[273] Appendix to Layard’s Nineveh and Babylon (London:
Murray). The proportions are nearly those of our day. We may assume our
common bronze at 11:100 for large, and 10:100 for small objects.
Cymbals and sounding instruments, however, contain tin 22:copper 78.
[274] Analysed by Mr. Robinson of Pimlico (Day, p. 110).
[275] Schliemann’s Troy, p. 361 (London: Murray, 1875).
[276] Sir W. Gell found the bronze nails in the ‘Treasury
of Atreus’ composed of 12 tin to 88 copper. The Trojan battle-axes,
according to Dr. Schliemann, yielded only 4, 8, and 9 per cent. of the
former metal.
[277] According to Helbig, the Palafittes and Terramare
villagers had spears but not Swords.
[278] For the tin-ore of Peru see Ethnolog. Journal, vol.
lxx. pp. 258–261. Rivero, p. 230, and Garcilasso, vol. i. p. 202.
[279] Amer. Journ. of Science, &c. v. 42; July 1866.
[280] From descriptions and drawings by Mr. J. H. Godfrey,
Mining Engineer-in-Chief to the Imperial Government of Japan.
[281] M.D., F.R.S., ‘Observations on some Metallic Arms and
Utensils, with Experiments to determine their Composition.’ Royal Soc.
London, June 9, 1796. Philosophical Transactions.
[282] Taken from Dr. Evans (Bronze Impl. &c. chap. xxi.). He
compiled it from Martineau & Smith’s Hardware Trade Journal (April
30, 1879).
[283] Wilkinson remarked that the Egyptian proportions of half
tin and half copper were whitish.
[284] Lord Rosse, in casting specula, preferred using copper
and tin in their atomic proportions, or 68·21 per cent. copper to 31·79
per cent. tin.
[285]Speltrum was introduced by Boyle. During the last
century much zinc was imported from India (possibly supplied by China),
and was called tutenag.
[286] Bohn’s Trans. ii. 32–45. The learned German begins
by stating that zinc was not known to the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs,
and then proceeds to prove that it was. The word ‘zinc’ (from zenken
or zacken, nails, spikes?) first occurs in the works of the
Iatro-chemist, Paracelsus, who died in a.d. 1541.
[287]Blende is a generic word, from blenden, to dazzle.
[289] At Goslar, however, according to Lohnriss, brass was
made in a.d. 1617.
[290] Pliny, xxxiii. 27. The solder (χρυσός and κόλλα, glue,
or κόλλησις) is attributed by Herod. (i. 25) to Glaucus of Chios, a
contemporary of Alyattes. The word kóllesis is variously rendered
‘soldering,’ ‘brazing,’ ‘welding,’ and ‘inlaying.’ Kóllesis was used
to agglutinate metals, and treated with a peculiar alkali (Pliny,
xxxiii. 24). The ‘gold glue’ (chrysocolla) is usually understood to
be a hydrosilicate of copper; not to be confounded with the χρυσόκολλα
or borax. The Mycenian goldsmiths soldered with the help of borax
(borate of soda): Professor Landerer, of Athens, found this salt on
an old medal from Ægina. It was called in the Middle Ages, Borax
Venetus, because imported by the Venetians from Persia; and it is the
Tinkal of modern India. According to Pliny, lead cannot be soldered
without tin, or tin without lead, and oil invariably must be used.
Later usage substituted for the latter colophonium and other resins:
we now solder by means of electricity. The same writer makes Nero
use chrysocolla-powder (a siliceous carbonate of copper, a kind of
blue-stone which would turn green by exposure to damp) for strewing the
circus, to give the course the colour of his favourite faction, the
Prasine (green).
[291] The Germans, who delight in German derivatives for
European words, would find leiton, &c., not in luteum, but in
löthen = to unite. There is little doubt, however, that the first
English manufactory of calamine brass at Esher, in Surrey, was set
up in the seventeenth century by Demetrius, a German. In Grimm’s
Dictionary, as noticed by Demmin (chap. i), bronze is erroneously
called messing (brass).
[292] Derived from ὄρος, οὖρος (mountain), or from Ὀρείος, the
discoverer. Metallic names in Greek are mostly masculine; in Latin and
modern usage, neutral. Oreichalcum or aurichalcum, a hybrid word,
became aurochalcum in the ninth century: the last corruption (middle
of the sixteenth century) was archal.
[293] De l’Orichalque. J. P. Rossignol (loc. cit.).
[294] Some translate this word ‘yellow frankincense’ (λίβανος)
colour; others derive it from Λίβανος, the Lebanon, and make it male,
argurolibanus, while leucolibanus (white) was female. Finally, the
word was explained by the old interpreters to be = ὀρείχαλκος = brass
of Mount (Lebanon).
[295] The tradition of Atlantis, a middle-land in the
Atlantic, has strong claims to our acceptance. The identity of the site
with the ‘Dolphin’s Ridge,’ a volcanic formation, and the shallows
noted by H.M.S. ‘Challenger,’ have been ably pleaded in Atlantis
(Ignatius Donnelly; London: Sampson Low, 1882). Perhaps we may trace
the vestiges in Saint Paul’s Rocks, the remarkable group of rocky
islets situate in the equatorial mid-Atlantic. Mr. Darwin supposed the
group to be an isolated example of non-volcanic oceanic insularity; but
Prof. Renard finds the ‘balance of proof decidedly in favour of the
volcanic origin of the rock.’ It will be remembered that Atlantis was
dismembered by earthquakes, eruptions, and subsidence.
[296] Quoted by Percy from Watson’s Chemical Essays (iv. p.
85, 1786).
[297] The artificial mixture of copper (four fifths) and gold
(one-fifth) was called pyropus (Pliny, xxxiv. 2), from its fiery red
tint; it was also made of gold and bronze, and termed chrysochalcos,
‘the king of metals.’ Æs corinthiacum (Pliny, xxxiv. 3), or
Corinthian brass, used for mirrors, composed of copper, silver (steel?
zinc?), and gold, was more valuable than gold. According to Pausanias
(ii. 3, § 3), this malleable and ductile metal was tempered in the
Fountain of Pyrene. The vulgar legend, refuted by Pliny, who tells the
tale (xxxiv. 6), dates it from the days of Mummius (b.c. 146).
A medal of Corinthian brass was analysed by the Duc de Luynes. Pliny
(xxxiv. 3) mentions three kinds, candidum, luteum, and hepatizon
(liver-colour), of equal quantities of metal; this probably resembled
our own alloys. Beckmann (sub voc. ‘Zinc’ and ‘Tin’) gives a list
of these and other compositions, Mannheim gold, Dutch gold, Prince’s
metal, Bristol brass, &c.
[298] Possibly the Armenian bole (Bol-i-Armani), used in the
East as a flux from time immemorial. The ‘dropping’ or ‘distilling’
(per descensum) must allude to a distillatory or condensing
apparatus, and the ‘false silver’ cannot be mercury, lead, or tin.
[299] Hence tutaneg and tutanego, which sometimes meant
an alloy of tin and bismuth. M. Polo (i. 21) describes ‘tutia’ as
very good for the eyes; and his notice of it, and of spodium, reads,
according to Colonel Yule, almost like a condensed translation of
Galen’s pompholyx, produced from cadmia or carbonate of zinc; and
spodos, the residue of the former, which falls on the hearth (De
Simp. Med. p. ix.). Matthioli makes pompholyx commonly known in the
laboratories by the Arabic name ‘tutia.’ The ‘tutia’ imported into
Bombay from the Gulf is made from an argillaceous ore of zinc, moulded
into tubular cakes, and baked to a moderate hardness.
[300] Masc. and fem.; the neut. ἤλεκτρον is the purest form.
Dr. Schliemann, noticing that it also means ‘amber’ (Mycenæ, p. 204),
derives it from ‘elek, signifying resin in Arabic (?), and probably
also in Phœnician (?).’ He found earrings of electrum in the so-called
‘Trojan Stratum,’ 30½ feet below the surface (Troy, p. 164). The
guanin or gianin of the Chiriquis was an aururet (electrum) of
19·3 per cent. of pure gold, with specific gravity 11·55. The tombac
or tombag of New Granada, used for statuettes, was also a gold of
low standard: 63 gold, 24 silver, 9 copper. Usually ‘tombac’ applies
to an alloy like Mannheim gold; the manufacture was introduced into
Birmingham, still its chief seat, by the Turner family, a.d. 1740.
[301] ‘Elektron,’ however, is generally translated ‘amber’;
and it may be the harpax, or drawer, for it occurs in the same
verse with ivory. Amber beads and weapon-handles were amongst Dr.
Schliemann’s finds. Rossignol (p. 347) supposes that electrum, the
pale-yellow or amber-coloured alloy of gold and silver, gave a name to
the gum amber.
[302] This text, stating a truth concerning native gold,
suggests amongst many that the ancients knew the départ, or
separation, of metals. It has been vehemently doubted whether they
could mineralise the white metal; that is, convert it to sulphide and
allow the gold to subside.
[303] Rossignol quotes Zonaras, Suidas, and John Pediasimus to
prove this position.
[304] We now lacquer with shell-lac dissolved in proof-spirit
and coloured with ‘dragon’s blood.’
[305] The lead was found in even larger proportions. See chap.
xiii.
[306] In my commentary on Camoens (Camoens: his Life and his
Lusiads), and again in To the Gold Coast for Gold (i. 17), I have
attempted to identify Western Tarshish or Tartessus with Carteia in
the Bay of Gibraltar. Newton makes Melcarth ‘King of Carteia’; but the
word may mean either ‘city-king’ (Malik-el-Karyat), or ‘earth-king’
(Malik-el-Arz).
[307] The well-known anthropologist, M. G. de Mortillet,
holds that the oldest type of bronze celt in France, Switzerland, and
Belgium, is that with straight flanges at the sides. This was followed
by the celt with transverse stop-ridge, by the true winged tool, by
the socketed adaptation, and, lastly, by the simple flat tool wanting
rib or flange, wing or socket, and formed of pure copper as well as
of bronze. Archæologists usually determine the last form to be the
earliest; but M. de Mortillet judges otherwise from the conditions
under which the finds occur.
[308] This weapon (gladius) is a Sword-blade, double-edged
or single-edged, straight or curved, and 4–9 inches long, much used
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It originated from the old
practice of binding the sickle, scythe, axe, hatchet, or Sword to the
end of a pole and thus forming a pike.
[309] The Amazons of the Mausoleum (Newton, Halicarnassus,
p. 235) are armed with axe, bow, and Sword; the Greeks with javelins and Swords.
[310] The Massagetæ (greater Jats or Goths) are opposed to
the Thyssa (or lesser) Getæ, and both used the sagaris. But while
some authors translate the word securis, others call it a ‘kind of
Sword,’ and others confuse it with the ἀκινάκης, the acinaces which
the Greek mentions separately (iv. 62, viii. 67). Strabo (xi. 8)
connects the Massagetæ (Goths) with the Sacæ (Saxons), and Major Jähn
derives Sacæ (the Shaka of the Hindus) from Saighead = Sagitta.
The term ‘Saxones’ was later than the age of Tacitus, and we first
find it in the days of Antoninus Pius. ‘Brevis gladius apud illos
(Saxones) Saxo vocatur’ suggests that the Seax was connected with
the race of old (Trans. Anthrop. Instit. May 1880).
[312] Egypt. akhu, Lat. ascia, Germ. Axt. The oldest
form is ‘aks’ (securis), the bipennis, ‘dversahs,’ and the
dolabrum ‘barte.’ In Lower Saxon axt is ‘exe,’ a congener of our ‘axe.’
[313] The word is variously written and explained.
[314] A silepe from the armoury of King Mosesh was shown at
the National Exhibition amongst objects from Natal (Col. A. Lane Fox,
Cat. p. 145).
[316] I have again noticed the sahs, seax, sax, and
scramasax in chap. xiii.
[317] Our ‘bill’ is the German Beil, the securis, or axe.
Both words appear to me congeners of the Greek βέλος, Sword or dart,
showing a missile-age, from βάλλειν, to throw; not, as Jähn thinks,
from the Sanskrit bhil. Robert Barret (1598) preferred the pike,
although owning that the bill had done good service. Even of late years
Messrs. John Mitchel and Meagher (‘of the Sword’) advised the wretched
Irish peasants to make pikes out of reaping-hooks.
[318] Prehistoric Times, p. 20. The Dublin Museum contains
1,283 articles of the Bronze Age.
[319] I assume as a type, the bronze Sword (Tafel iv.) in Die
Alterthümer von Hallstätten, Salzburg, &c. by Friedrich Simony (Wien, 1851).
[321] The word comes from the root which gave the Persian
áhan; the Irish iaran or yarann; the Welsh hiarn; the Armorican
uarn; the Gothic eisarn; the Danish iern; the Swedish iarn; the
Cimbric jara; the German Eisen, and the Latin ferrum, with the
neo-Latin ferro, hierro (Span.), &c. From iaran also we derive
Harnisch, harness.
[322] The unfortunate Cretans gained the name of ‘ever liars’
(ἀεὶ ψεῦσται) for telling what was probably the truth. They showed in
their island the grave of Jupiter, who must have been originally some
hero or chief deified after his death—evidently one of the origins
of worship. The evil report began with Callimachus (Hymn. in Jov.
8); and was continued in the proverbial τρία κάππα κάκιστα (Krete,
Kappadocia, and Kilikia). Hence the syllogistic puzzle of Eubulides:
‘Epimenides said that the Cretans are liars: Epimenides is a Cretan:
ergo, Epimenides is a liar: ergo, the Cretans are not liars:
ergo, Epimenides is not a liar.’
[323] Chap. iv. The Chalybs of Justin (xliv. 3) is a river
between the Ana (Guadiana) and the Tagus; called by Ptolemy and
Martianus, Κάλιπους or Κάλιπος. Æschylus alludes to the original
Chalybes when he personifies the Sword as the ‘Chalybian stranger,’
and in the same tragedy (Seven against Thebes) he entitles it ‘the
hammer-wrought Scythian steel.’
[324] ‘To the abundance of iron we may attribute the fact that
the Africans appear to have passed direct from the stone implements,
that are now found in the soil, to those of iron, without passing
through the intermediate bronze period which, in Egypt and other
countries, intervened between the ages of stone and iron.’—Anthropol.
Coll. pp. 128–134.
[325] ‘The High Antiquity of Iron and Steel,’ a valuable paper
read before the Philos. Soc. Glasgow, printed in Iron (1875–76), and
kindly sent to me by the editor, Mr. Nursey; also The Prehistoric Use
of Iron and Steel (Trübner, London, 1877), from which Mr. Day has
allowed me to make extracts.
[326] The question is to be determined by facts, not theories.
Hitherto we are justified in believing, from the skeletons dug up at
great depths, or found in caves associated with the mammals which they
destroyed, that Man in prehistoric times was of a low physical, and
therefore mental type. We shall believe the opposite view when we are
shown ancient crania equal, if not superior, to those of the present
day—relics that will revive the faded glories of ‘Father Adam’ and
‘Mother Eve.’ But, meanwhile, we cannot be expected to believe in ipse
dixits, inspired or uninspired.
[327] For instance, in North-Western Europe, the early iron
age began about a.d. 250, according to Konrad Englehardt
(Denmark in the early Iron Age, p. 4, London, 1866), quoted by Mr. Day.
[328] Egypt’s Place in Universal History, vol. v.; London,
Longmans, 1867, with additions by Samuel Birch, LL.D.
[329] When Laplace made meteorolites ejections from lunar
volcanoes, Chladni suggested that they were masses of metallic matter,
moving in irregular orbits through interplanetary, and possibly
interstellar, space.
[330] This word is tortured by non-Orientalists into various
ill-forms. The Arabs write it جيزة (Jízeh), and the Egyptians
pronounce it Gízeh, not Ghizeh.
[331] A full-sized drawing appeared in vol. vii. of
Proceedings of the Phil. Soc. Glasgow; and was repeated by Mr. Day in
his book, Pl. II. he also gives Belzoni’s sickle, Pl. I.
[332] When visiting the ‘Tombs of the Soldans,’ Cairo, I
found a slab of blue basalt bearing the cartouche of Khufu, used as
a threshold for one of the buildings. The characters had been partly
erased; but the material was too hard for the barbarians who had misused it.
[333] I have elsewhere noticed (chap. iv.) the colours of
metals in the painted tombs of Thebes, and the blue (cyanus-colour) of
the butcher’s steel. The history of this homely article is instructive.
For hundreds of years it retained, in England and elsewhere, its
original shape, an elongated cone. At last some ‘cute citizen had
the idea of breaking the surface into four edges, and of hardening
it with nickel. The simple improvement now fits it for sharpening
everything from a needle to a razor: it thus frees us from the ‘needy
knife-grinder,’ who right well deserved to be needy, as he disadorned
everything he touched.
[334] Antiquity of the Use of Metals, especially Iron, among
the Egyptians, p. 18 (London, 1868). Also Ueber die Priorität des
Eisens oder der Bronze in Ostasien, by Dr. M. Müller (Trans. Vienna
Anthrop. Soc. vol. ix.).
[335] I assume this date because it marks when the spring
equinox (vernal colure) occurred in the Taurus-sign. The earliest
of the six epochs proposed by Egyptologists is b.c. 5702
(Böckh), and the latest is b.c. 3623 (Bunsen); the mean being
b.c. 4573, and the difference a matter of 2079 years (Brugsch, i. 30).
[336] The Table of Sakkarah (Memphis), found about the end
of 1864 by the late Mariette Pasha, dates from Ramses the Great
(thirteenth century b.c.), and makes Mibampes the first
of his fifty-six ancestors. No. 2 is the new tablet of Abydos,
discovered, also in 1864, by Herr Dümmichen; it enabled scholars to
supply the illegible name in No. 3, the priceless Turin Papyrus, the
hieratic Canon of the Ptolemies. Mirbampes, Mirbapen, or Mi-ba of the
monuments is, called in Manetho ‘Miebides, son of Usarphædus’ (Cory’s
Fragments, p. 112).
[337] Of Ramses II., who, with his father Seti, represents
the Greek Sesostris, the Sesesu-Ra of the monuments. (Brugsch, Hist.
ii. 53–62: see my chap. viii.) Prof. G. Ebers has made this Egyptian
proto-Homerid the hero of his romance, Uarda (i.e. Wardah, ‘the Rose’).
[338] De Iside et Osiride. He quotes Manetho the Priest, who
wrote during the reign of the first Ptolemy, and who told unpleasant
truths concerning Moses, the Hebrews, and the Exodus.
[339] The limestones of Carniola produce heaps of pisoliths,
which require only smelting; and hence, probably, the early Iron Age of
Noricum and its neighbourhood.
[340] They suggest the magnetic and titaniferous iron sands
of Wicklow, of New Zealand, of Australia, and of a variety of sites
mentioned in To the Gold Coast for Gold, ii. 111.
[343] Proc. Soc. Antiq. second series, vol. v., June 1873.
Mr. Hartland added rubbings of various Pharaohnic stones, hoping to
‘show how little the mind of civilised man has developed during 3,000
years.’ A pleasant lesson to humanity! But after all thirty centuries
are a mere section of the civilisation which began in Egypt.
[344] The Corsican is simply a blacksmith’s forge. The Catalan
has a heavy hammer and blowing-machine; if the trompe be used, a fall
of water is required for draught. The Stückofen is a Catalan extended
upwards in the form of a quadrangular or circular shaft, 10–16 feet
high.
[345] It is to be noted that flint implements were found
all about these works: Mr. Hartland brought home from them silex
arrow-heads. The late lamented Professor Palmer observed them in
other parts of the Pharan peninsula, and I made a small collection in
Midian. In the Journ. of the Anthrop. Soc. 1879, I showed, following
Mr. Ouvry, Sir John Lubbock, and others, that Cairo is surrounded by
ancient flint-ateliers. M. Lartet explored them in Southern Palestine;
I picked them up near Bethlehem (Unexplored Syria, ii. 289). The Abbé
Richard and others traced them at Elbireh (in the Tiberiad); between
Tabor and the Lake; and, lastly, at Galgal, where Joshua circumcised.
Lastly, my late friend Charles F. Tyrwhitt-Drake, when travelling with
me, came upon an atelier east of Damascus. I have noticed General
Pitt-Rivers’ great Egyptian discovery in chap. ii.
[346]Hek or hak (chief) has a suspicious resemblance to
Shaykh and sos to sús, the mare, characteristically ridden by the
Bedawin. In old Egyptian sos is a buffalo.
[347] Movers (Phönicier, ii. 3), quoted by Dr. Evans
(Bronze, &c. 5), finds bronze (copper?) 44 and iron 13 times in the
Pentateuch, and he theorises upon the later introduction of the latter.
But when was the Pentateuch written in its present form?
[352] This term seems first to have been used by Orosius (i.
2) in our fourth century.
[353] In chap. ix. I shall attempt to show that Naharayn (the
dual of Nahr, a river) is also applied to Palestine in such phrases as
‘Tunipe (Daphne-town) of Naharayn.’
[354] Dr. Percy found that certain Assyrian bronzes had been
cast round a support of the more tenacious metal, thus combining
strength with lightness.
[355] M. F. Lenormant (‘Les Noms d’Airain et du Cuivre dans
les deux Langues ... de la Chaldée et de l’Assyrie, Trans. Soc. Bibl.
Archæology, vi. part 2) renders parzillu, iron; abar, lead;
shiparru (Arab. صفر, brass), bronze; anaku, tin; eru or erudu,
copper or bronze (Arab. ايار, copper or brass); kashpu, silver;
and kurashu, gold. The learned author discovers in the cuneiforms
repeated mention of the ‘ships of Mákan’ and the Kur Makannata
(mountain of Makná), which he translates ‘Pays de Mákan’: finding
it a great centre of copper, he is inclined to confound it with the
so-called Sinaitic Peninsula. I have only to refer readers to ‘Makná’
in my three volumes on the Land of Midian.
[357] The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern
World, vol. i. p. 62. London, 1871.
[358] The first period extended from b.c. 1500 to
909. The second from b.c. 909 to 745: the most marking names
being Assurnazirpal = ‘Ashur (arbiter of the gods) protects his son,’
who built the north-west palace of Nimrúd, b.c. 884; and his
son Shalmanezer II. of the Black Obelisk (Brit. Museum), b.c.
850. The third period (b.c. 745–555) numbered Tiglath-Pileser
II., b.c. 745–727 (a single generation before the first
Olympic, b.c. 776, when the mythic age of Greece emerges
into the historical); Sennacherib (705–681); Esarhaddon (680–668),
Assur-bani-pal (668–640); Nebuchadnezzar in 604–561, a contemporary
of Solon (b.c. 594); Nergalsharuzur (b.c. 557);
and the last Nabonidus (b.c. 555). Herodotus (b.c.
450) wrote about a century after the end of the third period, Ctesias
in b.c. 395, and Berosus in b.c. 280. We have, it
is clear, absolutely no historic proof that ‘the patriarchal system
of communities first locally developed itself at the mouth of the
Euphrates Valley,’ or began in any part of the great Mesopotamian plain.
[359] Rev. B. H. Cooper (loc. cit.) would derive ‘Ida’ from
the Semitic יר (yad, hand), and make the Daktyls, or fingers, its
peaks.
[360] I shall reserve for chap. xi. notices of iron by the
classic and sacred poets of Greece.
[361] Troy and its Remains, p. 362; the analysis by M.
Damour of Lyons.
[362] The theory of Stephani, Schulze, and others concerning
the Byzantine date and Herulian origin of the Mycenæan graves, has been
treated in England with some respect by Mr. A. S. Murray and Mr. Perry.
[363] According to Pausanias, Alyattes, the Lydian king (ob.
b.c. 570), dedicated to his god, amongst other offerings, an
inlaid iron saucer.
[364] Neither from this nor from any other passage can we
ascertain whether the Chalybes tribe gave its name to chalybs
(steel), or whether the material worked named the workmen.
[365] Colonel Yule (M. Polo, ii. 96) remarks that in the
Middle Ages steel was regarded as a distinct natural species made of
another ore, and relates how a native to whom an English officer had
explained the process of tempering replied, ‘What, would you have
me believe that if I put an ass into the furnace it will come out a horse?’
[366]Acies is properly the edge, that is, the steeled or
cutting part of an instrument, which may be case-hardened. Hence the
later words aciare, to steel, and aciarium, sharpening steel;
hence, too, the neo-Latin acier, acciaio, &c.
[367] See chap. xiii. Dr. Evans (Bronze, 275) says, ‘How far
their process of burying iron until part of it had rusted away would,
in the case of charcoal iron, leave the remaining portion more of the
nature of steel, I am unable to say.’ It will appear that this burying
is often spoken of; I have never seen it practised.