Chapter VIII

.

[167] Pliny, xxxvi. 65.

[168] Here Elton, like others of his age, mistranslates Chalcos by ‘brass’:

Their mansions, implements, and armour shine In brass,—dark iron slept within the mine.

[169] Engraving on copper-plates is popularly attributed to Maso Finiguerra, of Florence, in 1460; but the Romans engraved maps and plans, and the ancient Hindus grants, deeds, &c. on copper-plates.

[170] I regret the necessity of troubling the learned reader with these stock quotations, but they are essential to the symmetry and uniformity of the subject.

[171] Sophocles and Ovid make Medea, and Virgil makes Elissa, use a sickle of chalcos. Homer, as will be seen, uses the same material for his arms, axes, and adzes. Pausanias follows him, quoting his description of Pisander’s axe and Meriones’ arrow; he also cites Achilles’ spear in the temple of Athene at Phaselis, with its point and ferrule of chalcos, and the similar sword of Memnon in the temple of Æsculapius at Nicomedia. Plutarch tells us that the sword and spear-head of Theseus, disinterred by Cymon in Scyros, were of copper. Empedocles, who (B.C. 444)—

ardentem frigidus Ætnam Insiluit—

was betrayed by his sandal shoon with chalcos soles.

[172] See Macrob. _Sat._ vi. 3.

[173] Or ‘a furbisher (whetter, sharpener = _acuens_) of every cutting tool of copper and iron.’ See Chap. IX.

[174] I can hardly understand why Dr. Evans (p. 5) insists upon these sockets being bronze, as they could ‘hardly have been done from a metal so difficult to cast as unalloyed copper.’ He greatly undervalues the metallurgy of the Exodist Hebrews, who would have borrowed their science from Egypt.

[175] Lead is also mentioned, but not tin.

[176] A certain Herr Dromir patented in Germany a process for making malleable bronze. He added one per cent. of mercury to the tin, and then mixed it with the molten copper.

[177] For Irish copper swords see the _Archéologie_, vol. iii. p. 555. They will be exhaustively described in Part II.

[178] So Chalcis in Mela (ii. 7), now Egripos (Negroponte).

[179] The confusion with iron appears in the Sanskrit (Pali?) _ayas_; Latin _æs_ for _ahes_ (as we find in _aheneus_); the Persian _áhan_ (آهن); the Gothic _ais_, or _aiz_; the High German _er_ (which is the Assyrian _eru_ and the Akkadian _hurud_), and the English _iron_. J. Grimm (_Die Naturvölker_) connects Ἄρης with _æs_. That _æs_ and _æris metalla_ in Pliny mean copper, we learn from his tale of Telephus (xxv. 19), which, by the by, is told by Camoens (Sonnet lxix.) in a very different way.

[180] χαλκεύειν δὲ καὶ τὸ σίδηρεύειν ἔλγον, καὶ χαλκέας τοὺς τὸν σίδηρον ἐργαζομένους. Jul. Pollux, _Onomasticon_, viii. c. 10.

[181] The full term was _æs cyprium_, which Pliny apparently applies to the finer kind; then it became _cyprium_, the adjective, which expressed only locality; and lastly _cuprum_. The third is first used by Spartianus in the biography of Caracalla (No. 5), _Cancelli ex ære vel cupro_ (doors of _æs_ or copper). Ælius Spartianus dates from the days of Diocletian and Constantine (Smith, _sub voc._). When Pliny writes _in Cypro prima fuit æris inventio_, he leaves it doubtful if _æs_ be copper or bronze; but we should prefer the former. So he makes the best ‘Missy’ (native yellow copperas) proceed from the Cyprus manufactories (xxxiii., iv. 25, and xxxiv., xii. 31). The word _misí_ or _missí_ is still used in India for a vitriolic powder to stain the teeth. Cypros, the wife of Agrippa, was possibly named from Kafar = the henna plant: the Cyprus of Pliny (xii. 51) is also the _Lawsonia inermis_.

[182] _Frag._ tom. i. p. 226. Edit. Bipont.

[183] The island will be further noticed in Chap. VIII.

[184] _Cyprus_, &c., by General Louis Palma (di Cesnola). London: Murray, 1877. The author excavated from 1866 to 1876, and opened some 15,000 tombs, mostly Phœnician.

[185] Quoted in the _Kypros_ of W. H. Engel (vol. i. p. 14). The two volumes are a mine of information; much of it now antiquated, but useful to later students who have less leisure to accumulate learning.

[186] ‘In Cyprus, where the manufacturers of the stone called chalcitis (copper-smelters) burn it for many days in fire, a winged creature, something larger than a great fly, is seen walking and leaping in the fire.’ A brother of the salamander!

[187] Some commentators (Strabo, vi. 1) confound this place with Ausonian Temĕsa, or Tempsa, in the land of the Brutii, with Temése of Cyprus.

[188] Herodotus (iii. 23) tells us that, copper being of all metals the most scarce and valuable in Æthiopia, prisoners were there bound with golden fetters. As will be seen, copper has lately been found in Abyssinia.

[189] An awful list of his works is given in Diogenes Laertius.

[190] This ærugo was artificially made by the Ancients with acetic acid, converting copper to a green salt (Beckmann, _sub v._ ‘Verdigris or Spanish Green’). The green rust of the carbonate of copper is still erroneously termed verdigris (acetate of copper).

[191] Ample information is given by Brugsch (_Egypt under the Pharaohs_, vol. i. p. 64) of Senoferu; of the valiant Khufu or Suphis (Cheops); of the Pharaoh Sahura, or Sephris; of Menkauhor (Mencheres) and Tat-ka-ra (Fifth Dynasty); of the bas-reliefs at Wady Magharah dating from King Pepi (Sixth Dynasty); of Thut-mes III. or the Great, and his sister Hashop (Eighteenth Dynasty before B.C. 1600), one of whose expeditions produced among other things ninety-seven Swords (Brugsch, i. 327), and who mentions ‘gilt copper’; of Amon-hotep III., also ‘the Great’ (Eighteenth Dynasty, about B.C. 1500); and of other Pharaohs who worked these diggings.

[192] Pottery has lately been found embedded in the bricks of the Maydúm Pyramid.

[193] The Souphis I. of Manetho is the second king of the Fourth Dynasty following Soris. Souphis II. is the Khafra of the Tables and the Cephren of the Greeks.

[194] The hieroglyphic is of several forms;

[Hieroglyphs]

may serve as a specimen.

[195] ‘Malachite’ is the Greek _molochotis_, from the molokhe, or marsh-mallow; whence the Arabic _mulukhíyeh_. In Poland, malachite and turquoise preside over the month of December.

[196] Meaning the Beloved of Ptah, the Opener, the Artificer God. The word is found in the Arabic _fath_. It is a better derivation for _Hephæstus_ than ‘Vaishravana’; but Sanskrit is so copious that any given word can be derived from it.

[197] _O Muata Cazembe_, by Monteiro and Gamitto, describes the copper works in South-East Africa long known to the natives. I am told by Mr. Hooker, C.E., that he has lately seen (_pace_ Herodotus) ‘magnificent specimens of native copper sent from Abyssinia.’

[198] R.N., C.B., &c., _Across Africa_, vol. i. pp. 134, 319; and vol. ii. pp. 149, 329.

[199] _Viagens dos Portuguezes, Colecção de Documentos_, &c.

[200] Layard’s _Nineveh_, i. 224, ii. 415; 6th edit. 1854.

[201] Hence our _packfong_, or German silver, of China, an alloy of copper (50 per cent.), nickel, and zinc (25 per cent. each).

[202] The _Chinese Repository_ gives a hundred illustrations of the implements in use by the Chinese and the Japanese.

[203] _Fir_ or _fear_ (_vir_, a man), and _bolg_ (_Bolgi_, _Belgæ_), a belly, bag, budget, or quiver. They occupied Southern Britain, and formed the third immigrant colony preceding the ‘Milesians,’ sons of Milidh or Miledh (Senchus Mor), evidently _Miles_, the soldier. He had two sons, Emer and Airem, from whom the Irish race is descended. Emer, says Prof. Rhys, may represent the Ivernii or pre-Celtic population mentioned by Ptolemy; and Airem, which means ‘a farmer,’ the Iranian race which introduced agriculture amongst a horde of hunters. The fourth colony was the Tuatha (people, e.g. Tuatha-Eireann = people of Erin), named from Danair, a stranger, foreigner, and properly a Dane. We have lately been shown how much true history may be obtained from these names, which had become bye-words, almost ridiculous to use.

[204] _Bán_ (our corrupted ‘bawn,’ as in ‘Molly Bawn’), white, is the Latin _canus_. It is also a noun substantive, meaning ‘copper.’

[205] Wilde, _Catalogue_, pp. 58, 356.

[206] Meaning _Tectetan_ = ‘I don’t know.’ So the _M’adri_ on an old English chart of the Euphrates.

[207] _Select Letters of Columbus_, &c. p. 201. Translated by R. H. Major, Hakluyt Society, 1870.

[208] Humboldt, _Travels_, iii. 194.

[209] _Commentaries of the Yncas._ Translated by Clements R. Markham, C.B. Hakluyt Society, 1871.

[210] Daniel Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, vol. i. chap. viii.; _The Metallurgic Arts, Copper_ (pp. 231–79). Prof. Brush, of Yale College, calculated that 6,000 tons were yielded in 1858.

[211] R.E., _Spanish America_, &c. (Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1819), p. 49.

[212] It was divided, like the Greek and Roman, into centuries (_pachacas_), chiliarchies (_hurangos_), and inspectorships (_tokrikrok_), generally under royalties. The organisation was due to the Ynka Inti-Kapak (the Great), B.C. 1500–1600. There was a large fleet (‘magna colcharum classis’) of ships not smaller than the contemporary European, ‘navigiis velificantur nihili vestris minoribus,’ says P. Martyr (_Decad._ ii. lib. 3). Neither traveller nor historian has explained how this mighty organisation crumbled to pieces at the touch of a few European adventurers.

I have read with interest the able work of M. Vicente F. Lopez, _Les Races Aryennes du Pérou_ (Paris: Franck, 1871): he derives the word from Pirhua, the first Ynka deified to a Creator. He adopts (p. 17) against Garcilasso de la Vega, who gave the Ynkarial Empire 400 years, the opinions of the learned Dr. Fernando Montésinos el Visitador, of the later sixteenth century, who is set aside by Markham, _Narratives of the Yncas_ (Hakluyt, 1873). Montésinos derives the Peruvians from Armenia five centuries after ‘the Flood,’ and assigns 4,000 years with 101 emperors to the dynasty; it begins with Manko Kapak, son of Pirhua Manko; and Sinchi Roka (No. xcv. of Montésinos) is Garcilasso’s official founder (p. 25).

But I cannot follow M. Lopez in his theories of ‘Aryanism’ (Zend and Sanskrit) or ‘Turanianism’ (Chinese and Tartar). The Quichua wants the peculiar Hindu cerebrals (which linger in English), and lacks the ‘l,’ so common in ‘Indo-European’ speech; ‘Lima,’ for instance, should be ‘Rima.’ It has no dual, and no distinction between masculine and feminine. But with the licence which M. Lopez allows himself, any language might be derived from any other. For instance, _chinka_ from _sinha_, ‘the lion’ (p. 138); _hakchikis_ = _hashish_, ‘intoxicating herb’; _kekenti_, ‘humming-bird,’ from _kvan_, ‘to hum’; _huahua_, ‘son,’ from _su_, ‘to engender,’ _sunus_, &c., (when in Egypt we have _su_); and _mama_, ‘mother,’ from _mata_, μήτηρ, _mater_, when we have _mut_ and _mute_ in Nile-land. For _mara_, ‘to kill,’ ‘death,’ the old Coptic preserves _mer_, _meran_, ‘to die’; and for _mayu_, ‘water,’ _mu_.

I thus prefer the monosyllabic Egyptian for Quichua roots, noting the two forms of pronoun, isolated (_nyoka_ = I = _anuk_) and affixed (_huahua-í_, ‘my son;’ _huahua-ki_, ‘thy son;’ _huahua-u_, ‘his son’). The heliolatry of the Andes was that of the Nile Valley; _Kon_ is the Egyptian _Tum_, ‘the setting sun.’ The god Papacha wears on his head the scarabæus of Ptah, or Creative Might. The pyramids and megalithic buildings are also Nilotic. The pottery shows three several styles, Egyptian, Etruscan, and Pelasgic. The population was divided into the four Egyptian castes (p. 396), priests (_mankos_ and _amautas_), soldiers (_aucas_, _aukas_), peasants (_uyssus_), and shepherds or nomads (_chakis_). According to Cieza de Leon (p. 197) they thought more of the building and adorning of their tombs than of their houses; their mummies were protected by little idols, and the corpse carried the ferryman’s fee. The pyramid of Copan (Yucatan), 122 feet high, with its 6-feet steps, is that of Sakkarah. The Yucatan beard in statues is Pharaohic. The elephant-trunk ornaments (Stephens, ii. 156) are Indo-Chinese. The geese-breeding (ii. 179) is Egyptian. See also the Toltec legend of the House of Israel (ii. 172).

[213] The ‘lovely valley, Andahualas,’ is from Anta and Huaylla, pasture—i.e. ‘copper-coloured meadow.’ Anta in Cieza de Leon appears to be copper, whereas other writers make it bronze.

[214] _Peruvian Antiquities_, by Don M. E. de Rivero and J. J. von Tschudi.

[215] They abandoned the native silver mines when the ore became too hard, and they smelted it in small portable stoves. They knew also the chemical combinations, sulphate, antimonial, and others; and they worked quicksilver. They had mines of Quella (Khellay, or iron), but they found difficulty in extracting it. Besides smelting, they could use the tacana (hammer), cast in moulds, inlay, and solder.

[216] Ewbank, of whom more presently, sketches a well-cast axe (p. 455). He translates _anta_ by bronze (p. 455).

[217] Doubtless copied from Old-World articles. On the west side of Palenque the Sword is distinctly Egyptian (Stephens, _Yucatan_). I have attempted to show how easily castaway mariners could be swept by currents from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. See ‘Ostreiras of the Brazil’ in _Anthropologia_, No. 1, October 1873.

[218] _Antiquarian, Ethnological, and other Researches._ By William Bollaert. London: Trübner, 1860. We must probably change ‘brass’ into ‘bronze’ when he says (p. 90) that ‘the Peruvians used tools of brass.’

[219] Appendix to _Life in Brazil_ (Sampson Low, 1856).

[220] This white copperas was detected by Scacchi on the fumaroles after the Vesuvian eruption of 1855.

[221] Gold was shown by yellow, and silver by white. Dr. Evans (_Bronze_, &c. p. 7) suggests that the round blue bar used by butchers (Wilkinson, iii. 247) was not of steel; but his reasons are peculiarly unsatisfactory. The file is a common implement amongst savages, doubtless derived from the practice of cross-hatching wooden grips and handles. Mr. A. H. Rhind (_Thebes_, &c.) attributes little weight to the diversity of colours employed by ancient Egyptians to depict metallic objects, and he finds red and green confused.

[222] Thus we have a blue war-helmet of ring-mail (Lepsius, _Denkmäler_, iii. 115 &c.), a blue war-hatchet with wooden handle, and spears pointed with brown-red and blue (copper and iron) in the tomb of Ramses III. The war-car of an Æthiopian king, in the days of Tutankamun, has blue wheels and a body of yellow (gold). Lepsius, however, adds: ‘It is very remarkable that in all the representations of the old empire, blue-painted instruments can scarcely be traced.’ This simply proves that iron and steel were rare.

[223] _Prehistoric Man_, chap. viii.

[224] It was analysed by Mr. E. Tookey, with the following results:

Copper 97·12 Arsenic 2·29 Iron 0·43 Tin, with traces of gold 0·24 —————— 100·08

The presence of the tin may have been accidental. The proportion of arsenic (2¼ per cent.) might have been expected to harden the metal, yet it was so soft as to be almost useless.

[225] See chap. ix.

[226] It is equivalent to the Roman’s ‘Aliud clausum in pectore, aliud in lingua promptum habere.’

[227] So amongst the Jews the sharp knives for circumcision (_Josh._ v. 2–3) were of the silex which they learned from the Egyptians; and the custom continued long after the invention of metal blades.

[228] It was opened by Herr Ramsauer, and carefully described in _Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt_, by Baron E. von Sacken. I shall have more to say of it in chap. xiii.

[229] Prinseps’ _Essays_ (London, 1858), vol. i. p. 222, pl. xliv. fig. 12, and _Journ. R. As. Soc. Bengal_, vol. vii. pl. xxxii. fig. 12. Long descriptions of copper smelting in India are found in _Science Gleanings_, pp. 380 _et seq._, No. 36, Dec. 1831, Calcutta, and in Percy (_Metall._ p. 387); the latter by Mr. H. F. Blanford, of the Geol. Survey, who made especial studies in Himalayan Sikkim and the Nepaulese Tirhai. The workmen, who are of low caste, win the stone in small blast-furnaces about three feet high, burning charcoal and cow-chips. They work not only the easily reducible carbonates, but sulphuretted ores, copper pyrites, with a mixture of mundic (iron pyrites).

[230] Scales are apparently implied by _kaskassin_ (_1 Sam._ xvii.), which in Leviticus and Ezekiel applies to fish-scales.

[231] The shekel is usually estimated at 220 grs. (Troy), which would reduce the weights to 22·91 and 190·97 lbs. respectively; but Maimonides makes it = 320 grains of barley = as many grains Troy. See Parkhurst (_Lex._, _s.v._ ‘Amat’). Either figure would form a fair burden for a horse; and the spear would have been a most unhandy article, unless used by a man ten feet tall. I shall notice the Gathite’s Sword in chap. ix.

[232] _Ethnology of the British Islands._ We also read: ‘Copper Swords have been found in Ireland; iron among the Britons and Gauls; bronze was used by the Romans, and probably by the Egyptians; and steel of varying degrees of hardness is now the only weapon employed.’ (J. Latham: see chap. vii.)

[233] _Trans. Edinb. Philos. Soc._ Feb. 1822.

[234] J. A. Phillips, F.C.S. _Memoirs of the Chemical Soc._ vol. iv.

[235] _Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, p. 246.

[236] See Sir W. Wilde’s _Cat. Metallic Materials—Celts_, Museum of Royal Irish Academy.

[237] _History of Kerry_, p. 125.

[238] Yet Æschylus (_Agamem._) uses both _chalcos_ and _sideros_ generically for a weapon.

[239] _Ilios_, &c. (London, Murray, 1880).

[240] Some small objects are reported as wheel-made; but this requires confirmation, according to a writer in the _Athenæum_ (Dec. 18, 1880).

[241] The copper bracelet (_Troy_, p. 150, No. 88) with its terminal knobs is the modern trade ‘manilla’ of the West African coast. This survival will again be noticed in chap. ix.

[242] The word in its older form was written ‘allay.’ Johnson derives it from _à la loi_, _allier_, _allocare_: it appears to me the Spanish _el ley_, the legal quality of coinable metal. We have now naturalised in English _ley_, meaning a standard of metals. (Sub voc. _Dict. of Obsolete and Provincial English_, by Thomas Wright; London, Bell and Daldy, 1869.)

[243] _Recherches sur les Mystères_; and _Mémoire pour servir à la religion secrète_, &c. &c.

[244] The ‘Aglaophemus,’ so called from the initiator of Pythagoras. I see symptoms of a revival in assertions concerning a ‘highly cultivated beginning, with the arts well known and practised to an extent which, in subsequent ages, has never been approached; and from which there has not anywhere been discovered a gradual advancement; but, on the contrary, an immediate and decidedly progressive declension.’ This, however, is a mere question of dates. Man’s civilisation began long before the Mosaic Creation; and science has agreed to believe that savage life generally is not a decadence from higher types, not a degeneracy, but a gradual development.

[245] We now divide language into three periods: 1st, intonative, like the cries of children and lower animals; 2nd, imitative, or on onomatopoetic; and 3rd, conventional, the civilised form.

[246] _Axieros_ (the earth-goddess), _Axiokersa_ (Proserpine of the Greeks), _Axiokersos_ (Hades), and _Casmilos_ (Hermes or Mercury). Ennemoser may be right in making the Kabeiroi pygmies (i.e. gnomes), but not in rendering Dactyloi by ‘finger-size.’

[247] The lame and deformed ‘artificer of the universe,’ who became Hephæstos (Vulcan) in Greece, and Vishvakarma in India. Sokar has left his name in the modern ‘Sakkárah.’

[248] The Assyrian cuneiforms allude to ‘the (Great) Bear making its crownship,’ that is, circling round the North Pole.

[249] The temples of the Cabiri have lately been explored by Prof. Conze for the Austrian Government at Samothrace, and we may expect to learn something less vague concerning these mysterious ancients.

[250] The Rev. Basil H. Cooper believes that the Phrygian was the original Ida, which gradually passed to Crete; and here the Idæi were priests of Cybele. He is disposed to connect with it the Greek Σίδ(ηρο); the German _Eisen_ (and our iron), and the _Ida feldt_ and _Asi_ of the Norse myths (Day, p. 133).]

[251] The name is derived by Bochart from Heb. _Lub_ or _Lelub_, חיקלוב, chiefs of the Libu or Ribu, as the old Egyptians called the Libyans. Hence the Prom. Lilybæum (_Li-Lúb_) and the Sinus ad Libyam or Lilybatanus.

[252] We have satisfactory details concerning the Chalybes, who border on Armenia, in the _Anabasis_ (iv. 5, &c.). They dwell two days from Cotyora, the colony planted by Sinope; they are subject to the Mossynœci, and they subsist by iron-working (v. 5). Though few, they are a most warlike people, full of fight. Their armour consists of helmets, greaves, and cuirasses of twisted linen cords, reaching to the groin. They carry spears about fifteen cubits long, ‘having one spike’ (i.e. without ferule); and at their girdles a short faulchion, as large as a Spartan crooked dagger, with which they cut the throats of all whom they can master; and then, lopping off their heads, bear them away (iv. 7). Strabo makes the Chalybes the same as their neighbours the Chaldæi.

[253] The well-known inscription on the tomb of Midas, and another given by Texier (_Asie Mineure_, ii. 57) show the Phrygian tongue to have been a congener of Greek. Even the _Békos_ of Herodotus (ii. 2) is allied to our ‘bake,’ and _Bédu_ to our ‘water.’ We are greatly in want of further information about Phrygia, and it is to be hoped that Colonel Wilson and Mr. W. M. Ramsay will complete the labours of Texier and Hamilton.

[254] The Aryans of Herodotus, about the Arius river (_Heri-rúd_), are an undistinguished tribe, a mere satrapy. Strabo’s Aria (xi. 9) is a tract about 250 by 40 miles. In Pliny (vi. 23) Ariana includes only the lands of the Gedrosi (Mekran), the Arachoti (Kandahár), the Arii proper (Herat), and the Parapomisadæ (Kabul). It has been truly said that even if Aryan and Turanian man (first) centred in and emerged from these areas (the table-lands of Asia), the so-called history is entirely based on the philological discoveries of the Sanskritist school.

[255] Therasia and Therassia, now Santorin. Here have been found ruins of prehistoric cities buried by the great central volcano. According to most geologists the latter was exhausted in B.C. 1800–1700.

[256] I have personally noticed this, and described it in _Midian Revisited_, vol. i. p. 143.

[257] Beckmann (_s.v._ ‘Tin’) tells us that the metal ‘never occurs in a native state.’ He forgets stream-tin. He also denies that the oldest ‘cassiteron’ and ‘stannum’ were tin; and considers them to mean the German _Werk_, a regulus of silver and lead. His _vasa stannea_ are vessels covered with tin in the inside. In the fourth century ‘plumbum candidum’ or ‘album’ was superseded by ‘stannum.’ Speaking of electrum, Beckmann asserts that ‘the ancients were not acquainted with the art of separating gold and silver.’ ‘Britain,’ Ynis Prydhain Island, where the god Prydhain was worshipped, or rather ‘Isle of the Brythons,’ has been fancifully derived by the energetic Semitiser from Barrat-et-Tanuk = Land of Tin.

[258] Ezekiel tells us that the Tyrians received tin, as well as other metals, from Tarshish, or Western Tartessus, in the Bay of Gibraltar.

[259] M. Emile Burnouf, ‘L’Age de Bronze,’ _Revue des Deux Mondes_, July 15, 1877, also brings tin from Banca. The island is about 150 miles long by 36 broad; it has no mountain backbone, but the peak of Goonong Maras rises some 3,000 feet above the sea-level. Chinese coolies still work the mines of Mintok, and in 1852 the yearly yield was some 50,000 piculs (each = 133⅓ lbs.) at the cost of nine rupees per picul.

[260] Beckmann (_loc. cit._), like Michaelis, is surprised at the Midianites possessing tin in the days of Moses. These were the views of the last century. I have suggested (_Athenæum_, Nov. 24, 1880) that the old Nile-dwellers extended through Midian to El-Hejáz and El-Yemen, where they worked the mines which became known to the Hebrews.

[261] In 1866 De Rougemont made Phœnicia supply bronze to Europe, the copper being brought from Cyprus. Besides the Mediterranean, we find a Uralian and a Danubian branch of the industry. Before 1877 France had supplied 650 bronze Swords and daggers, Sweden 480, and Switzerland 86.

[262] _Alias_ the Œstrymnides. Borlase was of opinion that the group formed one block, with several headlands, of which ‘Scilly’ was the highest, outermost, and most conspicuous. He conjectures the original name to be _Syllé_, _Sulla_, or _Sulleh_, a flat rock dedicated to the sun; hence the Lat. _Siliræ_, _Silures_, and _Sigdeles_; the Engl. _Sylley_, _Scilley_, and lately _Scilly_; the Fr. _Sorlingues_; and the Span. _Sorlingas_. The Keltic name of the chief feature was Inis Caer.

[263] _Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, Part II. ‘The Archaic or Bronze Period.’ Daniel Wilson.

[264] Pliny represents the Cassiterides as fronting Celtiberia. He considers it a ‘fabulous story’ that the Greeks fetched ‘white lead’ from the islands of the Adriatic.

[265] _Prehistoric Times_, by Sir John Lubbock, 4th edit. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1878.)

[266] The identification is not settled; some propose the Isle of Thanet.

[267] Beckmann, _sub voce_ ‘Tin.’

[268] According to Messrs. Wibel, Fellemberg, and Damour, who investigated even 10/1000 parts, the average proportions were ⅒ tin to 9 copper; and ¼ tin for hard metal, as chisels, &c. M. E. Chauntre, _Age de Bronze_. 3 vols. (Paris: Baudry.)

[269] The late General Uchatius, who ‘trusted in princes,’ and whose tragical death was greatly lamented by his friends, always declared that he had rediscovered (not discovered) the hardening of copper and bronze; and that he hoped to arrive at other secrets. His career was cut short before he learned to make the metal and the alloy resilient.

[270] _Thut_, _Tuth_, _Toth_, _Thoth_, &c., the moon-god who became Hermes Trismegistus.

[271] Phosphor-bronze, for whose manufacture companies are now established in London and elsewhere, has the ordinary composition with the addition of red or amorphous phosphorus dropped upon the melted metal in the crucible. Berthier (_Traité des Essais_, ii. 410) states that a very small quantity of phosphorus renders copper extremely hard and suitable for cutting instruments. Percy (_Metallurgy_) found that copper will take up 11 per cent. of phosphorus; the metal, which assumes a grey tint, is quite homogeneous, and so hard that it can scarcely be touched by the file. The addition of phosphorus promotes the reduction of the oxides, and enables an exceedingly sound and durable casting to be made; but if it exceed ½ per cent. the metal becomes very brittle. Dr. Percy has described phosphor-silver, phosphor-lead, and phosphor-iron. The phosphorus is, according to some authorities, apt to volatilise with time. At present a new form of bronze, the antimonial, in proportions of 1–2 per cent., is coming into fashion: it is said to be malleable and ductile, and to resist torsion in a high degree. Another new bronze is the aluminium, whose price has been reduced from 1,000_l._ to 100_l._ per ton by Mr. Webster, of Hollywood, near Birmingham.

[272] So called from Cape Emeri in Naxos.

[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.

[288] Mongez, _Mém. de l’Institut_.

[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).

[311] _Loc. cit._ p. 43.

[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).

[315] Par Lacombe (Paris, Hachette, 1868).

[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).

[320] Pliny, xxxiv. 39.

[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.

[341] The Naphtuhim of Scripture.

[342] _Percy’s Metallurgy_, p. 874, first edit.

[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?

[348] Rougemont, _L’Age du Bronze_, pp. 188 _et seq._

[349] Volney, _Travels_, ii. 438.

[350] Much of it, however, was the amygdaloid greenstone, called in English ‘toad-stone,’ a corruption of the Germ. _Todstein_.

[351] _Speaker’s Commentary_, i. 831.

[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.

[356] Akkad is upper, Sumir lower Babylonia.

[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.

[368] Regulus (the ‘little king’) is the residue of pure metal purged of its dross; the old alchemists so entitled it because they ever expected to find the great king—Gold.

[369] At the Anthropological Congress of Austrian Salzburg (Aug. 1881) the tools attributed to the ‘Keltic’ miners were almost the same as those which I had seen near the Wrekin.

[370] Ingénieur des Mines: ‘Gisements métallifères du District de Carthagène (Espagne),’ Liège, 1875; a contribution to the _Proc. Geolog. Soc. Belgium_; and the result of extensive geological and mineralogical observation. The coloured map shows the strata-sequence (actual and in ideal order) to be tertiary limestone, iron-ore (carbonated, manganiferous, or plumbiferous); schistes; blende; schistes; silicated iron and schistes.

[371] _Lectures on the Science of Language_, pp. 254–55, vol. ii., edit. 1873.

[372] _Chips from a German Workshop_ (set up in England), p. 47, vol. ii., edit. 1868.

[373] Mr. Day (_General Table of Terms_, given at end of this chapter) quotes as ‘oldest Sanskrit’ two names of iron, आर (_ár_ or _ára_), meaning the planet Mars (_Ares_) or Saturn; iron (oxide of iron, ironstone?), brass (copper?); and अयस्, _áyas_ (whence _ayaskant_, a loadstone, and _ayaskár_, a smith), a word already noticed in connection with _æs_. But Mr. Day adds to his ‘oldest Sanskrit’ ‘probably B.C. 1500’; and here again we recognise the master-touch of the subtle race—

‘for profound And solid lying much renowned.’

[374] Report of Gen. A. Cunningham (Archæolog. Survey, 1861–62). It speaks highly for Anglo-Indian _vis inertiæ_ and incuriousness when we are told that the ‘whole length of the pillar is unknown,’ and when every observer’s account of it differs in essentials.

[375] The _savant_ who first translated the inscription _Indian Antiquities_, vol. i. p. 319. The dates vary between the tenth century B.C. and A.D. 1052 (!).

[376] The Persian _haft-júsh_ (seven boilings), referred to by Ibn Batutah in Colonel Yule’s letter, p. 145 (Day, p. 153).

[377] Quoted by Mr. Day (p. 24) from the _United States Railroad and Mining Register_.

[378] Mr. Day (quoting Fergusson’s _Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan_, London, 1848) cautions his readers that ‘Mr. Fergusson’s dates are not to be relied on, however important his writings unquestionably are in other respects’ (p. 168). Here again we see the misleading influence of the Sanskritists, who have allowed themselves to be cozened by the ‘mild Hindu.’ Mr. Day inclines (p. 151) to the tenth century B.C. (!), when the peoples of India were, we have reason to believe, the merest savages.

[379] The modern Hindus call steel _Paldah_, from the Persian _Pulád_, the Arab. _Fulád_. They apply to Spanish steel the terms _Ispát_, _Sukhela_ and _Tolad_. Their favourite trial of Sword-metal is with a bar of soft gold, which should leave a streak.

[380] Colonel Yule does not consider the word genuine, and with reason, as the Indo-Phœnician (‘Safá’) alphabet has no _w_ and no _z_. The word first appears in ‘Experiments and Observations to investigate the Nature of a Kind of Steel manufactured at Bombay, and there called _Wootz_,’ ... by G. Pearson, M.D. (paper read before the Royal Soc., June 11, 1795). He notes that ‘Dr. Scott of Bombay, in a letter to the President, acquainted him that he had sent over “specimens of a substance known by the name of wootz, which is considered to be a kind of steel, and is in high esteem among the Indians”’ (p. 322). In Wilkinson’s _Engines of War_ (1841) we read (pp. 203–206), ‘The cakes of steel are called _wootz_.’

Dr. E. Balfour states that _uchhá_ and _níchhá_ (in Hindustani ‘high’ and ‘low’) are used in the Canarese provinces to denote superior and inferior descriptions of articles, and that _Wootz_ may be a corruption of the former. Colonel Yule and his coadjutor in the _Glossary of Indian Terms_, the late lamented Dr. Burnell, hold that it originated in some clerical error or misreading, perhaps from _wook_ representing the Canarese _ukku_ = steel.

[381]

C. {combined 1·333 {uncombined 0·312 Si. 0·045 S. 0·181 As. 0·037 Fe. (by difference) 98·092 ——————— 100·000

Phillips, _Metallurgy_, p. 317. Faraday found in Wootz 0·0128–0·0695 per cent. of aluminium, and attributed the ‘damask’ of the blades to its presence. Karsten, after three experiments, and Mr. T. H. Henry, failed to detect it, and suggested that it may have been derived from intermingled slag containing silicate of alumina (Percy, _Iron, &c._ pp. 183–84).

[382] _Archiv. Port. Oriental._ fascic. iii. p. 318.

[383] M. Keller (_Pres. Soc. Ant. Switz._) notes that crudely formed lumps and quadrangular blocks of malleable iron, double pyramids weighing 10–16 lbs., have been found in prehistoric sites. They were probably produced in primitive Catalans. Pieces of iron slag worked by the Kelts were discovered in 1862 on the Cheviot Hills.

[384] The cupel (of old copel) is the French _coupelle_, little coupe. The muffle is a metal cupel.

[385] This is the process of working Wootz given by Mr. Heath; others pack the metal with finely-chopped stalks of asclepias as well as cassia. Mr. Mallet has described the Indian manufacture of large iron masses in _The Engineer_, vol. xxxiii. pp. 19, 20. Beckmann (_loc. cit. sub v._ ‘Steel’) notices the bloomeries or furnaces. The _Penny Cyclopædia_ and Ure’s _Dict. of Chemistry_ (the latter the best), London, Longmans, 1839, may also be consulted. Dr. Percy gives a long account (pp. 254–66) of iron-smelting in India from Mr. Howard Blackwell. He notes three kinds of furnaces:—

1. Rude, like chimney-pots; used by the hill-tribes of Western India, the Deccan, and the Carnatic. 2. Simple Catalan forge } Central India and the 3. Early form of Stückofen } N.W. Provinces.

The anvil is a square iron without beak. Three kinds of Indian bellows are noticed (pp. 255–56). The people, who love _stare super antiquas vias_, ignore the hot blast: this contrivance causes a more active combustion, an ‘ultimate fact’ as yet unexplained.

[386] Report of 1852.

[387] The dialect is much more ancient than we usually suppose: it existed long before Akbar the Great and his ‘Urdú zabán’ (camp language), for we find that the poet Chand wrote in it during the twelfth century.

[388] As will appear in Part II. there are many processes for making the Damascus; the exact markings, however, are best produced by that noticed above.

[389] Pp. 270–3, from the descriptions of Mr. W. T. Blanford, of the Geol. Survey of India.

[390] Pp. 273–5; borrowed from _Travels in Borneo_, by Dr. C. A. L. M. Schauer during 1843–47, p. 109.

[391] The Swords of the Borneo Dyaks and the islanders of Timor and Rotti are photographed by the Curator of the Christy Collection.

[392] Mr. Day quotes, book i., the Tribute of Yu, Legge’s _Chinese Classics_, vol. iii. part i. p. 121 (Trübner, London, 1865).

[393] The ‘Celestial Empire,’ according to her annals, began B.C. 100,000–80,000; the date being probably astronomical, or rather astrological, founded, like the four Hindu æras, upon retrograde calculations. The first cycle of 60 years is attributed to the Emperor Hwang-tí, and its initiation to the 61st year of his reign, in B.C. 2637 (the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt?). The first historical dates are given in B.C. 651, a century after the foundation of Rome: these figures afford a curious contrast between pretensions and proof. But as Englishmen after long residence ‘grow black’ in Africa, and have become semi-Hinduised in India, so in China they have allowed themselves to be imposed upon by the ‘magna fabulositas,’ the marvellous self-sufficiency of astute semi-barbarians. ‘China is a sea that salts all the rivers which flow into it.’ Yet I am curious to ascertain by actual travel if China ever possessed a centre of civilisation independent of what she received from the West; in other words, non-Egyptian.

[394] Of the 214 keys or radicals. The first three arithmetical figures are lines disposed horizontally, while the Egyptians wrote them vertically. In his Terminal Table (affixed to this chapter) Mr. Day assigns Chinese to the ‘Sporadic or Allophyllian family.’ I believe it to be the oldest and, as far as we know, the original form of Turanian speech, a kind of _tertium quid_ deduced from the so-called ‘Aryan’ and ‘Semitic’ elements of Egyptian.

[395] _Trans. Bib. Archæol._ 1879. Sayce’s _Grammar_ gives 522 Assyrian characters.

[396] The lump of iron worked into a mass more or less rectangular is called a bloom, from the Saxon _bloma_, metal in mass (Bosworth): _Bloma ferri_ occurs in the Domesday Book. Hence ancient furnaces were called _bloomeries_; the Elizabethan spelling is a _bloomary_. The blooms were beaten out to bars.

[397] In Persia I was told that this was one of the ‘secrets’ of making the finest Khorasáni blades.

[398] It followed the Mongols and preceded the Manchow Tartars, who still reign.

[399] This process of converting iron to steel is first described in ‘_Alchemiæ Gebri_ (El-Gabr), _Arabis philosophi solertissimi, Libri, &c._, Joan. Petreius Nurembergen̄. denuo Bernæ excudi faciebat. anno 1545.’ The Arab, known to Albertus Magnus, flourished in the eighth to the ninth century. According to Beckmann, he noticed the ore _cineritii_ (cupellation) _et cementi_ (cementation) _tolerans_. The mixture is usually of sal ammoniac, borax, alum, and fine salt: the many varieties are described by Percy, Ure, and a host of others. Compare also Ure’s account of cast-steel and of shear-steel, the latter so called because cloth-shears were forged of it.

[400] At least it would so appear from the following passage (p. 176): ‘When we examine the etymology of ‘pole,’ or ‘pillar,’ thus—Saxon, _pol_ or _pal_; German, _Pfahl_; Danish, _paal_ or _pol_; Swedish, _pale_; Welsh _pawl_—we arrive at the Latin _palus_, which, besides signifying a pole or stake, is also the φαλλός of the Greeks, _Mahadeva_ (?) or _Linga_ (?) of the Hindoos, _Bel_ or _Baal_ (?) of the Chaldeans, _Yakhveh_ (?) of the Canaanites, _Ti-mohr_ of the ancient Irish, and _Teih-mo_ of the Chinese,’ &c.

[401] _Notes from Mr. Henderson’s Diary during a Ramble through Shansi, in March 1874_, published by Mr. Day (Appendix D, p. 251). Colonel Yule (_Marco Polo_, ii. 429), alluding to these enormous deposits of coal and metal, says: ‘Baron Richtofen, in the paper which we quote from, indicates the revolution in the deposit of the world’s wealth and power, to which such facts, combined with other characteristics of China, point as probable; a revolution so vast that its contemplation seems like that of a planetary catastrophe.’

[402] _Les Mondes_, tome xxvi., Dec. 1871.

[403] _Polynesian Researches_ (Rev. William Ellis).

[404] _Researches into the Early History of Mankind_, p. 167.

[405] Unless greatly mistaken, I have seen iron tools made of hæmatite near the old Gongo Socco gold-mines of Minas Geraes, in the Brazil. Worked hæmatite is also mentioned in Cyprus by General Palma (di Cesnola). See chap. ix.

[406] From _Nature_ (Sept. 30, 1875); quoted by Mr. Day (pp. 217–19).

[407] _Flint Chips_, by Edmund T. Stevens, p. 553 (London: Bell & Daldy, 1870).

[408] The ‘plummet’ is figured (No. cxxxii.) in the _American Naturalist_ (vol. vi. p. 643).

[409] The people of Camarones River, Bight of Biafra, work up old cask and bale hoops into very creditable edge-tools and weapons, hoes, knives, and Swords (Rev. G. Grenfell, _Proc. Roy. Geolog. Soc._ Oct. 1882).

[410] The origin of the modern process is still debated. Agricola (_nat._ 1494, _ob._ 1555) notices both malleable and cast iron. Dr. Percy (p. 578) quotes from Mr. M. A. Lower (_Contributions to Literature, &c._ 1854) that Burwash Church, Sussex, contains a cast-iron slab of the fourteenth century with ornamental cross and inscription in relief. The same authority declares that iron cannon were first cast at Buxted (Buckstead in Sussex) by Philip Hoge or Hogge in 1543 (35 Henry VIII.); and that his successor, Thomas Johnson, made ordnance pieces for the Duke of Cumberland weighing 6,000 lbs.

[411] Dr. Percy (pp. 764 _et seq._) notices the three processes of making steel (iron containing carbon in certain proportions): 1. The addition of carbon to malleable iron; 2. The partial decarburisation of cast iron; and 3. The addition of malleable iron to cast iron.

[412] I borrow from O Muata Cazembe (Kazembe, the King) a rude sketch (p. 38) of one of the better kinds of iron-smelting furnaces used by the extensive Maráve race dwelling north of the Zambeze (River of Fish), which Europeans persist in miswriting _Zambesi_. The bellows, it will be remarked, are almost of European shape; but this peculiarity may be attributed to the artist.

[413] _Travels_, pp. 275–77 (London, 1749).

[414] Colonel A. Lane Fox (_Prim. Warfare_, i. 38) believes that the ‘Fans and Kafirs (Caffres) are totally different races.’ But both speak dialects of the same tongue, the great South African language. Modern African travellers have traced community of customs from north to south, and from east to west, suggesting extensive intercourse, in former days, throughout the length and breadth of the Dark Continent.

[415] _Across Africa_, chap. xix., July 1874 (Daldy, Isbister & Co., London, 1877).

[416] _Missionary Travels_, p. 402 (London, 1857).

[417] _Anthrop. Coll._ pp. 128–134. ‘Specimens illustrating the geographical distribution of corrugated iron blades, or blades with an ogee section, double skin bellows, and iron work.’ As regards the ogee section, the author should have compared it with the arrow-heads whose plane sides are ‘bellied on a twist’ to cause rotation or rifling.

[418] Diogenes Laertius tells us of Anacharsis only that he ‘wrote also about war.’

[419] As all savage races show, the original anchor was a stone first bound round like a celt, and then pierced for a rope: hence the ‘fugitive stone’ used by the Argonauts as an anchor (Pliny, xxxvii. 24). In the spring of 1880 eight stone anchors of modern shape were found in Piræus harbour, and were sent to the Nautical School at Athens.

[420] Wilkinson, i. 174. Mr. Day, pp. 86, 87.

[421] Hence, too, we see our ‘bellows’ = ‘bellies.’

[422] This word is curiously corrupted in Europe. It is formed upon the model of Dár-Wadái, &c.; and means the abode, region, home (_Dár_) of the For tribe. My lamented friend General Purdy (Pasha) formerly of the United Slates Army, admirably surveyed it, and died at Cairo in 1881.

[423] _Vulgo_ Kattywár; described in 1842 by Captain (the late Sir G. Le Grand) Jacob in his _Report on Guzerat_ (Gujarát).

[424] The sticks correspond with the strings on the bellows of the Egyptian monuments.

[425] _Iron_, Jan. 8, 1876.

[426] I observe that M. Terrien de la Couperie has lately derived the oldest civilisation of China from Chaldæo-Babylonia of the Akkadian Ages, B.C. 2400–2300.

[427] Major Jähns (p. 416) would derive _Schwert_ (= _das Sausende_, _Schwirrende_, i.e. whizzing) from the Sansk. _svar_, noise; and considers it originally a missile pure and simple. He quotes Isidore, who explains _rhomphæa_ by _wafan_; _Schwert_ and _framea_ = _asta vel gladius_; _ensis_ = _hevas_, _hevassa_; _mucro_ = _swert_, _gladius_ = _wafan_; _culter_ = _wafansahs_, _sahse_. In the hebraising days _Sword_ was derived from Sharat, to scratch, and _Sabre_ from Shabar, to shiver.

[428] Of the Flamberge and the ‘flamboyant,’ or wavy blade, more hereafter.

[429] Muratori (_Antiq._ ii. 487) notes, ‘_Spatam sive spontonem_, and _sponto_, _spunto_, i.e. _pugio_’ (Adelung). Of _spatha_ more to come.

[430] Or ‘_die Schneide_,’ the older forms being _ekke_, _egge_; while ‘_valz_’ was the middle section of the two-handed Sword.

[431] ‘Chape,’ derived from _capa_, and a congener of ‘cap’ and ‘cape,’ is differently used by authors. Some apply it to the mouthpiece or ring at the top of the sheath; others to the metal crampet, bouterolle, or ferule at the scabbard-tip, and others to the guard-plate. In Durfey (_The Marriage-Hater Matched_) we find ‘the hilt, the knot, the scabbard, the _chape_, the belt, and the buckles’ (of a Sword). Skinner explains it as _vaginæ mucro ferreus_. Mr. Fairholt defines _chape_ to be the guard-plate or cross-bar at the junction of grip and hilt. Shakespeare, who knew the Sword, speaks of the ‘_chape_ of his dagger’ (_All’s Well &c._ iv. 3) and ‘an old rusty Sword with a broken hilt and _chapelesse_’ (_Taming of the Shrew_, iii. 2). Commentators mostly explain this by ‘without a catch to hold it.’ Dr. Evans (_Bronze, &c._ chap. viii.) has exhaustively described the bronze chapes (bouterolles) in the British Islands.

[432] A congener of our ‘quill,’ from the Lat. _caulis_, a stalk. Littré is not satisfactory: ‘Quillon (_ki-llon_, ll mouillées), s.m.

## Partie de la monture du sabre ou de l’épée, située du côté opposé aux

branches, et dont l’extrémité est arrondie. Dérivé de quille’ (cone) ‘par assimilation de forme’ (in fact, incrementative of) ‘quille. Etym. Génev. _quille_; de l’anc. haut-allem. _Kegil_; allem. _Kegel_, objet allongé en forme conique, _quille_.’ Burn translates _quillon_ ‘cross-bar of the hilt of an infantry or light-cavalry Sword.’

[433] This must not be written, as by some English authors, _pas d’ane_. ‘_Pas d’âne_, instrument avec lequel on maintient ouverte la bouche du cheval pour l’examiner.’ Littré has: ‘_Pas d’âne_, nom donné, dans les épées du xvi^{ème} siècle, à des pièces de la garde qui sont en forme d’anneau, et qui vont des quillons à la lame. “Le Seigneur le prit et mit un pied sur la lame ... alors Collinet s’écria: Venez voir, messieurs, le grand miracle que l’on fait à mon épée; je l’ai apportée ici avec une simple poignée et sans garde défensive, et voilà maintenant que l’on y met le plus beau pas d’âne du monde.”’ _Francion_, vi. p. 237: ‘Pas d’âne, nom vulgaire du tussilage, à cause de la feuille.’

[434] The Scottish basket-hilt, however, requires improvement, as it does not allow free play to hand or wrist.

[435] The word is originally the Persian _Shamshír_ (شمشير); but as the Greeks have no _sh_ sound, it made its way into Europe curiously disguised. Jean Chartier (temp. Charles VII.) says, ‘_Sauveterres ou cimeterres qui sont manière d’espée à la Turque_.’ _Sauveterre_ became in Italian _salvaterra_; and in England _scymitar_ was further degraded to _semitarge_. I have no objection to _scimitar_, but _scymitar_ is the older form.

[436] See note at the end of this chapter.

[437] As usual, the diagram is an exaggeration. It directs the thrusting weapon too low, at the antagonist’s breast, not his eye; nor is it necessary to raise the hand so high in order to deliver the cut.

[438] Quoted from Mr. John Latham by Colonel A. Lane Fox, _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 171. Concerning the drawing cut and its reverse, the thrusting cut, I shall have more to say when treating of the ‘Damascus’ blade in Part II.

[439] The section of the modern weapon shows that the _baïonnette Gras_ is fit only for the thrust; and, as it stops its own cut, it is useless for the menial and servile offices in which the Yataghan-bayonet, like the old _coupe-choux_ Sword, did yeoman’s service. I can see no improvement upon the old-fashioned triangular bayonet, which amongst us has been superseded by the short Enfield Sword-bayonet. To the latter I should prefer even the bowie-knife bayonet, of which the Washington Arsenal was once full, and which has been used even lately in the United States. None but practical soldiers realise the fact that the bayonet is meant to be a bayonet, not a Sword, nor a dagger, nor a chopper, nor a saw.

[440] Mr. Wareing Faulder (Exhibition of Industrial Art, Manchester, June and July, 1881, _Catalogue_, p. 24) suggests that the Colichemarde ‘fell into disuse probably in consequence of its costliness, combined with its inelegant appearance when sheathed.’

[441] Captain George Chapman, in his _Foil Practice, &c._, a book which will appear in the ‘Bibliography’ (Part III.), rightly distinguishes between the triangular small-Sword, used only for thrusting, and the bi-convex cut-and-thrust ‘rapier,’ a term applied by the Germans to the _Schläger_, which has no point. In England most people use ‘small-Sword’ only in opposition to ‘broadsword’; but, as the Art of Fencing may be considered a general foundation for swordsmanship, all men-at-arms should understand and preserve the difference. The writer, however, observes (Notes, pp. 4, 5), that, among the various actions which may conveniently be executed with the triangular ‘Biscayan,’ there are many which cannot be so easily managed with a flat blade, or with the usual weapon of modern combat, however light and handy. Hence ‘fencers among military men should be cautioned against _indiscriminately_ attempting with the Sword performances usually taught in lessons with the foil.’

[442] It was also a proper name applied to the Paladin Renaud’s Sword. The flamberge of the seventeenth century became a rapier-blade, and no longer ‘flamboyant,’ and the difference is in the hilt, and especially the guards. The latter were shallower and simpler than the rapier form, and were more easily changed from hand to hand, as was the practice of early fencers.

[443] There is another Dáo in the Eastern regions, a large, square, double-edged blade, with a handle attached to the centre. The Dah of Burma is originally the same weapon as the Nágá Dáo.

[444] In the _Bulletin de l’Institut Egyptien_ (deuxième série, No. 1, année 1880) there is an admirable paper on Eastern heraldry, ‘Le blason chez les Princes musulmans,’ by E. T. Rogers Bey. He proves that a heraldic scutcheon is known to the Arabs as _rank_, plur. _runúk_, and that the word is the Persian _rang_, colour, from which he would derive our (man of) ‘rank,’ a word hitherto unsatisfactorily explained. As regards the tints, ‘azure’ is evidently the Persian _lájawardi_; and ‘gules’ is better derived from _gul_, a rose, than from Fr. _gueules_ (jaw), which is L. Lat. _gula_, reddened skin. These three words suggest that for the origin of heraldry in its present form we must go back to Persia. Of the Sword in European heraldry I shall have more to say in Part II.

[445] Strange to say, these Sword-names are carefully omitted from Liddell and Scott, 1869.

[446] The information was kindly forwarded to me by Captain F. M. Hunter, Assistant Political Resident, Aden. Along the blade runs the inscription, which will be quoted in Part II., and the characters appear modern. My informant thinks that this Chelidonian does not represent the original Zú’l-Fikár, which was two-edged.

[447] This trophy hangs against the staircase wall of the fine armoury belonging to the Museo del Arsenale (Naval Arsenal), Venice. Here, however, it has become a complicated affair with Koranic inscription (ch. xl. vol. i.); open-jawed dragons’ heads at the hilt, and below the handle a rosette with various complications of ‘Yá’ (Allah!).

[448] It is figured in the illustrations following the _Antiquities of Orissa_, by Rajendra Lala Mitra.

[449] Capt. Cameron and I exhibited a specimen, made for us by good King Blay of Attábo, at a special meeting of the Anthropological Institute of London.

[450] The Austrian geographer, Dr. Josef Chavanne, estimates the mean altitude of Africa at 2,170 feet (round numbers), or more than double that of Europe (971 feet, M. G. Leipoldt).

[451] He makes his Ethiopians emigrate from India to Egypt—but where? when? how? The ‘Asiatic Æthiopians’ of Herodotus lie between the Germanii (Persian _Kerman_) and the Indus (iii. 93, &c.). The bas-reliefs of Susiana show negroid types, and Texier found the Lamlam tribe in the marshes round the head of the Persian Gulf to resemble the Bisharin of Upper Egypt. Was _the_ Buddha one of these Cushite Ethiopians?

[452] _Monumental History, &c._

[453] The late Mr. Lane, who was greatly attached to Cairo and its population, insisted upon the Arab origin and kinship of the Egyptian. To those who know both races they appear as different as Englishmen and Greeks. Place an Arab, especially a Bedawi, by the side of a Fellah, and the contrast will strike the least experienced eye.

[454] The first instalment was sent in May 1881 to the Royal College of Surgeons for the benefit of Professor Flower and Dr. C. Carter Blake. I am aware of the difficulty in determining mummy-dates, but the fact of mummification shows a certain antiquity whose later limit is sharply defined. The mummy of King Mer en Rá (Sixth Dynasty), found near the Sakkarah pyramids, had been stripped of its bandages; but the marks impressed upon the skin showed that the system was that of later years. He can hardly be dated later than B.C. 3000; and, reckoning from that period to A.D. 700, when mummifying ceased, we have a population of embalmed bodies of some 730,000,000 in round numbers.

[455] The hair is of intermediate type between negro and Malay. The Nilotes are οὐλότριχοι and ἐριόκομοι, with woolly locks, slightly flat like ribbons, evenly distributed (not in peppercorns) over the scalp. It is also a mistake to make the Nubians λισσότριχοι: none of the Nile Valley races are lank-haired like Hindús, Chinese, and Australians.

[456] The full number of Herodotus is 52,000 years. Mr. Day (p. 59) is scandalised by these dates, which argue for the ‘high antiquity theory’; and appears astonished to find ‘anything placed centuries previous to the Noahitic Deluge.’ Of this more presently.

[457] Each generation contained a ‘Piromis, son of a Piromis.’ The word, made equivalent to _Kalos k’ agathos_ (= _galantuomo_), _Pe-Rome_, the man, opposed to _Pe-Neter_, the god.

[458] Mela has been blamed for repeating Herodotus without understanding him. When he states that the sun twice set at the point where it now rises (‘solem bis jam occidisse unde oritur’), he probably means that the greater light left to the west the zodiacal sign which presided at its rising.

[459] The word at first applied probably to the commander-in-chief. Wilkinson’s day derived it from _Phra_ (_pa-Ra_), the sun; now it is explained _Per-áo_, the Great House, in the sense of ‘Sublime Porte.’

[460] _Antiquité des Races Humaines._ Paris, 1862.

[461] The ‘black land,’ opposed to _Tesher_, the ‘red land’ (Edom, Idumæa, Erythræa), the wilds of North-Western Arabia. It is also called on the monuments _A’in_ (_Æan_ in Pliny) and _Ta-mera_ (_Mera_, _Tomera_), the ‘inundation region.’ Another old name, _Aeria_, is from יאר, _Yior_, the Nile. _Kemi_ must not be confounded with _Khem_, _Chemmis_, universal nature, the generative and reproductive principle—_Pan_. When Q. Curtius writes that Chemmis ‘_umbraculo_ maxime similis est habitus,’ I would change the first word to ‘umbilico.’ The stepped cone in the Elephanta Caves exactly explains the latter.

[462] Hecatæus and Anaximander divided the globe into Europe (_Ereb_, _Gharb_, the West) and Asia (_Asiyeh_, the East). Their successors added Libya (Africa), a term derived from the Libu or Ribu tribes; and the Father of History a most insufficient fourth—the Nilotic Delta. The latter, however, is ethnologically correct: Egypt is neither Africa nor Asia, but a land _per se_.

[463] In Homer, Ægyptus always applies to the Nile (_Od._ xiv. 268). Manetho makes it the name of a king, Sethos = Seti I. M. Maspero proposes as a derivation of the word, Ha Kahi Ptah (the land of the god Ptah). Hence the Biblical Pathros = Ptah-land (_Ezek._ xxix. 14). Pathyris, the western side of Thebes, and the western Provinces generally, may have named the πάταικοι (Herod. iii. 37), the obscene dwarfs who made Cambyses laugh.

[464] Herodotus (vii. 66) specifies the Arians, a racial name then synonymous with the Medes. This is not the place to enter upon the subject of Aria’s enormous development.

[465] As a specimen of the roots—which are most remarkable when they consist of single consonants, whose reduplication made the earliest words—take ‘papa’ and ‘mamma.’ The former is from the Egyptian _pa-pa_ (root _p_), to produce, the original idea of the begetter; and the latter is _ma-ma_ (root _m_), to carry, be pregnant, bear. _Mut_ becomes _mátá_, μήτηρ, _mater_, mother: _Mer_ (_a-mor_), love; _meran_ (_morior_), die, and _more_ (_mare_), the sea. In ‘Semitic’ we have _má_, Heb. and Arab. _má_, water; and a long array of other words (as _ia_, yes, yea; and _na_, nay) too extensive for notice.

[466] Characterised chiefly by post- instead of pre-positions, by additions to the verb which make it causal, reflective, and so forth, and by the peculiar form of sentences. Examples: the Finn-Ugrian-Magyar and the Turk-Mongol-Tartar, both probably deriving from the ancient _Sakas_ = Scythians.

[467] To Aryan I much prefer the older term ‘Iranian’; Iran (Persia), which once extended from the Indus to the Mediterranean, being one of the great centres where the ‘Aryo’-Egyptian element of language developed itself, and where a typical race is still found. Nor is there much objection to ‘Turanian,’ Turan being the non-Iranian regions to the east, Tartary and China. But ‘Semitic,’ which contains a myth and a theory, should be changed into ‘Arabian.’ Egypto-Arabic attained its purest and highest development in the Peninsula; Hebrew is a northern and somewhat barbarous dialect; Syriac is a north-western offspring; Galla, a western; and so forth.

[468] For whose erection every ‘authority’ gives his or her own date. Mr. Proctor’s calculation, based upon the precession of the equinoxes, is B.C. 3350. It appears to me that we also obtain the date from the position of the polar star (α Draconis), which looked down the axis of the great entrance-passage before this long tube was blocked up. We may thus assume between B.C. 3440 and B.C. 3350.

[469] _Records of the Past_, ii. 120; and _Trans. Bibl. Soc._ i. ii. 383–85.

[470] Brugsch, vol. ii. chap. xiv.

[471] One nome (_Tanis_) carried a crescent and one star, others had two and three of the latter. The emblem passed over to the Byzantine Empire, and now we see upon the Egyptian flag the crescent and Seb, the five-rayed star. It is thus distinguished from the Turkish, which has seven rays.

[472] See chap. viii.

[473] The popular conception of the Noachian Deluge is a study. There have been millions of local and partial floods; but wherever and whenever a traveller finds the legend of an inundation he incontinently applies it to ‘the Flood.’ Dr. Livingstone could not refrain from so doing at the petty Lake Dilolo. And it is to be noted that the Egyptians, accustomed to annual freshets, utterly ignored one general cataclysm as held by the Greeks.

[474] ‘Nuhu’ is found in the Nahrai tomb, Beni Hasan (Osburn, i. 239); other names are Noum, Nouf, and Nef.

[475] Amun Ra (Hephæstus, Vulcan), the veiled Osiris, the ‘Hidden One of Thebes,’ is thus addressed in a papyrus:—

He is One only, alone sans equal, Dwelling above in the Holy of Holies.

Another describes him as ‘Maker of all things; whose beginning was the beginning of the world; whose forms are various and manifold; the first to exist; the one only Being, and the Parent of all who live.’

[476] Mr. Froude _metaphysicises_ when he tells us that the religion of Egypt is the adoration of physical forces. Mankind do not worship abstractions; they begin (and mostly end) by adoring man.

[477] Blind because she saw with insight, not physical vision. Her eyes are hidden by blinkers or ‘goggles.’ Her usual name is Ma, and her ideograph is the ell-measure.

[478] Even ‘God save the King’ must be referred back to them.

[479] It is an aorist from ‘Havah;’ so φύσις from φύω, and _natura_ from _nascor_. Mystically, _Ya_ is the past, _Ha_ the present, and _Vah_ the future.

[480] My fellow-traveller, the Rev. W. Robertson Smith, has neglected the derivation of the ‘Prophet’ grade by Jewry from Egypt; his interesting volume (_The Old Testament, &c._) wants more Egyptianism. The Prophets of Nile-land had their merits; they foretold that Pharaoh Necho’s Suez Canal would be more useful to strangers than to natives.

[481] The High Priest’s robe in Jewry had 366 bells, symbolising the days of the Sothic-sidereal year. In the times of the early Pharaohs, the ‘Queen of the New Year’ appeared in coincidence with the beginning of the solar year. The Sothic æra had been fixed from observations before Thut-mes III. (Eighteenth Dynasty, circ. B.C. 1580).

[482] Yet the end of chap. xix. is distinctly teleological. Were there two Jobs?

[483] Abraham, the legendary forefather of the Hebrews, was a Chaldæan from Ur of the Chaldees. On the east bank of the Euphrates lies Uru-ki, Erech, or Warká, fronted by Ur, Uru, or Mughayr: the Bedawin still call the latter ‘Urhha’ in memory of ‘Ur.’ Thus Abraham was a hill-man from the harsh and rugged regions fringing Southern Armenia. Hence the ‘Jewish face,’ with its strongly marked features and its wealth of hair and beard, appears everywhere in the sculptures of ancient Babylonia and Persia. Hence, too, the superficial observation that the Afghans and hill-tribes west of the Indus are Jews because they have the typical Jewish look. The reason is that all are derived from the same ethnic centre, a great watershed of race.

[484] In this section of the nineteenth century three popular crazes are producing a literature of vigorous growth. The first is the Shakespearian; not Shakespeare, but Bacon, or some other Palmerstonian pet, wrote Shakespeare. The second, apparently a by-blow of the Book of Mormon, is the descent of John Bull from the ‘Lost Tribes,’ who were never lost. The third is the Pyramid craze; and the rough common sense of the public has embodied it in ‘the Inspired British Inch’: these Pyramidists mostly forget that _the_ Pyramid is one of three greater and some seventy lesser items which form the cemetery of Memphis.

[485] Yet it is remarkable, observes Brugsch (i. 212), that from the earliest ages the curse of the Typhonic gods clings to gold. So Plutarch (_Isis and Osiris_) tells us that the worshippers were directed not to wear the noble metal; and this still is a general rule in El-Islam.

[486] Silver, the ‘next folly of mankind,’ says Pliny (_Nat. Hist._ xxxiii. 31), showing his own, and rivalling Horace’s ‘aurum irrepertum et sic melius situm.’ Strange to say, neither old Egypt nor Assyria had a coinage, which Herodotus (i. 94) and a host of other writers attribute to the Lydians, the forefathers of the Etruscans. Its representative in the Nile Valley was the ring-money, which extended to ancient Britain, and which is still preserved in many parts of Africa. The golden ‘manillas’ discovered at Dali (Idalium) in Cyprus, where the breaks of the circle are adorned with the heads of animals, lions and asps, show what the now meaningless thickening of these parts originally meant.

[487] ‘Lead is also united by the aid of white lead (tin); white lead with white lead by the agency of oil’ (Pliny, xxxiii. 30).

[488] _The Captivity of Hans Stade_, p. 145.

[489] Properly speaking, to ‘damascene’ is confined to ‘grit’ or inlaid iron or steel, the word evidently deriving from Damascus, once so famous for Swords. Johnson (_Dict._, Longmans, 1805) explains the word ‘damask,’ ‘linen or silk woven in a manner invented at Damascus, by which part, by a various direction of the threads, exhibits flowers or other forms.’ Percy (_Metal._ p. 185) inclines towards ‘Damascus’; but he suggests that the ‘word “damask” applied to steel may have been derived, not from the place of manufacture but from a fancied resemblance between the markings in question and the damask patterns on textile fabrics.’

[490] This process resembles our niello (nigellum) inlaying. The oldest composition contained most silver and no lead. Percy (_Metallurgy_, p. 23) gives us its history: the first treatise by Theophilus, _alias_ Rugerus, a monk of the early eleventh century, was translated by Robert Hendrick (London, 1847).

[491] Plutarch relates (_De Isid._ 2) of Ochus (Thirty-first Dynasty), who, amongst other acts of tyranny, caused the sacred bull Apis to be made roast beef, that he was represented in the Catalogue of Kings by a Sword.

[492] _Ḳrsha_, _Krasher_, or _Krershra_. The determinative is a squatting archer with bow and arrows. Marvellous to say, Brugsch (i. 51) mentions ‘clubs, axes, bows and arrows,’ utterly neglecting the Sword.

[493] Egyptian national names give derivation to, but do not derive from, Greek. According to Pollux (vii. 71), however, _Hemitybion_ is Egyptian, evidently corrupted.

[494] The horse, apparently unknown to the First Dynasty of Memphis, was familiar to the Second. Mr. Gladstone (_Primer of Homer_, p. 97: Macmillan, 1878) supposes that the animal came from Libya or Upper Egypt; but the African horse probably originates from Asia. The first illustrations of horses and chariots are found at Eileithyias, _temp._ Aah-mes, Amos, Amosis, B.C. 1500.

[495] The pole-axe was three feet long, the handle being two; the blade varied from ten to fourteen inches, and below it was a heavy metal ball, some four inches in diameter, requiring a powerful arm. The club in the British Museum, armed with wooden teeth, is not represented on the monuments, and probably belonged to some barbarous tribe.

[496] I have already discussed the Stone Age in Egypt and in Africa (chap. iii.). We must not, however, determine it to be pre-metallic without further study. Herodotus first notices it when he tells us that the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes used stone-tipped arrows.

[497] I cannot but suspect the word of being a congener of our ‘chop.’ Mr. Gerald Massey, author of _A Book of the Beginnings_, favoured me with his opinion upon the ‘scymitar Khopsh.’ He identifies it with the hinder thigh ([Hieroglyphs], _Shepsh_, or [Hieroglyphs], _Khepsh_), of the ‘old Genitrix’ of the Typhonian type, _Kfa_ or _Kefa_ (force, power, might); the Goddess of the Great Bear and the place of birth. Hence the [Hieroglyphs] (_Ru_) or ‘mouth’ of the Sword came to be synonymous with the ‘edge’ of the Sword (Genesis xxxiv. 36). In the Denderah zodiac, the central figure, the ‘old Genitrix,’ holds the Khopsh-chopper or falchion with the right hand. The ‘thigh of Khepsh’ is also the Egyptian rudder-oar. The Great Bear Khepsh is one of the earliest measures of the Seasons: the Chinese still say that at nightfall the ‘handle of the northern bushel’ (tail of Ursa Major) points east in spring, south in summer, west in autumn, and north in winter.

Mr. Gerald Massey’s two fine volumes have secured him, and will secure him, much bitter and hostile criticism from the many-headed who are lynx-eyed as to details while they overlook the general scheme. His object has been to show that religion and literature, science and art, originated in Egypt; and here he is undoubtedly right. Relying upon the self-evident fact that the language of the hieroglyphs contains ‘Semitic’ as well as ‘Aryan’ roots and derivative forms, he traces these throughout the languages of the world. Whether we judge his work conclusive or not, we cannot but admire and applaud the vast reading and research which he has brought to bear upon the most interesting subject.

And in another way Mr. Massey has done good. He has uttered a lively and emphatic protest against the Sanskritists and their over-weening pretensions. In vol. ii. (p. 56) he shows how shallow is the conclusion that Ophir was in India because the produce brought back by Solomon’s fleets had, according to Professor Max Müller, Sanskrit or Dravidian names. ‘_Koph_’ the ape is _Kapi_ in Sansk.; but it is pure Egyptian, _Kapi_, whence the Gr. κῆπ-ος or κῆβ-ος. ‘_Tukkiyim_’ (peacocks) resembles the Toki of Tamil and the Togei of Malabar; but the root is evidently the Egyptian _Tekh_ or _Tekai_, a symbolical bird. ‘_Shen habim_’ (teeth of elephant = tusks) may derive from the Sansk. _Ibau_, an elephant, but the latter is originally _Ab_ in Egyptian. These erroneous views, coming from an authoritative source, are at once accepted, copied into popular books, and find their way round the world, to the confusion of true knowledge. They make it our hapless fate to learn, unlearn, and relearn. See ‘ape’ in Smith’s _Dict. of the Bible_, and, to quote one in dozens, the _Trans. Anthrop. Soc._ p. 435, May 1882,—‘the name for ape in “Kings” and in Greek authors, both adopted from Sanskrit.’

Mr. Massey unfortunately has not studied Arabic, hence many views which will hardly find acceptance. In interpreting the hieroglyphics he has wisely preferred the ideographic symbolism and the determinatives which, countless ages ago, preceded the phonetic and alphabetic forms.

[498] For further notice of the Kopis, see chap. xi.

[499] Also _v._ to decapitate: the Coptic form is _Sebi_ or _Sefi_.

[500] Bunsen, v. 758.

[501] Bunsen’s _Egypt_, v. 429. According to Castor, the two Swords pointed at the throat of a kneeling man was the priest’s stamp denoting pure beasts, fit for sacrifice. He has noted that this survival points distinctly to human sacrifice in older days.

[502] Yet the tombs at Beni Hasan date 900 years before the popular era of the Trojan war.

[503] _Monum._ 262 fol., plates 11, 15.

[504] Rosellini shows a long tapering blade with a mid-rib, apparently sunken, and a raised surface on each side. The length is divided into five parts, smooth and hatched (?).

[505] The Somal have retained three other notable peculiarities of ancient Egypt; the wig (worn by the old Nilotes); the _Uts_ ([Hieroglyphs]) or wooden head-stool acting pillow, which further north was a half-cylinder of alabaster finely carved; and the ostrich-feather head-gear The latter was a symbol of Truth among the old Egyptians, because, says Hor Apollo, the wing-feathers are of equal length. The Romans adopted it as a military decoration. ‘Your courage has not yet given your helmet wherewithal to shade your face from the burning sun,’ say the Kurds, who add to the crest a new feather for every foe slain in fight. The Somal, after victory or murder, stick the white variety in the mop-head. We still use the phrase ‘a feather in his cap.’ The ‘Prince of Wales’ feather’ is an Egyptian ideograph of Truth. Mr. Gerald Massey seems to think that Wilkinson’s ‘_Thmei_’ (II. chap. viii.) is ‘only a backward rendering of the Greek “_Themis_”‘; that the feathers are ‘_Shu_’ ([Hieroglyphs]), and that the goddess is ‘_Ma_’ ([Hieroglyphs]), or ‘_Mati_.’ But surely the root of _Themis_ would be in ‘_Ta-Ma_,’ _the_ Goddess (of Truth)?

[506] Compare _Raa_, Heb. and Ar., ‘he saw’; Gr. ὁράω, and Lat. _Ra-dius_.

[507] Colonel A. Lane Fox remarks that the groove which is constant in these Caucasian blades is a little out of the central line, and does not correspond on each side, an alternation showing that it is derived from the ogee form. I have suggested that the idea arose from the arrow-head ‘bellied on a twist,’ and have figured the weapon in the next page (fig. 170).

[508] _Bronze, &c._ p. 298.

[509] Chap. v.

[510] Returning from the exploration of Harar (1853), I sent a small collection of Somali weapons to the United Service Institution.

[511] The form is accurately preserved in the formidable Afghan ‘Charay’ or one-edged knife.

[512] _A Critical Inquiry_, &c.

[513] I have shown that the heraldic Sword in the East preserves this double sword-knot (chap. vii.).

[514] The Baghirmi, according to Denham, adore a long lance of peculiar construction: this spear-worship is also practised by the Marghi and the Musghu. It extended from ancient Rome to certain of the Pacific Isles; while the Fijians worship the war-club. At Baroda in Gujarát superstitious honours are paid to the Gaekhwar’s golden cannons with silver wheels.

[515] English and Styrian razors are also largely imported.

[516] Chap. viii.

[517] Athenæus (i. 27) speaks of the Thracian dance in arms, ‘men jumping up very high with light springs, and using Swords.’ At last one of them strikes another, so that it seemed to everyone that the man was wounded.

[518] _Marocco_, page 66 (Milano, Treves, 1876).

[519] Hence the ardent desire of the Abyssinians, when first visited by Europeans, to obtain civilised Swords. Father F. Alvarez (_Hakluyt Soc._ 1881), who lived in Abyssinia between 1520 and 1527, shows the Barnagais (_Bahr-Negush_, or sea-ruler) begging the Portuguese ambassador for his rich Sword and ornaments, ‘as the great lords have few Swords’ (chap. xxx.). Prester John (the Negush or Emperor) displays ‘five bundles of short Swords with silver hilts,’ taken from the Moslems (chap. cxiii.). The King of Portugal sends as a present to Prester John ‘first a gold Sword with a rich hilt,’ and a good fencer, Estevam Pallarte.

[520] _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 184.

[521] _Gorilla-land_, p. 227.

[522] Quenching in oil or grease instead of water is a common practice. The workman still ‘adds to the water a thin cake of grease, or pours over it hot oil, through which the steel must pass before it enters the water, for by these means it is prevented from acquiring cracks and flaws.’ (Beckmann, _loc. cit._ ii. 330.)

[523] Specimens of all these weapons are in the Lane-Fox Collection, Nos. 1088 to 1100.

[524] _The Cataracts of the Congo_, p. 234.

[525] I have noticed that arrant humbug, the celebrated ‘golden axe’ which, in 1880–81, caused the last ‘Ashantee scare’ (_To the Gold Coast for Gold_, ii.). The thing sent to England was certainly not the great fetish which is held to be the national Palladium. Another memento of the last Ashantee war, ‘King Koffee’s umbrella, an article of prodigious proportions, and of gaudy material,’ only returned to where it was made. The type of the latter may be seen in most Italian market-places, shading the old women’s fruits and vegetables; and Manchester, I believe, had the honour of building it.

[526] _Through the Dark Continent_, i. 21.

[527] Described in my _Mission to Dahome_, _passim_.

[528] _Across Africa_, vol. i. pp. 121, 139; vol. ii. 104.

[529] The famous copper mines of the Congo region, whose yield, says Barbot, was mistaken for gold, are noticed in _The Cataracts of the Congo_, pp. 45, 46.

[530] Captain Cameron has brought home specimens.

[531] From _O Muata Cazembe_, which also contains a long and valuable description of the copper mines in South-Eastern Africa, worked by the people since olden time.

[532] According to Marco Polo (lib. iii. cap. 34), the men of Zanghibar (Zanzibar) are ‘both tall and stout, but not tall in proportion to their stoutness, for if they were, being so stout and brawny, they would be absolutely like giants; and they are so strong that they will carry for four men and eat for five.’

[533] _Anthrop. Coll._ p. 135.

[534] The _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ (August 1883) has printed an excellent paper ‘On the Mechanical Methods of the Ancient Egyptians.’ Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie believes that they cut diorite with lathes and jewel graving-points (diamond? or corundum abundant in Midian?); and that the diamond was the ‘piercing-stone’ of early Babylonian Inscriptions.

[535] Gen. xxiii. 18. In 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, ‘Aretz tahtim-hodshi’ should be read, ‘Aretz ha-Hittim Kadesh,’ ‘the land of the Hittites of (city) Kadesh.’

[536] _Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæology_, vol. v. part 2, p. 354. They were then the paramount nation in Syria, from the Euphrates to the Libanus; and the Assyrians knew the region as Mat-Khatte.

[537] Wild work has been made with this word. Some render it ‘large’ (i.e. whale-like); the scholiast calls the Cetians a people of Mysia; others confound them with the Kittaians (Chittim = Cypriots) of Menander in Josephus (_A. J._ ix. 14; Cory’s _Frag._, p. 30; London, Reeves & Turner, 1876); others with the people of Kiti (the circle), the Heb. Galil or Galilee.

[538] ‘Two-river’ (land) is mostly applied to the great Interamnian plain, Mesopotamia. Here it must mean Syria proper; and Aram Naharayn (Highlands of the Two Streams) admirably describes Palestine, which is composed of a double anticlinal river-valley formed by the Iarunata (Jordan) and the Arunata (Orontes). The whole length and breadth of the country is distributed between the two, with the exception of the small Litani watershed.

[539] The ‘Aram wine from Halybon’ was produced at Helbún (Halbáún, the inhabitants call it), a gorge-village near Damascus. Being Moslems, they no longer ferment their grape-juice; but the fruit is still famous. The Helbún people speak the broadest dialect, and are a perpetual laughing-stock to the Damascus citizens. The Aleppites derive their ‘Halab’ (Aleppo) because Abraham there milked (_halaba_) a cow; but the place is older than the Genesitic flood, _the_ Flood.

[540] This word is corruptly written Jerablus, Jorablus, Jirabis, &c.

[541] In Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_ (i. 463) we find that the Southern Hittites numbered twelve kings.

[542] The decisive action is shown on an Egyptian tomb (Brugsch, i. 291).

[543] Ramses left as memorials of his invasion three hieroglyphic tablets cut upon the rocks on the south side of the embouchure of the Nahr el-Kalb (Dog or Wolf River, the Lycus), a few miles north of the Venerable Bayrut (Berytus, &c.). They mark the ancient road which ascended the rough torrent-gorge to its origin in Cælesyria (El-Buká’a). Even since these pages have been written the coffins and mummies of Ramses II. and his daughter have been found at Dayr el-Bahri in Upper Egypt, and conveyed from Thebes to Bulak by Dr. Emil Brugsch. The same collector has been equally lucky with the remains of Seti I., although Belzoni, who discovered the tomb, sent the sarcophagus to the Sloane Museum.

[544] Sesostris derives from _Ses_, _Setesu_, _Sestesu_, or _Sestura_, i.e. ‘Sethosis, also called Ramses’ (Seti-son?). The Greek Sesostris combines, I have said, the lives of Seti and his son Ramses. According to Brugsch, he is the ‘Pharaoh of the Oppression,’ and the son of the unnamed Princess (Merris? Thermutis?) who ‘found Moses in the bull-rushes.’

The Princess Thermutis, says Josephus, named Moshe (Moses) from _mo_ (_má_ = water) and _uses_, those who are saved out of it (_ses_ = to reach land). Possibly it is _Mu-su_ = water-son. Josephus was sorely offended by the ‘calumnies’ of Manetho; this Egyptian priest, who wrote under Ptolemy Philadelphus about the time of the LXX, declared that the Hebrews were a familia of leprous slaves who, when expelled from Egypt, were led by a renegade priest called Osarsiph (Osiris-Sapi, god of underworld); and that the number was swollen by Palestinian strangers driven out by Amenophis. He gives the number of lepers and unclean at 250,000 (= 50,000 × 5), and the Hyksos, another impure race, number also 250,000. The learned classics accepted this view, duly abusing the ‘gens sceleratissima’ (Seneca), and the ‘odium generis humani’ (Tacitus).

[545] The site of Kadesh and the Buhayrat Hums (Tarn of Emessa) or B. Kutaynah, a ‘broad’ or widening of the Orontes, was first visited by Dr. Thomson of Bayrut in 1846. I rode about the ‘lake of the land of the Amorites’ in 1870; but found no ruins, or rather ruins of no importance everywhere. It was not then known to me that in A.D. 1200 the geographer Yakut (_Geogr. Dict._ edit. Wüstenfeld) had noticed the water in his day as the ‘Bahriyat Kuds’ (Tarn of Kadesh). Since that time the Palestine Exploration Fund (July 1881) identified the seat of Atesh or Kadesh with the Tell Nabi Mendeh, a Santon’s tomb on the highest part of the hill where the ruins lie. The site is on the left bank of the Orontes, four English miles south of the ‘broad.’ The city disappears from history after the thirteenth century B.C., but local legend has preserved its memory.

[546] Prof. Ebers, who is familiar with the many portraits of Ramses-Sesostris, declares that he was a handsome man with fine aquiline features, like Napoleon Buonaparte.

[547] This original and instinctive way to revive the drowned endures to the present day, despite the wrath of the Faculty.

[548] Brugsch (ii. 68) gives the terms of the treaty as translated by Mr. Goodwin (_Records of the Past_, iv. 25); and adds instances to prove that it was acted upon. Thus he explains the hitherto mysterious countermarch, the turning back of the Hebrew exodus, at the time when the emigrants were advancing straight upon their objective. His strong point is the identification of ‘Baal-Zephon,’ about which all the commentators have made such hopeless guesses. He explains it by ‘Baal of the North’ (Typhon, Sutekh or Khepsh), the ‘Mount Kasion’ of Jupiter Kasios, a name derived from the Egyptian Hazian or Hazina.

[549] So called from an old Coptic town, long ruined.

[550] Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, vol. i., Essay VII., and reference to Black Obelisk in British Museum. _Synchronous History of Assyria and Judæa_, pp. 1–82, vol. iii. pt. i.; _Soc. Bibl. Archæology_, 1874.

[551] A Keltic word, _bot_ = foot.

[552] In popular Hebrew use, ‘Canaanite’ meant a trader.

[553] Possibly the ‘pure’ (Hebr. _Tohar_), in which case the word is ‘Semitic.’

[554] Brugsch, ii. chap. xiv. As a rule, slingers were the least esteemed of fighting men.

[555] The Rev. William Wright, missionary at Damascus, first suggested that the Hamath inscriptions were Hittite. The study was begun in 1872 by the late Dr. A. D. Mordtmann at Constantinople, where is the original of the silver Hittite dish represented in the British Museum.

[556] _Trans. Soc. Biblical Archæol._ vol. iv. pt. 2, 1876.

[557] Described by M. Clermont-Ganneau in the _Revue Archéologique_, Dec. 1879; and figured in the _Palestine Exploration Fund_, July 1881.

[558] In Egypt the king rests his feet upon war-captives; and making a foot-stool of the enemy is a Biblical phrase (Psalm cx. 1) which had a literal signification.

[559] For the two-headed eagle in Moslem heraldry (A.D. 1190 and 1217), see p. 108 of Rogers Bey’s valuable paper before quoted (chap. vii.).

[560] His chief argument for their Northern origin seems to be founded upon their boots; he forgets, however, that the Arabs of Mahommed’s day wore ‘Khuff;’ and that legal ablutions were modified to suit them. It is the _cothurnus calceatus_ of Pliny (vii. 19) which, as we see on statues and vases, covered the foot and ankle to the calf. The Assyriologist Prof. P. Schrader, followed by Prof. G. Ebers, considers the Khita to be Aramæans.

[561] And Carchemish. ‘On the Hamathite Inscriptions,’ Trans. _Soc. Bibl. Archæol._ vol. i. pt. 1, 1876, and vii. 298–443, on Tarrik-timmun.

[562] Mr. Heath kindly explained to me the key of his system published in the _Journ. Anthrop. Instit._ May 1880. The figures at Ibríz having suggested ‘Semitism,’ he separated root-letters from formatives and found three Aramæan suffixes, _t-na_, _t-kun_, and _t-hun_. These gave an immense probability that he had hit upon the _t_, _n_, _k_, and _h_. Meanwhile Mr. Boscawen (Pal. Expl. Fund, July 1881) contends that our ‘knowledge of Hittite is confined to four syllabic characters and the ideographs.’ The Rev. Mr. Sayce was good enough to explain to me how he had determined eleven values. A comparison of inscriptions, with the silver boss of Tarkodemos as a _point de départ_, suggested to him that the stirrup-shape ([Hittite]) marks the nom. sing. of proper names, and this in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments ends in _s_. He assumes that adjectives agree with their substantives, which they follow by taking the same suffixes. He was at first disposed to make the broken _k_ ([Hittite] or [Hittite]), which curiously resembles an old Egyptian sign, signify ‘and’ (cop. conjunct.); but the incised inscription found by Mr. Ramsey at Bór (old Tyana) proved it the determinative of an individual. The goat’s head seems from the bilingual boss to have the phonetic value ‘tarku,’ and is interchanged with [Hittite] (_ku_), [Hittite] (_s_), [Hittite], and [Hittite]. The two spear-heads with the stirrup ([Hittite]) appear to represent a patronymic—_Kus_. The second sign (= _ku_), which seems to be the first pers. sing. of the Aor., can be followed in the same group of characters by [Hittite]; whence Mr. Sayce inferred the latter to be an adjectival participial affix = _u_. Similarly [Hittite] = _e_, the acc. plur.; thus [Hittite] = _ue_. The bilingual boss also shows [Hittite] or [Hittite] = _mi_, the third pers. sing. present tense, and we find indifferently [Hittite] and [Hittite]. The gen. plur. is [Hittite], but the pronunciation is not determined. The same is the case with the sock or low boot ([Hittite]), suggested to be the third pers. plur. of the Aorist. Lastly, the ideograph of plurality attached to nouns and verbs is [Hittite].

[563] Dr. Guyther, visiting the Merash citadel, has found several new characters in a long inscription on a lion, and fragments of stone with other hieroglyphs have been forwarded from Carchemish to the British Museum.

[564] Under Shishonk (Shishak), the contemporary of Solomon, the conquered tribes of Edom and Judah are termed the ‘Fenekh and the Aamu (Syro-Aramæans) of a far land.’ Brugsch (ii. 210) ‘has a presentiment’ that these Fenekh are intimately related to the Jews; and he notes the similarity of Aamu with ‘Am,’ the well-known Hebrew term.

[565] Some have suspected Punt to be the far later Pándya, or Madura kingdom, in Southern India. Mariette’s Punt extended from Bab el-Mandeb to Cape Guardafui (‘I was a Guard’).

[566] Prof. Rugge of Christiania, however, connects Baldur with Achilles. We can hardly accept his scheme until the details shall have been better worked out.

[567] ‘Bak,’ from Beki in Coptic = city, town.

[568] ‘In Judæâ rivus Sabbatis omnibus siccatur’ (Pliny, xxxi. 18). The idea doubtless arose from the intermittent springs (Siloam, &c.) about Jerusalem. Josephus (_B. J._ viii. 5, § 1) makes his Sabbatic R. break the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) by flowing only on that day and resting during the other six. Hence the fabled Sabbation, whose flood of huge rocks and sand-waves, sixty to two hundred cubits high, issued from the ‘Garden of Eden.’ It still hems in the ten ‘Lost Tribes,’ and is believed by the Druzes.

[569] I quote from _Phœnician Inscriptions_, by the Rev. Dunbar I. Heath, not from the far more poetical version of the Duc de Luynes.

[570] My friend Prof. Socin holds that St. Meklar of Tyre conserves the cultus of Melkarth.

[571] Perhaps from the Egyptian _Ur_, old, ancient, original.

[572] The modern Persians, and, indeed, Persian history and legend, know nothing of this wild legend.

[573] A terra-cotta relief in the British Museum shows Chrysaor (Χρυσάωρ) springing from Medusa’s neck.

[574] Joppa, according to tradition (Pliny, v. 14), was built by Kepheus, king of the Æthiopians, and was his capital before ‘the Deluge.’ The same author tells us that Andromeda’s chains were there shown, and that the monster’s skeleton (some fish cast ashore upon the harbour reef?) was brought to Rome by the Curule Ædile M. Æmil. Scaurus the younger, who held office in Syria (ix. 4). The bones were upwards of forty feet long, the backbone one foot and a half thick, and the ribs higher than those of the Indian elephant (a cachelot?). Ajasson declared that the remains should have been sent to those who show in their collections the weapon with which Cain slew Abel. Pausanias (second century) saw the Lydda streamlet red with blood, where Perseus had bathed after killing the ‘Ketos.’ At Joppa St. Jerome was shown the traditional rock in which holes had been worn by Andromeda’s fetters. The spot is now clean forgotten—at least, all my inquiries failed to find it. The testimony is of the highest character; unfortunately it testifies to impossibilities—all monsters are ‘contradictory beings.’ The Ketos, whale or shark (_Canis Carcharias_), is evidently the same that swallowed Hercules and Jonah.

[575] Mgr. Bianchini very improperly translates _Harpé_ by ‘glaive,’ and other writers absurdly use ‘scymitar.’ They could hardly better describe what it was _not_.

[576] The bronze Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini in the Loggie dell’ Orgagna of Florence holds a falx-Sword or falchion.

[577] Hence possibly the town Arsúf; and (the Isle of) Seripho, where Perseus was worshipped.

[578] There seem to be three of the name: Palladius, the first missionary to Ireland; Sen Patrick, who studied under St. Germanus and died A.D. 458–61; and Patrick M‘Calphurn, also a pupil of St. Germanus, who missionarised about A.D. 440–42.

[579] _Horus et Saint-Georges_, &c. See also a kind of sentimental study æsthetically baptised ‘Saint Mark’s Rest: the Place of Dragons,’ by J. R. Anderson.

[580] From דג (_dag_), a fish, a Ketos, the Phœnician דגון (_Dajun_, _Dagon_); Dagan is the male, Dalas the female. Simply a fish-god. Sardanapalus was ‘he who knows Anu (the god) and Dagon.’

[581] Others found at Cannæ resemble the copper Swords of Ireland, according to the _Encyclopædia Metropolitana_.

[582] The ‘tariff of masses,’ from the temple of Baal at Marseille, speaks of Chaltzibah the Sufet. Other inscriptions inform us that the Carthaginians had a triad, Baal Hammon (Ammon); the Lady Tanith Pen Baal (Tanis or Neith, the πρόσωπον, or face, of Baal), and Iolaus.—_Phœnician Inscriptions_, by the Rev. D. I. Heath.

[583] Ezekiel (xxxii. 27). ‘And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell [Sheol = Shuala, the ghost-land of Babylon] with their weapons of war: _and they have laid their Swords under their heads_, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.’

[584] The Hebrews were probably included under the ‘miserable foreigners,’ who, at that time, numbered about one-third of the Egyptian people. It was the fashion to find ‘Hebrew’ in the ’Aper, ’Apura, ’Aperiu, and ’Apiurui of the monuments; but Brugsch has shown that these were the original ‘Erythræans,’ equestrian Arabs of the barrens extending from Heliopolis onward to modern Suez.

[585] _Trattato di Scherma_, &c. di Alberto Marchionni (Firenze: Bencini, 1547).

[586] This word will be noticed in