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sheen. According to Lepsius it is the 'usem '-metal of Thutmes III.; Brugsch (i. 345) understands by 'usem' brass, and thinks Asmara or Asmala equivalent to the Hebrew hasmal or hashmal=electrum. In Bunsen (v. 757) Kasabet and Kakhi are brass (aurichalcum), and Khesbet is a metal connected with Kassiteros =tin. The alloy was known to Hesiod ('Scut.' 142) and to the ‘Odyssey'1 (iv. 73), not to the Iliad.' Sophocles ( Antig.' 1037) applied ‘Sardian electrum 'to gold, not to silver. Herodotus (iii. 115), in the historic age (B.C. 480-30), gives the name of the mythical metal to the 'tears of the Heliades,' which the Latins called succinum (succum), the Low-Latins ambrum, the Arabs anbar, and we Amber. Pliny (xxxiii. 23), repeated by Pausanias (v. 12, § 6), notes two kinds, natural (‘in all gold ore there is some silver '2) and artificial; in the latter the proportion of silver must not exceed one-fifth. The staters of Lydian Croesus, held by the Greeks to be the most ancient of coins, were, according to Böckh, of electrum, three parts gold and one part silver. Lucian applies the term to glass (vaλos); and, lastly, it was taken for brass and confounded with aurichalcum.3

I would suggest that this aurichalcum might also be the Dowris bronze' of Ireland, so called because first observed at Dowris, near Parsonstown, King's County. Wilde (p. 360) supposes with others that the gold-coloured alloy depended upon the admixture of a certain proportion of lead, and compares it with the Cyprus copper termed by the Romans Coronarium (used for theatrical crowns), which was coated with ox-gall. Of this or molu there are many articles in the Dublin Museum, preserving their fine golden-yellow lustre they had probably been lacquered or varnished like modern brasses; and the patina might be some gumresin. When much tarnished, they were cleaned by holding over the fire, and then by dipping in a weak solution of acid, as is done with modern castings. Two specimens, a Sword and a dagger-blade, were analysed (pp. 470, 483), and proved to contain copper 8767 to 9072, tin 8:52 to 8.25, lead 387 to 0.87, with a trace of sulphur in the Sword. The specific gravities were 8.819 to 8675. In a spear-head (p. 512), besides copper, tin, and lead, iron 0·31 and cobalt 0'09 were found.

There were other alloys of which we read but know little; such were the as agineticum, demonnesium, and nigrum; the as deliacum, whose secret was

in the so-called 'Trojan Stratum,' 30 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.

'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.

2 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.

Rossignol quotes Zonaras, Suidas, and John Pediasimus to prove this position.

4 We now lacquer with shell-lac dissolved in proof-spirit and coloured with 'dragon's blood.'

5 The lead was found in even larger proportions. See chap. xiii.

lost in Plutarch's day, and the Taprýσoios xaλxòs' from Southern Spain, probably shipped at Gibraltar Bay. Ollaria or pot-copper (brass) contained three pounds of plumbum argentarium (equal parts of tin and lead) to one hundred pounds of copper. Es caldarium could only be fused. Finally, græcanicum (Greek-colour) was mould or second-hand copper (formalis seu collectaneus) with ten per cent. of plumbum nigrum (lead) and five per cent. of silver lead (argentiferous galena?).

Metal, when first introduced, must have been rare and dear; the large modern Sword, axe, or mall would hardly have been imitated in copper, bronze, or iron. The earliest attempts at developing the celt 2 would have produced nothing more artful

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than a cutting and piercing wedge of the precious substance (fig. 85). As smelting and moulding improved, the pointed end would develop into the knife, the dagger, and the Sword; and the broad end would expand to the axe. This composite weapon, uniting the club with the celt or hand-hatchet, and appearing in Europe with the beginning of the Neolithic period, plays a remarkable part in history,

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).

2 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.

ancient, mediæval, and even modern; whilst its connection with the Sword is made evident by the 'glaive.'' The expansion of the edge and of the flanges developed two principal forms. For cutting wood the long-narrow was found most serviceable: where brute force was less required, the weapon became a broad blade with a long crescent-shaped edge.

The Akhu or war-axe was, as we might expect, known to ancient Egypt in early days, and became an objet de luxe. A gold hatchet and several of bronze were found buried as amulets in the coffin of Queen Askhept, the ancestress of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Again, a bronze weapon occurred with a mummied queen of the Seventeenth Dynasty (B.C. 1750). Useful in war, the implement, probably when

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in the stone period, rose to be a symbol of the Deity: hence, doubtless, the hâches votives of the later Bronze Age without edge to serve for work or weapons, and intended only for religious use. The two-headed weapon was that outward and visible sign of Labrandian Jove, so called from the Xáßpa, which in the Lydian tongue was synonymous with TENEKUS. The emblem appears on the medals of three Carian kings, the most notable being Mausolus (or Mausollus), dating from B.C. 353. According to Plutarch (De Pythia Oraculis) the Tenedians 'took the axe from their crabs, . . . because it appears that the crabs alone have the figure of the axe in their shells.' Hence the double-headed weapon on the coins of Tenedos is

This weapon (gladius) is a Sword-blade, doubleedged 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.

a votive or sacrificial, rather than a warlike, symbol. The Tenedian Apollo also held the axe, which some regarded as the symbol of Tennes. Aristotle and others maintained that a certain King of Tenedos decreed that adulterers should be slain with the axe, and his carrying out the law upon his own son gave rise to the proverb, TEVédios TÉNEKUs, denoting a rough-and-ready way of doing business.

Although the TEXEKUS is mentioned by Homer (‘Il.' and 'Od.') as a weapon as well as a tool, the Greeks, like the Assyrians, did not much affect it. The Romans, who worshipped Quirinus in spear-shape, bound the securis in a bundle of rods (fasces), bore it as a badge of office, and placed it on consular coins. The weapon was lowered in the salute, and thus, perhaps, arose our practice of dropping the Swordpoint, which is unknown to the East. The axe with expanded blade upon Trajan's column is in the hands of a workman. Possibly the classics of Europe despised the weapon because it was proper to the securigere caterva of the effeminate East. As early as the days of Herodotus (I. chap. i. 215) the oáyapıs, the Armenian sacr, and the Latin securis, made either of gold or chalcos, was the favourite weapon of the Amazon and the Massagetæ horseman. In Ireland the axe plays a part in the tales of Gobawn Saer: this goblin-builder completed the dangerous task of finishing off a royal roof of cutting wooden pegs, throwing them one by one into their places, and driving them in by flinging the magic weapon at each peg in due succession.

2

From Egypt the axe passed into the heart of Africa. Here it still serves, before and after use, as a medium of exchange; and this circulation from tribe to tribe explains the various forms that have overspread the Dark Continent. The Nile Valley again sent it eastward through Hittite-land and Assyria to Persia and India, where the crescent-shaped battle-axe has long been a favourite. The varieties of form and colour are noticed by Duarte Barbosa 3 when describing the 'Moors' of Hormuz Island. It was adopted by the Turkish horseman, who carried it at his saddle-bow. Klemm (Werkzeuge und Waffen') notices that it was a favourite Scandinavian weapon slung by a strap to the back; and most of the deaths recounted in Burnt Njal' are the result of it. The Norman long-hefted axe is common on the Bayeux tapestries. A Scandinavian war-axe of the early seventeenth century was found on the battle-field of Norwegian Kringelen; the handle is recurved so as to fit the back socket. In Germany it was generally used during the fifteenth century; in England during the sixteenth; and in the seventeenth it became obsolete throughout Europe, except among the Slavs and the Magyars.

1 The Amazons of the Mausoleum (Newton, Halicarnassus, p. 235) are armed with axe, bow, and Sword; the Greeks with javelins and Swords.

2 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 ȧkiváкns, the acinaces which the Greek mentions separately (iv. 62, viii. 67).

Strabo (xi. 8) connects the Massagetæ (Goths) with the Saca (Saxons), and Major Jähn derives Sace (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).

3 Loc. cit. p. 43.

The German processional axe shows its latest survival; blade and handle are of one piece of wood, ornamented with the guild-devices, and so modified that the original weapon can hardly be recognised. Similarly the Bergbarthe (mine-picks) of the German Bergmänner (miners) were used, according to Klemm, for the defence of cities, notably of Freiberg in 1643; and, made of brass as well as iron, they are still carried in State processions. The axe, like the spear, demarked boundaries. The charter given by Cnut (Canute) to Christ Church, Canterbury, grants the harbour and dues thereof on either side as far as a man standing on deck at flood

FIG. 90.-IRISH BATTLE-AXE.

FIG. 91. AXE USED BY BRUCE.

FIG. 92.-GERMAN PROCESSIONAL AXE.

tide could cast a taper-axe, and the custom of throwing the tool to mark boundaries has been retained in some parts of the country to our day. It was with a battleaxe that the Bruce of Bannockburn clove the skull of an English champion to the chin. Monstrelet tells us that during the wars of Jeanne d'Arc (Patay fought in A.D. 1429) the English carried hatchets in their girdles.

The Axe was adopted by the Franks, as well as by the Scandinavians and the Germans, especially the Saxons. Hence the two-edged axe when affixed to long staves, forming a spear, became the Icelandic Hall-bard 2 (hall-axe ?), the Teutonic

1 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.'

2 The word is variously written and explained.

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