparently taught the Greeks metallurgy which they learned in Egypt, they would import their tin from Southern France, Spain, and England.[261]

It is a disputed question whether the Phœnicians discovered the tin-stones and the stream-tin of the Cassiterides,[262] or whether the ore was worked by the ‘Welsh of the Horn’—the barbarians of Cornwall and Devonshire, who in those days were probably confined to small coast-clearings.[263] Herodotus, indeed, knows nothing (iii. 115) of ‘any islands called the Cassiterides (tin islands) whence the tin comes.’ These Silures or Scilly Islands were evidently mere depôts, not sites of production. The Phœnicians kept their secret well, and lost their ships rather than betray it; so says Strabo (iii. 5, § 11), whose Cassiterides appear to be the Azores.[264] The age when the trade was first opened is disputed; some place it b.c. 1500, others[265] reduce it to b.c. 400. Diodorus Siculus (v. 21–2) tells us that tin was found and run into pigs near the Belerium Promontory (Land’s End); thence it was carted to Ictis (Vectis, not the Isle of Wight, but Saint Michael’s Mount and Love Island);[266] and lastly horsed across Gaul to the Rhone. There is in the Truro Museum[267] a pig of tin, flat above and reniform below (the shape of the mould), two feet eleven inches by eleven inches broad, with a particular mark; it has been suggested that this is Phœnician. ‘Cassiter Street’ in Bodmin is supposed to retain the classical name. The second Thursday before Christmas Day is called in Cornwall (Kern-Walli, Cornu Galliæ) ‘Picrous Day,’ from the man who discovered the ‘streaming’ (or washing) of ‘stean’ or tin. Strabo gives a bad account of the people of the twelve Cassiterides and their Cornishmen, the latter ‘resembling the Furies we see in tragic representations.’ These pleasant persons would find stream-tin, almost fit for use, lying upon the surface by the side of copper pyrites—the latter harder than tin, but still comparatively soft and ductile. Both ores were easily fused, while iron was comparatively difficult and tedious to smelt; and the two (copper and tin) combined were not only more fusible, but they also continued longer in the fluid state, facilitating casting and moulding. Hence Worsäae believes that England was an ancient centre of bronze, whence the alloy was diffused throughout Europe. It is usually stated that the bronze-using period in England began between b.c. 1400 and 1200, and lasted eight to ten centuries, the invasion of Cæsar taking place during the early ‘Iron Age.’

The great bronze manufacture which we have first to consider is Egypt. The exact average proportion of the alloy is hard to ascertain,[268] the tin varying from ten to twenty per cent., and the copper from eighty to ninety per cent. A dagger analysed by Vauquelin gave copper eighty-five, tin fourteen, and iron one per cent. Wilkinson’s bronze chisel, nine and a quarter inches long, and weighing one pound twelve ounces, found in a quarry at Thebes, contained in one hundred parts 94·0 copper, 5·9 tin, 0·1 iron; consequently its edge is at once turned by hard stone. He repeatedly mentions bronze chisels (ii. ch. vii. &c.), and he seems to suspect that they were sheathed and pointed with steel. Of course, he was puzzled to explain how the ‘bronze or brass blades were given a certain degree of elasticity.’[269]

The result of Egyptian metallurgy is admirable, both in material and finish. At what period bronze was introduced we ignore; a cast cylinder, however, bearing the name of Pepi, dates from b.c. 3000 in the Sixth Dynasty of Middle Egypt, which includes Nitaker (Nitocris). Knives appear in the sculptures dating from before that time. A bronze dagger in the Berlin Museum, found by Sig. Passalacqua in a tomb at Thebes, retains a spring which might be of steel. My friend, Mr. W. P. Hayns, of the Alexandrian Harbour Works, showed me a specimen brought from Thebes by the late Mr. Harris, made of bronze still slightly elastic. The total length measures one foot, of which the blade is half; the latter, slightly leaf-shaped, has a minimum breadth of one inch and three-twelfths, and one inch at the shoulder. The tang, which is prolonged to the handle-end (four inches), has a minimum width of five-twelfths. The grip of two plates, hippopotamus hide (?), probably boiled, and not unlike wood, has twenty-six ridges for firmer hold, and there are bronze rivets at the sixth and the twenty-third ridges: it is without pommel, the end being simply rounded off.

It is held that mummies of the Eleventh Dynasty were buried with bronze sabres; and there is a bronze dagger of Thut-mes[270] III. (Eighteenth Dynasty), circa b.c. 1600. As late as Mene-ptah II. of the Nineteenth Dynasty (b.c. 1300–1266), we read in the list of his loot, after the Prosopis battle, of bronze-armour, Swords, and daggers. Among the Etruscans, before the foundation of Rome, bronze statues were known; and Romulus is said to have placed a statue of himself, crowned by Victory, in a bronze quadriga taken at Comertium. According to Pausanias (iii. 12, § 8), Theodorus of Samos invented casting in bronze (b.c. 800–700): this author discredits the Arcadian legend that Neptune dedicated a bronze statue to Poseidon (the Sidonian?) Hippios (Wilkinson, ii. chap. vii.). But the Samians cast a bronze vase in b.c. 630.

The importance of the Uchatius re-discovery, that is, of hardening bronze as well as copper by hydraulic pressure, not by phosphorus,[271] becomes evident by Wilkinson’s reflections. ‘We know of no means of tempering copper, under any form, or united with any alloys for such a purpose’ (as hollowing out hieroglyphics). He suggests that the old Egyptian letters, sometimes exceeding two inches in depth, and the alt-reliefs nine inches high, on granite coffins, may have been worked with wheel-drill and emery powder.[272] The Egyptians had also the secret of gilding bronze, as many of their remains prove; moreover, they produced by acids a rich patina of dark and light greens.

The Assyrians rivalled in metallurgy their ancient instructors the Egyptians: and the art passed eastwards to Persia, which inherited Assyrian and Babylonian civilisation. Diodorus Siculus, following Ctesias the oft-quoted contemporary of Xenophon, describes immense works of bronze decorating the gardens of Semiramis. In Assyria, again, the proportion of the alloy greatly varied. Layard[273] quotes the following assays of Assyrian bronze:

No. 1 shows the proportions found in a bronze dish from ‘Nimroud’; No. 4 in a bell; and the fore-leg of a bull[274] yielded 11·33 tin to 99·70 copper. The Mesopotamians were able to cast their bronze extremely thin, which is no small difficulty; they fashioned it into weapons, temple utensils, and domestic articles, and they skilfully ‘elaborated it by chasing and by curious ornamental tracery.’ They used it in their most sumptuous decorations, as the thrones prove; and the beautiful workmanship of their vases shows abnormal skill in the toreumatic treatment of bronze. Gilt specimens of bronze from Nineveh are in the British Museum.

Dr. Schliemann questions the popular assertion that the age of Hesiod and of Homer ignored alloys and fusion, knowing only plating, the plates being hammer-wrought (‘Od.’ iii. 425). This explorer found the strata of copper and lead scoriæ at the so-called Troy from twenty-eight to twenty-nine and a half feet deep. He notes also small crucibles and a mould of mica-schist (twenty-six feet deep), which was probably intended for bronze casting. He finds no iron; but copper and its alloy, bronze, are abundant. M. Damour of Lyon[275] analysed the drillings of two ‘copper’ battle-axes from ‘Ilium,’ in fact, from ‘Priam’s Treasury’; they contained 0·0864 and 0·0384 parts tin to 0·9067 and 0·9580 copper. Nearly the same proportion of alloy was found in a common two-edged axe dug at a depth of three and a quarter feet, and therefore in the remains attributed to a Greek colony. Dr. Percy analysed, with the following results, the handle of a bronze vase and a Sword:

The specific gravity (at 60° F.) was 8·858. The extreme proportions of the alloy in other articles were 10·28 tin to 89·69 copper (a usual ratio in ancient bronzes[276]), and 0·09 tin to 98·47 copper, the latter being almost pure.

Mongez, of the Institut, describing a bronze Sword found in France, gives the proportions as 87·47 per cent. of copper to 12·53 of tin. Analyses of Greek bronzes in the British Museum yielded 87·8 per cent. copper to 12·13 tin. A bronze knife has been found in the Palafittes (Pile-villages) of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.[277] Worsäae (‘Primæval Antiquities’) makes the Bronze Period in Denmark and Northern Europe begin about b.c. 500 to 600, and last some 1,100 years. It is not found among the Normans. But it was developed in Ireland and Scotland, in China and Japan, in Mexico and in Peru: Cieza de Leon notes the admirable bronze work of the Ynkarial empire.

A Peruvian chisel, analysed by M. Vauquelin, contained 0·94 copper to 0·06 tin. In other tools the proportion of the latter metal varied from two to four, six and even seven per cent. As a rule the people used only half the proper proportion of tin, which they called Chayantanka—a name suggesting the Old-World ‘Tanuk.’ Humboldt mentions a cutting tool found near Cuzco with ninety-four per cent. of copper and six of tin. Rivero (i. 201) notices in Peru brass (?) hammers and bellows-nozzles, axes, adzes, bill-hooks, and other tools, of bronze as well as copper. The Mexicans cast their tin ingots in T-shape. The Peruvians hardened copper also with silver for quarrying-tools and crow-bars. Velasco (ii. 70) tells us that when the Ynka Huasca was being led to prison by order of his brother, a woman secretly gave him a bar of metal, ‘silver with bronze, brass, or an alloy of silver, copper, and tin’ (Bollaert, p. 90); by means of this he cut through the jail wall during the night. Hutchison (ii. 330) mentions a buckler from Ipijapa in Ecuador, and Ewbank (p. 454) notices an old Peruvian bronze knife.[278]

The admirable bronzes of China and Japan are well known in the English market, and Raphael Pumpelly,[279] who studied direct from the native workmen, has printed interesting notes on the ornamental alloys, or Mokume, applied to Swords and other articles. Damask-work is produced by soldering alternately thirty to forty sheets of rose-copper, silver, shakdo (copper one to gold ten per cent.), and gui shi bu ichi (silver and copper). The mass is then cut into deep patterns with the reamer. An alloy of silver (thirty to fifty per cent. of copper) produces the favourite tint, a rich grey colour, and this becomes a bluish black like niello by being boiled after polishing in a solution of sulphate of copper, alum, and verdigris. Dr. Percy (p. 340) describes the liquation of argentiferous copper in Japan.[280]

We owe to Dr. George Pearson[281] sundry experiments in alloys, which first determined that the norm of the Old World and the best proportion for weapons and tools are one tin to nine copper.

Fusing the metals, he found:

1 tin : 20 copper (5 per cent.) produces a dark-coloured bronze with the red fracture of the pure metal.

1 tin : 15 (6½ per cent.) gives a stronger alloy and obliterates the colour.

1 tin : 12, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 gradually increases hardness and brittleness.

1 tin : 2 makes a mixture almost as brittle as glass.

The following table[282] shows the alloys now in common use, and the purposes to which they are applied:

The most popular alloy of copper, next to bronze, is brass, which is harder and wears better than the pure metal. Originally, as now, it was a mixture of copper and zinc, popularly called spelter (old speautre, speauter, spiauter, spialter).[285] The proportions greatly varied, one part of the latter to two of the former being the older ratio, and the density increasing with the amount of copper from 8·39 to 8·56.

Beckmann tells us, in his valuable ‘History of Inventions,’[286] ‘in the course of time an ore which must have been calamine (carbonate of zinc) or blende[287] (sulphuret of zinc), was added to copper, and gave it a yellow colour. The addition made it harder, more fusible and sonorous, easily subject to the lathe, more economical to work, and a worse conductor of heat than the pure metal.’ We have few specimens of old art-works in ‘brass’ proper, although zinc was discovered by analysis in an ancient Sword, chiefly copper.[288] Gibel assures us that zinc occurs only in Roman alloys, the bronze of the Greeks containing nothing beyond copper, tin, and lead. The Romans also could varnish or lacquer brass, but it is not known whence they derived the art. Percy notes (p. 521) that brass was produced ‘early in the Christian era, if not before its commencement.’ He quotes in proof a large coin of the Cassia Gens (b.c. 20) which contained copper 82·26 and zinc 17·31; a Vespasian (Rome, a.d. 71), an imperial Trajan (Caria, circ. a.d. 110), a Geta (Carian Mylasa, a.d. 189–212), a Greek Caracalla (a.d. 199), and many others. In modern times zinciferous ore was imported by the Portuguese from the East a century before it was common throughout Europe.[289] In the early seventeenth century the Dutch captured one of their craft laden with spelter, and the secret became known. Bishop Richard Watson says (1783) the cargo was calaem, which he connects with ‘calamine’: the latter, like the German Galmei, derives from cadmia.

Amongst the moderns æs gave rise to airain. The French leton, laton, latton, or laiton (cuivre jaune); the Italian lattone, lottone, and lastly ottone, and the Spanish lata and laton, German Latun, and English latten (thin sheet brass), the latoun of Chaucer (‘Pardoner’s Prologue,’ 64), are either from luteum, yellow (metal), or from the plant luteum (Reseda luteola), used to stain chrysocolla.[290] Our brass is probably the Scandinavian bras, cement; and the German Mosch, Meish, and Messing, from mischen = miscere.[291]

It may be advisable to notice the ὀρειχάλκον[292] of the Homerids and Hesiod, which Strabo also calls ψευδάργυρος (false silver), and aurichalcum, and which the perverse ingenuity of commentaries has made so mysterious.[293] In the poetic phase, which loves the vague, this ‘mountain-copper’ was a mythic natural metal, ranking between gold and silver, and chimerical as was the chalcolibanon[294] of the Apocalypse (i. 15, ii. 18). The name does not occur in Pindar or the Dramatists. Plato (the ‘Critias,’ § ix., treating of Atlantis,[295] America) makes oreichalc, ‘now known only by name,’ the most precious metal after gold. Pliny (xxxiv. 2) tells us truly enough that aurichalcum no longer exists.

The next application of the word was to ruby copper (?), a suboxide whose beautiful crystals are formed in the natural state. Pollux and Hesychius the grammarian (d.d. 380) define it as copper (χαλκός) resembling gold; and Cicero puts the question whether, if a person should offer a piece of gold for sale, thinking he was disposing of only a piece of orichalcum, an honest man ought to inform him that it was really gold, or might fairly buy for a penny what is worth a thousand times as much.[296] Buffon compares it with tombac, or Chinese copper containing gold.[297] Beckmann (s. v. ‘Tin’) notes aurichalcum or Corinthian brass in Plautus, ‘Auro contra carum.’ Festus speaks of ‘orichalcum (copper), stannum (zinc or pewter?), cassiterum (tin), and aurichalcum (brass).’ The same signification occurs in Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (fourth century); in Primasius, Bishop of African Adrumetum (sixth century), and in Isidore, Bishop of Seville (seventh century). Albertus Magnus (thirteenth century), the Dominican monk, in treating ‘De Natura et Commixtione Æris,’ describes how cuprum became aurichalcum.

Strabo is mysterious. In one place he tells us that the Cyprian copper alone produces the Cadmian stone, copperas-water, and oxide of copper. In another (lib. xiii.) he says, ‘There is a stone near Andeira which, being burnt, becomes iron. It is then put into a furnace, together with some kind of earth,[298] when it (the stone? the earth? or both?) drops or distils a ψευδάργυρος (mock silver, zinc?), which, with the addition of copper, produces what is called the mixture, and which some term oreichalcum.’ Pseudargyros, also found in the neighbourhood of Tmolus, would here seem to mean zinc or Cadmia fossilis (natural calamine or carbonate of zinc). Pliny (xxxiv. 22) confuses with cadmia, furnace calamine, and a particular ore of copper opposed to calchitis. When Dioscorides (v. cap. 84) seems to allude to artificial or furnace-calamine, an impure oxide of zinc, he may mean the more modern tutiya (Avicenna), toutia, thouthia,[299] cadmie des fourneaux, or tutty. Reduced to powder, and mixed with an equal quantity of wetted charcoal by way of fondant or flux, it is melted with copper to form brass. The Avocat de Launey (1780) and Bishop Watson both agree that Strabo’s orichalcum is brass.

Lastly, aurichalcum was made synonymous with electrum, natural or artificial. The word Ἤλεκτρος[300] is popularly derived from Helios, as rivalling the sun in sheen. According to Lepsius it is the ‘usem’-metal of Thut-mes III.; Brugsch (i. 345) understands by ‘usem’ brass, and thinks Asmara or Asmala equivalent to the Hebrew hasmal or hashmal = electrum. In Bunsen (v. 757) Kasabet and Kakhi are brass (aurichalcum), and Khesbet is a metal connected with Kassiteros = tin. The alloy was known to Hesiod (‘Scut.’ 142) and to the ‘Odyssey’[301] (iv. 73), not to the ‘Iliad.’ Sophocles (‘Antig.’ 1037) applied ‘Sardian electrum’ to gold, not to silver. Herodotus (iii. 115), in the historic age (b.c. 480–30), gives the name of the mythical metal to the ‘tears of the Heliades,’ which the Latins called succinum (succum), the Low-Latins ambrum, the Arabs anbar, and we Amber. Pliny (xxxiii. 23), repeated by Pausanias (v. 12, § 6), notes two kinds, natural (‘in all gold ore there is some silver’[302]) and artificial; in the latter the proportion of silver must not exceed one-fifth. The staters of Lydian Crœsus, held by the Greeks to be the most ancient of coins, were, according to Böckh, of electrum, three parts gold and one part silver. Lucian applies the term to glass (ὕαλος); and, lastly, it was taken for brass and confounded with aurichalcum.[303]

I would suggest that this aurichalcum might also be the ‘Dowris bronze’ of Ireland, so called because first observed at Dowris, near Parsonstown, King’s County. Wilde (p. 360) supposes with others that the gold-coloured alloy depended upon the admixture of a certain proportion of lead, and compares it with the Cyprus copper termed by the Romans Coronarium (used for theatrical crowns), which was coated with ox-gall.[304] Of this or molu there are many articles in the Dublin Museum, preserving their fine golden-yellow lustre: they had probably been lacquered or varnished like modern brasses; and the patina might be some gum-resin. When much tarnished, they were cleaned by holding over the fire, and then by dipping in a weak solution of acid, as is done with modern castings. Two specimens, a Sword and a dagger-blade, were analysed (pp. 470, 483), and proved to contain copper 87·67 to 90·72, tin 8·52 to 8·25, lead 3·87 to 0·87, with a trace of sulphur in the Sword.[305] The specific gravities were 8·819 to 8·675. In a spear-head (p. 512), besides copper, tin, and lead, iron 0·31 and cobalt 0·09 were found.

There were other alloys of which we read but know little; such were the æs ægineticum, demonnesium, and nigrum; the æs deliacum, whose secret was lost in Plutarch’s day, and the Ταρτήσσιος χαλκὸς[306] from Southern Spain, probably shipped at Gibraltar Bay. Ollaria or pot-copper (brass) contained three pounds of plumbum argentarium (equal parts of tin and lead) to one hundred pounds of copper. Æs caldarium could only be fused. Finally, græcanicum (Greek-colour) was mould or second-hand copper (formalis seu collectaneus) with ten per cent. of plumbum nigrum (lead) and five per cent. of silver lead (argentiferous galena?).