New Guinea, another focus of arrested civilisation, was found equally ignorant of the metal blade. The American aborigines never taught themselves to forge either cutting or thrusting Swords; and they entertained a quasi-superstitious horror of the long knife' in the hands of the pale-faced conqueror. This is apparently the case with all the lower families of mankind, to whom the metal Sword is clean unknown. If the history of arms be the history of our kind, and if the missile be the favourite weapon of the Savage and the Barbarian, the metal Sword eminently characterises the semi-civilised, and the use of gunpowder civilised, man.

A chief named Shongo, of Nemuro, in Japan, assured Mr. John Milne' that, ‘in old times, when there were no cutting tools of metal, the people made them of Aji, a kind of black stone, or of a hard material called iron-stone. Even now implements of this material are employed by men who dwell far in the interior.' Here, then, is another instance of the stone and the metal 'Ages' overlapping, even where the latter has produced the perfection of steel-work.

Trans. Anthrop. Inst. May 1881. Mr. Milne brought home some fine specimens of worked stones,

one of which (No. 17, pl. xviii.) is a chopper in the shape of the Egyptian flint-knives.

53

CHAPTER IV.

THE PROTO-CHALCITIC OR COPPER AGE OF WEAPONS.

I WILL begin by noticing that the present age has settled a question which caused much debate, and which puzzled Grote (ii. 142) and a host of others half a century ago, before phosphor-bronze was invented. This was the art of hardening (not tempering) copper and its alloys. All knew that these metals had been used, in cutting the most refractory substances, granite, syenite, porphyry, basalt, and perhaps diorite,2 by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Trojans, and Peruvians. But none knew the process, and some cut the knot by questioning its reality. When you cannot explain, deny-is a rule with many scientists. The difficulty was removed by the Uchatius-gun,3 long reported to be of 'steel-bronze,' but simply of common bronze hardened by compression. At the Anthropological Congress of Laibach (July 27-29, 1878), Gundaker Graf Wurmbrandt, of Pettau, exhibited sundry castings, two spear-heads and a leaf-shaped blade of bright bronze (Dowris copper) adorned with spirals to imitate the old weapons. They were so indurated by compression that they cut the common metal.

5

Again, at the Anthropological Congress of Salzburg (August 8, 1881), Dr. Otto Tischler, of Prussian Königsberg, repeated the old experiment, showing how soft copper and bronze could be hardened by the opus mallei (simple hammering). Moreover his metal thus compressed could cut and work the common soft

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

2 For instance, the magnificent life-sized statue of Khafra (Cephren or Khabryes) in the Bulak Museum, dated B.C. 3700-3300 (Brugsch, History, vol. i. p. 78). Scarabæi of diorite can be safely bought in Egypt, the substance being too hard for cheap imitation work. Dr. Henry Schliemann constantly mentions diorite in his Troy and its Remains (1875); for instance, wedges' (i.e. axes) large and small, (pp. 21, 28, 154): he speaks of an immense quantity of diorite implements (p. 75); of a Priapus of diorite twelve inches high (p. 169); of curious little sling bullets' (p. 236), and of hammers (p. 285). At Mycenae he found 'two well-polished axes of diorite.'

But as he also calls it hard black stone,' I suspect it to be basalt, as his 'green stone' (Troy, p. 21) may be jade or jadeite.

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

↑ Stahl-bronce = steel (i.e. hardened) bronze. The misunderstanding caused some ludicrous errors to the English press.

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

kinds without the aid of iron or steel. He exhibited two bronze plates in which various patterns had been punched by bronze dies. The hammering, rolling, beating, and pressing of copper for the purpose of hardening are well known to modern, and doubtless were to ancient workmen. The degree of compression applied is the feature of the discovery, or rather re-discovery.'

It may be doubted whether old Egypt and Peru knew our actual process of hydraulic pressure, whose simplest form is the waterfall. But they applied the force in its most efficient form. The hardest stones were grooved to make obelisks; the cuts were filled with wedges of kiln-dried wood, generally sycomore; and the latter, when saturated with water, split the stone by their expansion. And we can hardly deny that a people who could transport masses weighing 887 tons over a broken country, from El-Suwan (Assouan) to Thebes, a distance of 130 miles, would also be capable of effecting mechanical compression to a high degree.

2

Buffon (Hist. Nat.' article 'Cuivre ') believed in the 'lost art.' Rossignol 3 (pp. 237-242) has treated of the trempe (diá Tivos Baþĥs) que les anciens donnèrent au cuivre; and relates that the chemist Geoffrey, employed by the Comte de Caylus, succeeded in hardening copper and in giving it the finest edge; but the secret was not divulged. Mongez, the Academician, held that copper was indurated by immersion and by gradual air-cooling, but that la trempe would soften it. In 1862 David Wilson, following Proclus and Tzetzes, declares the process of hardening and tempering copper so as to give it the edge of iron or steel, a 'lost art.' Markham supposes that the old Peruvians hardened their copper with tin or silica; and he erroneously believes that tin is scarcely found in that section of South America.

5

Modern archæological discovery has suggested that in many parts of the world we must intercalate an age of virgin Copper between the so-called Stone and Bronze Periods. The first metal, as far as we know, was the stream-gold, washed by the Egyptians; and, as Champollion proved, the hieroglyphic sign for Núb (gold) is a bowl with a straining-cloth dripping water. The fable of glassdiscovery by the Sidonians on the sands of the Belus, a tale which has le charme This latter is the common process for softening the

Of this I shall have more to say in Chap. V. 2 This was the weight of the statue of 'Sesostris,' Ramses II, and his father Pharaoh Seti I.; see Chap. IX. The overseer standing upon its knee appears about two-thirds the length of the lower leg (Wilkinson, Frontisp. vol. ii.). Pliny treats of colossal statues, xxxiv. 18.

3 Les Métaux dans l'Antiquité, par J. P. Rossignol. Paris: Durand, 1863.

↑ So Professor F. Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, asserted, with a carelessness rare in so learned a writer (vol. ii. p. 255. London: Longmans, 1873), that the ancients knew a process of hardening that pliant metal (copper), most likely by repeated smelting (heating ?) and immersion in water.'

des origines, explains, I have said, how a bit of metalliferous stone, accidentally thrown upon the fire in a savage hut, would suggest one of the most progressive of the arts. And soon the 'featherless biped,' like the Mulciber and the Mammon of Milton

Ransack'd the centre, and with impious hands

Rifled the bowels of their mother earth

For treasures better hid.

The greater antiquity of copper in Southern Europe was distinctly affirmed, as has been seen, by the Ancients. The use of sheeting, or plating, on wood or stone was known as long ago as the days of Hesiod (B.C. 880-850?):

Τοῖς δ ̓ ἦν χάλκεα μὲν τεύχεα, χάλκεοι δέ τε οἶκοι,

Χαλκῷ δ' εἰργάζοντο, μέλας δ' οὐκ ἔσκε σίδηρος.—Erga, 149.

Copper for armour and arms had they, eke Copper their houses,
Copper they wrought their works when naught was known of black iron.1

Copper sheets were also used for flooring, as we learn from the xáλeos ovdós (Copper threshold) of Sophocles (Edip. Col.'); and the treasury-room of Delphi, as opposed to the Maïvos ovdós (stone threshold). So in the Palace of Alcinous (Odys.' vii. 75) the walls and threshold were copper, the pillars and lintels were silver, and the doors and dogs of gold.

The same practice was continued in the Bronze Period, as Dr. Schliemann proved when exploring the Thalamos attached to the Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenus. Nebuchadnezzar, in the 'Standard Inscription,' declares that he plated with copper the folding-doors and the pillars of the Babylon rampart, and it is suspected that gold and silver sheeted the fourth and seventh stages of the Temple of Belus, vulgò the Tower of Babel.

Lucretius is explicit upon the priority of copper

Posterius ferri vis est ærisque reperta,

Sed prior æris erat quam ferri cognitus usus.

Ære solum terræ tractabant, æreque belli

Miscebant fluctus et volnera vasta ferebant.-V. 1286.

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.

2 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.

3 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.

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) —

Insiluit

ardentem frigidus Ætnam

was betrayed by his sandal shoon with chalcos soles.

He justly determines its relation to gold

Nam fuit in pretio magis æs, aurumque jacebat,

Propter inutilitatem, hebeti mucrone retusum.-V. 1272.

And he ends with the normal sneer at his own age

Nunc jacet æs, aurum in summum successit honorem.-V. 1274.

Virgil, a learned archæologist, is equally explicit concerning the heroes of the Eneid and the old Italian tribes

Æratæ micant peltæ, micat æreus ensis.—Æn. vii. 743.

And similarly Ennius

Æratæ sonant galeæ : sed ne pote quisquam

Undique nitendo corpus discerpere ferro.1

Even during her most luxurious days Rome, like Hetruria, retained in memoriam the use of copper (or bronze?) for the sclepista or sacrificial knife. When founding a city they ploughed the pomoerium with a share of æs. The Pontifex Maximus and priests of Jupiter used hair-shears of the same material, even as the Sabine priests cut their locks with knives of æs. The Ancile or sacred shield was also of æs.

3

Pope, and other writers of his time, translated copper and bronze by 'brass' (copper and zinc); and in older English native brass' was opposed to 'yellow copper' (cuivre jaune). The same occurs in the A. V. Tubal Cain (the seventh in descent from Adam) is an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron '2 (Gen. iv. 22). Moses is commanded to 'cast five sockets of brass for pillars (Exod. xxvi. 37). Bezaleel and Aholiab, 'artists of the tabernacle,' work in brass (Exod. xxxi. 4). We read of a 'land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass' (Deut. viii. 9). Job tells us, 'Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.'4 Hiram of Tyre was 'cunning to work all works in brass' (casting and hammer-wrought), for Solomon's Temple, which dates from about two centuries after the time of the Trojan war (B.C. 1200). In Ezra (viii. 27) the text mentions 'two vessels of fine copper, precious as gold;' and the margin reads 'yellow or shining brass.' Nor is the old word quite forgotten we still speak of a brass gun.'

'In the Brazen Age,' unphilosophically says Schlegel (Phil. of Hist.' sect. ii.), 'crime and disorder reached their height violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were of copper, and their implements and

1 See Macrob. Sat. vi. 3.

2 Or a furbisher (whetter, sharpener = acuens) of every cutting tool of copper and iron.' See Chap. IX. 3 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.

4 Lead is also mentioned, but not tin.