Chapter III

.

[90] A commentator volunteers the information that the bow was tipped with ram’s-horn. Nor is there any need to translate ‘goat’ by _ibex_.

[91] Pemberton, _Travels_.

[92] Hakluyt’s edit., p. 43. The index to this publication is very defective: one must look through the whole volume for a line of quotation. I shall again notice it in the next chapter.

[93] Wilkinson (Sir J. Gardner), _A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians_, i. chap. 5, mentions only tips of hard wood, flint, and metals.

[94] The _Roteiro_ or _Ruttier_ of the _Voyage of Vasco da Gama_ (p. 5, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional) speaks of tribes about the Cape of Good Hope armed with horn-weapons ‘worked by fire’ (_huuns cornos tostados_). I should suggest that ‘_cornos_’ is an error for _páos_ (wooden staves).

[95] The khanjar proper is shaped like a yataghan, of which more presently.

[96] I avoid treating of armour in a book devoted to the Sword; but the Horn Age compels me to show, in a few words, how that material, combined with hoofs, gave rise to scale armour. Pausanias, confirmed by Tacitus, informs us that the Sarmatians (Slavs) prepared the horse-hoofs of their large herds and sewed them with nerves and sinews to overlap like the surface of a fir-cone. He adds that this lorica was not inferior in strength or in elegance to the metal-work of the Greeks. The Emperor Domitian wore a corslet of boars’-hoofs stitched together; and a fragment of such horn-armour was found at Pompeii. Ammianus Marcellinus describes the Sarmatians and the Quadi as protected by loricas of horn-flakes planed, polished, and fastened like feathers upon a linen sheet. A defence composed of the hoofs of some animal, made to hold together without the aid of an inner jerkin, and used in some parts of Asia, is represented in Meyrick (plate iii.). A stone figure of old type similarly defended, and bearing an inscription in a dialect cognate with Greek, appears in vol. iii. _Journ. Archæol. Assoc._ Herodotus (vii. 76) tells us of a people, whose name has disappeared, that, in addition to their brazen helmets, they wore the ears and horns of an ox in brass. This horn-helmet shows the savage practice of defending the head with the skins of beasts and their appendages.

[97] The _Pfahlbauten im Laibacher Moraste_ were first noticed in the _Neue Freie Presse_, August 27, 1875; secondly, by the _Neue Deutsche Alpenzeitung_, of Vienna, Sept. 4, 1875; thirdly, by Herr Custos Deschmann (to whom the discovery is attributed) in his paper _Die Pfahlbauten auf dem Laibacher Moore_ (Verhand. der Wiener K. K. Geolog. Reichsanstalt, Nov. 16, 1875); and, fourthly, by Carl Freiherr von Czoernig, whose study (_Ueber die Vorhistorischen Funde im Laibacher Torfmoor_) was read at the Alpine Society of Trieste on December 8, 1875. Between that time and 1880 the subject has been illustrated by many writers. The course of discovery also has been ‘forwards;’ and the whole moor was about to be drained in 1881.

[98] Perhaps this may explain the ‘pierced implements of unknown use’ found with harpoon-heads of reindeer-horn in a cavern near Bruniguel, France. Two picks made of reindeer-antlers were produced by the ‘Grimes Graves,’ Westing Parish, Norfolk.

[99] The animal remains were of bears, wolves, lynxes, beavers, badgers (probably the cave-species), hogs, goats, sheep (differing in the jaw-bone from _ovis_), dogs (common, and not eaten), and cattle with small teeth like those of the aurochs. The bird-bones resembled those of the common duck. Man was rare, suggesting that the pile-villagers buried on the adjacent slopes; the only human ‘find’ was an inferior maxilla with teeth much worn.

[100] The word _paalstab_, _palstab_, or _palstave_ is usually translated ‘labouring-staff,’ from _at pula_ or _pala_, to labour, _labourer_. Dr. John Evans (_Bronzes_, &c., p. 72) prefers ‘spade-staff,’ the verb being _at pæla_, to dig, and the noun _pall_, a spade, spud, shovel; the Latin _pala_, the French _pelle_, and our (baker’s) _peel_, or wooden shovel. He confines the term ‘pal-stave’ to two forms; the first is the winged celt with the lateral extensions hammered to make a socket; the second is the spud-shaped form, with a thinner blade above than below the side-flanges.

[101] M. Kugelmann, of Hamburg—a wholesale merchant, who kindly showed me his warehouse—prefers the horns of the North American and Japanese stag, especially when buttons are to be made of the crown.

[102] _Reports on the Discovery of Peru_, by Clements R. Markham, C.B., p. 53 (London: Hakluyt Soc. 1872).

[103] Oldfield’s ‘Aborigines of Australia’ (_Trans. Eth. Soc._). The author was employed (1861) in collecting specimens of timber for the International Exhibition.

[104] Commissioner for Victoria at the Geographical Congress of Venice, September 1881.

[105] It is instructive to note the novel application of old inventions to general use when the necessities of the age demand them. The detonating and explosive force of gunpowder was known, in the form of squibs and fireworks, centuries before firearms were required. The power of steam, as a whirling toy and a copper vessel prove, was familiar to the old Egyptians, and perhaps to the Greeks and Romans under the name of _æolipylæ_ αἰόλου πύλαι. But only at the end of the last century its motive force attracted general attention; it became a necessary of civilised life, and at once superseded the sailer and the stage coach. And by aid of the Past we may project the Future. Man will bungle over the balloon, but he will never fly straight till railways and steamers become too slow for him: when ‘levitation,’ in fact, shall become a necessity. Now the mode of transit would be an unmitigated evil to humanity.

[106] In the Monuments Civils of the Salle de l’Est, Vitrine A. H., at the south side. I can give only the old arrangement, which was changed in 1879–80. During my last visit (November 1882) the new order had not been completed. These club-swords are accompanied by throw-sticks, hatchets, and knob-kerries. The old Lisáns from Thebes are illustrated by Wilkinson (_loc. cit._ i. 5). The name, however, is _not_ ‘lissan,’ and they are _not_ made of acacia, a soft wood that readily perishes. Why will writers confound acacia and mimosa?

[107] The arrangement of the Swords when I last visited the collection (August 1878) was temporary till classified. The wooden blades referred to were in the Petrie Section (Case 21) to the east.

[108] So the sovereign of England appointed his Lord High Treasurer by handing over to him a white rod, and the Lord Steward of the Household by presenting a white staff with the words: ‘Seneschall, tenez le bâton de nostre hostiell.’ Holding the staff was equivalent to the royal commission, and when not in the presence it was carried by a footman bareheaded. On the death of his liege lord the great functionary broke the staff over the corpse, and his duties were at an end. The Lord Marshall of England was expressly permitted to bear a gold truncheon with the royal arms at one end, and on the other his own enamelled in black. The king solemnly gave the ‘Marshall’s rod’ into the hands of Maude, daughter of the Earl of Pembroke, who made it over to her son, Earl Roger.

[109] It derives from _booroomooroong_; and the latter denotes, among the Maoris, a part of the ceremonies practised when the boys are being made men. The symbol, we are told (Collins, _New South Wales_, p. 346), is knocking out a tooth with the aid of a throwing-stick. Mr. Howard Spenseley (_loc. cit._) makes the average boomerang 60 centimètres long by 0·6 broad and 0·15 thick: he gives it a flight of 100 mètres.

[110] Strangers in Egypt often suppose the true asp to be the _Cerastes_, or horned snake. As the hieroglyphics and the monuments prove, it is invariably the cobra de capello (_Coluber Haja_), an inhabitant of Africa as well as of Asia. The colour of this deadly thanatophid—which annually kills thousands in India—varies with its habitat from light yellow to dull green and dark brown. The worst I ever saw are upon the Guinea Coast.

[111] Anthrop. Soc. July 11, 1882. General Pitt-Rivers, I believe, would localise the boomerang to the neighbourhood of the Indian Ocean, and deny it to Europe and America.

[112] _Loc. cit._ vol. i. chap. iv. pp. 235, 236, 237, in the abridged edition.

[113] Lib. iv. 4, § 3.

[114] _Pragmateia_, vi. 22, § 1; a fragmentary but admirable account of the Roman army.

[115] _Trans. Irish Assoc._ vol. xix. The Romans also called it _aclys_ (_Æn._ vii. 730), which the dictionaries render as a ‘kind of dart.’ It was an archaic and barbarian weapon; and Virgil (_Æn._ vii. 730) attributes it to the Osci:—

Teretes sunt aclydes illis Tela: sed hæc lento mos est aptare flagello.

This would mean that after the weapon is thrown it might be drawn back again with a leather thong. Possibly the _cateia_ of Isidore (_cateia_, to cut or mangle, and _catan_, to fight; the Irish caꞇ̇ and the Welsh _kad_, a fight or a corps of fighters, Latin _caterva_), survives in the tip-_cat_. In the Keltic dialect of Wales _catai_ is a weapon.

[116] See his learned note (p. 410) on the weapon and on Isidore (_Orig._ xviii. 7): ‘Hæc est cateia quam Horatius cajam dicit.’ The disputed word probably derives from the Keltic _katten_, to cast, to throw.

[117] _Nile Tributaries_, by Sir Samuel W. Baker, p. 51. The word has a curious likeness to the ‘tombat,’ a similar weapon in Australia (Col. A Lane-Fox, _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 31).

[118] The ‘Fans’ of M. du Chaillu, a corruption unfortunately adopted by popular works. In _Gorilla-Land_ (i. 207) I have noticed the Náyin, or Mpangwe crossbow (with poisoned _ebe_, or dwarf bolt), which probably travelled up-Nile like the throw-stick. The _détente_ and method of releasing the string from its notch are those of the toy forms of the European weapon. The Museum at Scarborough contains a crossbow from the Bight of Benin. The people of Bornu (North-West Africa) also use a crossbow rat-trap.

[119] It is called _chakarani_ in the _Coasts of East Africa and Malabar Coast_, by Duarte Barbosa or Magellan (?). The Jibba negroes of Central Africa wear a similar weapon as a bracelet, sheathed in a strip of hide.

[120] Col. A. Lane-Fox, _Anthrop. Coll._, p. 33. For a comparative anatomy of the boomerang the reader will consult that volume, pp. 28–61. I have here noticed only the most remarkable points.

[121] The Sword stood in Case 2 of the Salle du Centre, numbered 695; and was described in p. 225 of the late Mariette Pasha’s catalogue. I cannot quite free myself from a suspicion that it was also a boomerang of unusual size. Some of the South African tribes still use throw-sticks a yard to a yard and a half long. ‘They are double as thick at one end as they are at the other,’ says Herr Holub (ii. 340), ‘the lighter extremity being in the usual way about as thick as one’s finger.’

[122] This meaningless word (_cartuccia_, a scrap of paper) was applied by Champollion to the elliptical oval containing a group of hieroglyphics. It is simply an Egyptian shield (Wilkinson, _loc. cit._ i. chap. 5), and the horizontal line below shows the ground upon which it rested. The old Nile-dwellers, like the classics of Europe and the modern Chinese, use the shield for their characteristics, their heraldic badges, &c. The same was the case with our formal heraldry, which originated about the time of the Crusades, personal symbolism being its base. As Mr. Hardwick shows, the horse, raven, and dragon were old familiar badges; many of our sheep-marks are identical with ‘ordinaries,’ and the tribes of Australia used signs to serve as _kobongs_, or crests. Thus, too, in fortification the shield became the crenelle and the battlement, and it served to ‘iron-clad’ the war-galleys of the piratical Norsemen.

[123] So there are two ways of swimming. The civilised man imitates the action of the frog, the savage the dog, throwing out the arms and drawing the hands towards his chest.

[124] _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ vol. iii. pp. 7–29, April, 1873.

[125] An illustration is given in Mr. J. G. Wood’s _Natural History of Man_. He also quotes Mr. F. Baines, who describes the paddles of the North Australians with barbed and pointed looms.

[126] Capt. James Mackenzie, in a paper read before the Ethno. Soc. by Mr. G. M. Atkinson (_Journal_, vol. ii. No. 2, of July 18, 1870. The paddle is figured pl. xiv. 2).

[127] Translated for the Hakluyt Society (1874) by Mr. Albert Tootal, of Rio de Janeiro, who wisely preserved the plain and simple style of the unlettered and superstition-haunted gunner.

[128] In Bacon’s day (_Aphorisms_, book ii.) gummy woods were supposed to be rather a Northern growth, ‘more pitchy and resinous than in warm climates, as the fir, pine, and the like.’ They are as abundant near the Equator, where the viscidity preserves them from the alternate

## action of burning suns and torrential rains; moreover, they are harder

and heavier than the pines and firs of the Temperates.

[129] _Historia Geral do Brazil_, by F. Adolpho de Varnhagen, vol. i. p. 112 (Laemmert, Rio de Janeiro, 1854).

[130] M. Paul Bataillard (p. 409, _Sur le Mot Pagaie_, Soc. Anthrop. de Paris, 1874) is in error, both when he calls the people of Paraguay ‘Pagayas,’ or ‘carriers of lances,’ and when he identifies Pagaya (not a spear, but a paddle-sword) with the ‘sagaia or assagai.’ The latter word is of disputed origin, and it is meaningless in the tongues of South Africa. Space forbids me to touch its history, except superficially. ‘Azagay,’ a lance, or rather javelin, appears in Spanish history as far back as the days of Ojeda (1509); and in 1497 the Portuguese of Vasco da Gama’s expedition use the term ‘azagayas’ (p. 12, Roteiro or Ruttier, before alluded to). I believe both to be derived from the Arabic _el-khazúk_, a spit—in fact, the Italian _spiedo_, lance.

[131] Markham (p. 203, Cieça de Leon) makes ‘Macaná’ a Quichua word; it also belongs to the great Tupi-Guarani family.

[132] _Antiquarian Researches_, quoted by Markham, _loc. cit._ p. 181.

[133] The Godeffroy Collection has produced a huge Catalogue of 687 pages (_Die ethnographisch-anthropologische Abtheilung des Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg_, vol. i. 8vo (L. Friederichsen u. Co. 1881). It was shown to me by Dr. Graeffe, the naturalist often mentioned in ‘_South Sea Bubbles_, by the Earl and the Doctor.’ As a rule the Samoans had clubs and spears, but few Swords.

[134] This part of Melanesia has been familiar to the home reader by the life, labours, and death of Bishop Patterson.

[135] Case 21, Petrie, No. 142.

[136] The village of Abu Rawásh, north of the Pyramids of Jízah, still works this material in large quantities; and its _caillouteurs_, or flint-knappers, have produced excellent imitations of the so-called prehistoric weapons. I have described the flint finds of Egypt in the _Journ. Anthrop. Instit._ (Feb. 1879), and shall have something more to say about them. A Mr. R. P. Greg, who writes in the same Journal (May 1881) on the ‘Flint Implements of the Nile Valley,’ is not aware of the fact that I found worked flints near the larger petrified forest (Cairo). Since that time General Pitt-Rivers made his grand discovery of ‘Chert Implements in stratified Gravel in the Nile Valley’ (_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ May 1882). In March 1881, when visiting the Wady, near Elwat El-Díbán (Hill of Flies) amongst the cliffs of Thebes, he came upon palæolithic flints, flakes worked with bulbs and facets embedded in the hardened grit, six and a half to ten feet below the surface. In the same strata tombs had been cut, flat-topped chambers with quadrangular pillars. The fragments of pottery enabled Dr. Birch to pronounce these excavations ‘not later than the eighteenth dynasty, and perhaps earlier.’ The New Empire in question was founded by Amosis (_Mah-mes_, or Moon-child) _circ._ B.C. 1700; it included the three great Tothmes, and lasted about three hundred years, ending with the heretic Amun-hotep IV., slave of Amun, _circ._ B.C. 1400, and Horemhib, the Horus of Manetho. The worked flints may evidently date thousands of years before that period. This is a discovery of the highest importance, and we may expect, with Mr. Campbell, that the ‘works of men’s hands will be found abundantly underlying the oldest history in the world, in the hard gravel which underlies the mud of the Nile-hollow from Cairo to Assouan.’ At any rate, this find disposes of the scientific paradox that Art has no infancy in Nile-land. The strange fancy has been made popular by the Egyptologist, who threatens to become as troublesome as the Sanskritist.

[137] It is figured (p. 8) by Dr. John Evans (_Ancient Stone Implements_, &c.), who offers another ‘poniard’ (perhaps a scraper) on p. 292. On p. 308 he notes the large thin flat heads called ‘Pechs’’ (Picts’?) knives.’

[138] Nephrite is so called because once held a sovereign cure for kidney disease. Jade is found in various parts of Europe (Page); in the Hartz (or Resin) Mountains; in Corsica (Bristowe), and about Schweinsal and Potsdam (Rudler). Saussurite, the ‘Jade of the Alps,’ appears about the Lake of Geneva and on Monte Rosa. Mr. Dawkins limits Jade proper in the Old World to Turkestan and China. _Jade_, the Chinese _you_, is popularly derived from the Persian _jádú_ = (the) magic (stone).

[139] I need hardly notice that the mussel-shell was the original spoon, still a favourite with savages.

[140] Humboldt (_Pers. Narr._ vol. i. p. 100) makes the Guanches call obsidian ‘tabona’; most authors apply the word to the Guanche knife of obsidian.

[141] Neuhoff, _Travels_, &c. xiv. 874.

[142] Our word ‘glass’ derives from _glese_ (_gless_, _glessaria_), applied by the old Germans to amber (Tacit. _De Mor. Germ._ cap. 45). Pliny (xxxvii. chap. 11) also notices _glæsum_ (amber) and Glæsaria Island, by the natives called Austeravia.

[143] Stephens, _Yucatan_, i. 100.

[144] The curious and artistic rock inscriptions and engravings of the South African Bushmen were traced in outline by triangular flint-flakes mounted on sticks to act as chisels. The subjects were either simple figures; cows, gnus, and antelopes, a man’s bust and a woman carrying a load; or compositions, as ostrich and rider, a jackal chasing a gazelle, or a rhinoceros hunting an ostrich.

[145] See Chap. I.

[146] _Voyage Pittoresque autour du Monde_, par M. Louis Choris, Peintre, 1822.

[147] _Trans. Ethno. Soc._ vols. i. and ii. p. 290.

[148] Quoted by Col. Lane Fox, _Prim. War._ i. 25.

[149] _Prehistoric Man_, by Daniel Wilson (vol. i. pp. 216–17).

[150] _Incidents of Travel in Central America_, &c., p. 51; by J. Lloyd Stephens. The work is highly interesting, because it shows Egypt in Central America. Compare the Copan Pyramid with that of Sakkarah; the Cynocephalus head (i. 135) with those of Thebes; the beard, a tuft on the chin; the statue and its headdress (ii. 349); the geese-breeding at the palace (ii. 316); the central cross (ii. 346) which denotes the position of the solstices and the equinoxes and the winged globe at Ocosingo (ii. 259). In Yucatan the _Agave Americana_ took the place of the papyrus for paper-making. Indo-China also appears in the elephant-trunk ornaments (i. 156).

[151] _Prim. War._ ii. p. 25.

[152] The two latter are in Demmin, p. 84.

[153] A specimen is in the British Museum, Department of Meteorolites. (_Prim. War._ p. 25.)

[154] The distinguished physicist, Prof. Huxley, extends on purely anthropological grounds, the name ‘Australioids’ to the Dravidians of India, the Egyptians, ancient and modern, and the dark-coloured races of Southern Europe. I have ventured to oppose this theory in Chap. VIII. Mr. Thomas, curious to say, would make letters (alphabet, &c.) arise amongst the Dravidian quasi-savages.

[155] _Trans. Anthrop. Inst._ May 1881. Mr. Milne brought home some fine specimens of worked stones, one of which (No. 17, pl. xviii.) is a chopper in the shape of the Egyptian flint-knives.

[156] Mr. Heath (who directed the Indian Iron and Steel Company) opined that the tools with which the Egyptians engraved hieroglyphics on syenite and porphyry were made of Indian steel. The theory is, as we shall see, quite uncalled for.

[157] For instance, the magnificent life-sized statue of Khafra (Cephren or Khabryes) in the Bulak Museum, dated B.C. 3700–3300 (Brugsch, _History_, vol. i. p. 78). Scarabæi of diorite can be safely bought in Egypt, the substance being too hard for cheap imitation work. Dr. Henry Schliemann constantly mentions diorite in his _Troy and its Remains_ (1875); for instance, ‘wedges’ (i.e. axes) large and small, (pp. 21, 28, 154): he speaks of an immense quantity of diorite implements (p. 75); of a Priapus of diorite twelve inches high (p. 169); of ‘curious little sling bullets’ (p. 236), and of hammers (p. 285). At Mycenæ he found ‘two well-polished axes of diorite.’ But as he also calls it ‘hard black stone,’ I suspect it to be basalt, as his ‘green stone’ (_Troy_, p. 21) may be jade or jadeite.

[158] Casting the cannon called after the late General Uchatius is still kept a secret; and I have been unable to see the process at the I. R. Arsenal, Vienna.

[159] _Stahl-bronce_ = steel (i.e. hardened) bronze. The misunderstanding caused some ludicrous errors to the English press.

[160] I reported to the _Athenæum_ (August 16, 1879) this ‘recovery’ of the lost Egyptian (and Peruvian) secret for tempering copper and bronze, which had long been denied by metallurgists. Copper hardened by alloy is described in the _Archæologia_, by Governor Pownall. Mr. Assay-Master Alchorn found in it particles of iron, which may, however, have been in the ore, and some admixture of zinc, but neither silver nor gold.

[161] Of this I shall have more to say in Chap. V.

[162] This was the weight of the statue of ‘Sesostris,’ Ramses II., and his father Pharaoh Seti I.; see Chap. IX. The overseer standing upon its knee appears about two-thirds the length of the lower leg (Wilkinson, Frontisp. vol. ii.). Pliny treats of colossal statues, xxxiv. 18.

[163] _Les Métaux dans l’Antiquité_, par J. P. Rossignol. Paris: Durand, 1863.

[164] So Professor F. Max Müller, _Lectures on the Science of Language_, asserted, with a carelessness rare in so learned a writer (vol. ii. p. 255. London: Longmans, 1873), that ‘the ancients knew a process of hardening that pliant metal (copper), most likely by repeated smelting (heating?) and immersion in water.’ This latter is the common process for _softening_ the metal.

[165] Cieza de Leon (Introd. p. xxviii.): ‘Humboldt mentions a cutting instrument found near Cuzco (‘_the_ City’) which was composed of 0·94 parts of copper and 0·06 of tin. The latter metal is scarcely ever found in South America, but I believe there are traces of it in parts of Bolivia. In some of the instruments silica was substituted for tin.’ The South American tin is mostly impure; still it was and can be used.

[166] Apparently there are two forms of ‘Núb’ (gold), the necklace and the washing-bowl. See