Chapter XXII: Conclusion (3)

[57] It is not, as usually supposed, a ‘bastard French word,’ from _fustis_, a staff, and βάλλειν, to throw.

[58] Our ‘bow’ is the Gothic _bogo_ (a bender?), Scand. _bogi_, Dan. _buc_, and Old Germ. _poko_. (Jähns, p. 18.) The ancients made fine distinctions in slings: thus the three-thonged weapon of Ægeum, Patræ, and Dymæ was held far superior to that of the Baleares (‘Slinging-Isles’), which had only one strap (Livy, xxxviii. 30).

[59] Pliny, vii. 57. The legend points to the excellent archery of the Scythians (Turanians) and the Persians.

[60] Even in modern days Dr. Woodward suggests that the first model of flint arrow-heads was brought from Babel, and was preserved after the dispersion of mankind. This is admirably archaic.

[61] The crossbow is apparently indigenous amongst various tribes of Indo-China, but reintroduced into European warfare during the twelfth century (Yule’s _Marco Polo_, ii. 143).

[62] The military engines of the ancients were chiefly on the torsion principle; those of the mediævals were of two types, the sling and the crossbow. The ‘tormentum’ was so called because all its parts were twisted; the ‘scorpion’ (or catapult), because the bow was vertically placed, like the insect’s raised tail; and the ‘onager,’ because the ‘wild asses, when hunted, throw the stones behind them by their kicks, so as to pierce the chests of those who pursue them, or to fracture them.’ So at least says A. Marcellinus (_Hist._ xxiii. 4). I cannot but suspect that Anna Comnena’s τζάγρα is a corruption of _onager_ (Yule’s _Marco Polo_, ii. 144).

[63] The National Museum of Prague, Old Graben Street, now Kolowrat, contains a fine collection of war-flails, especially the huge ‘morning star’ of John Zsizka, generally called Ziska.

[64] Mostly, not always, as I learnt to my cost.

[65] In a subsequent work (_Bronzes_, &c., pp. 27–30) Dr. Evans discusses the suggestions of Beger and of Mr. Knight Watson (_Proc. Soc. Ant._ 2nd S. vii. 396) that _celte_ in Job is a misreading for _certe_. He justly reprobates the fashion of writing ‘Kelt,’ and the newly-coined French plural _celtæ_. The truth is that not a few antiquaries have confounded the instrument with the Keltic or Celtic tribes. The word, meaning a stone axe, adze, or chisel, has been erroneously derived from the Celts, properly Kelts, and by older philologists _a cælando_, which would convert it into a congener of _cælum_. It is the Latin _celtis_ or _celtes_, a chisel, possibly a relative of the Welsh _cellt_, a flint. The word is found, according to Mr. Evans, only in the Vulgate translation of Job, in Saint Jerome, and in a forged inscription. He first met with its antiquarian use in Beger’s _Thesaurus Brandenburgicus_ (1696), where a metal _securis_ (axe) is called _celtes_.

[66] In 1650 Sir William Dugdale (_Hist. of Warwickshire_) spoke of stone celts as the weapons of the Ancient Britons, and in 1766 he was followed by Bishop Lyttelton. In 1797 Mr. Frere drew the attention of the Society of Antiquaries to the Drift (palæolithic) instruments occurring at Hoxne, Suffolk, together with remains of the elephant and other extinct animals. He was one of several; but, as usually happens, the wit of one man collected and systematised the scattered experience of many. The man was M. Boucher de Perthes, whose finds in the drift-gravels of St. Acheul, near Amiens (1858), appeared in the _Antiquités Celtiques et Anté-diluviennes_, and made an epoch, changing the accepted chronology of mankind.

[67] The stone-weapon was also called _betulus_, _belemnites_, and _ceraunius_ (thunder-stone), _ceraunium_ and _ceraunia_. So Claudian (_Laus Serenæ_, v. 77)—

Pyrenæisque sub antris
Ignea flumineæ legere ceraunia nymphæ.

‘Fuerunt auctores’ (says Aldovrandus) ‘qui hunc lapidem ceraunium, nempe fulminarem, indigitaverunt.’ According to Skulius Thorlacius, the stone-axe typified the splitting; the hammer, the shattering; and the arrow, the piercing, action of the bolt (Om Thor og hans Hammer). People carried these belemnites about their persons, because lightning was supposed never to strike twice in the same place.

[68] According to Suetonius, the Roman Cæsar presided over the senate with a Sword by his side and a mail-coat under his tunic.

[69] _De Rer. Nat._ v. 1282. He speaks of Italy, where copper and bronze historically preceded iron.

[70] _Sat._ i. 3.

[71] Leading to the fourth, or Historic, and the fifth, or Gunpowder, age of weapons. In these ‘ages’ we have a fine instance of hasty and indiscriminate generalisation. They originated in Scandinavia, where Stone was used almost exclusively from the beginning of man’s occupation till B.C. 2000–1000. At that time the Bronze began, and ended with the Iron about the Christian era. Thomsen, who classified the Copenhagen Museum in 1836; Nilsson, the Swede, who founded comparative anthropology (1838–43); Forchhammer and Worsäae, the Dane, who illustrated the Bronze Age (1845), fairly established the local sequence. It was accepted by F. Keller, of the Zurich Lake (1853), by Count Gozzadini, of Bologna (1854), by Lyell (1863), and by Professor Max Müller (1863, 1868, and 1873), who seems to have followed the Swiss studies of M. Morlot (_Bulletin de la Soc. Vaudoise_, tome vi. etc.) Unhappily, the useful order was applied to the whole world, when its deficiency became prominent and palpable. I note that Mr. Joseph Anderson (_Scotland in Early Christian Times_, p. 19) retains the ‘three stages of progress’—stone, bronze, and iron. Brugsch (_History_, i. 25) petulantly rejects them, declaring that Egypt ‘throws scorn upon these assumed periods,’ the reverse being the case. Mr. John Evans (_The Ancient Stone Implements, &c., of Great Britain_, p. 2) adopts the succession-idea, warning us that the classification does not imply any exact chronology. He finds Biblical grounds ‘in favour of such a view of gradual development of material civilisation.’ Adam’s personal equipment in the way of tools or weapons would have been but insufficient, if no artificer was instructed in brass and iron until the days of Tubal Cain, the sixth in descent when a generation covered a hundred years. Mr. Evans divides the Stone Age into four periods. First, the Palæolithic, River-gravel, or Drift, when only chipping was used; second, the Reindeer, or Cavern-epoch of Central France, and an intermediate age, when surface-chipping is found; third, the Neolithic, or surface stone-period of Western Europe, in which grinding was practised; and, lastly, the Metallo-lithic age, which attained the highest degree of manual skill.

[72] In Denmark the division is marked even by the vegetation. The Stone Age lies buried under the fir-trees; the oak-stratum conceals the Bronzes, and the Iron Age is covered by birch and elders (Jähns, p. 2).

[73] Yule’s _Marco Polo_, ii. 208.

[74] Servius, ad _Æneid._ ii. 44, ‘Sic notus Ulysses.’

[75] Col. A. Lane Fox (_Prim. War._, p. 24) notices the bone implements of the French caves and their resemblance, amounting almost to identity, with those found in Sweden, among the Eskimos, and the savages of Tierra del Fuego.

[76] _Mittheilungen der Wien. Anthrop. Gesellschaft._ Vienna, 1874.

[77] _Pfahlbau_ (_pfahl_ = _palus_) was originally applied to the pile-villages of the Swiss waters (_The Lake-Dwellings of Switzerland_, by Dr. Ferdinand Keller).

[78] Wilkinson opines that the Egyptian Khons or Khonsu, the new moon of the year which appeared at the autumnal equinox when the ‘world was made,’ becomes the Biblical Sem, and that ‘Sampson’ is Sem-Kon, or Sun-fire. Jablonski (_Pantheon Egyptiorum_) supported the theory that Son, Sem, Con, Khons, or Djom was the god or genius of the summer sun.

[79] _Travels into Indo-China_, &c. ii. 147, by Henri Mouhot, 1858–59.

[80] ‘Pile,’ applied to the arrow-head (as ‘quarrel’ to the bolt of the crossbow), is a congener of the German _pfeil_, an arrow. The Scandinavian is _pila_, the Anglo-Saxon _pil_, apparently a congener of the Latin _pilum_.

[81] _Ulster Journal of Archæology_ for 1857.

[82] The Dacota tribe is said still to ‘doctor’ the bullet by filling with venom four drilled holes, which are covered by pressing down the projecting lips or rims of the metal. Unfortunately, travellers tell us that the venom is the cuticle of the cactus, which is quite harmless. The Papuans tip their arrows with a human bone, which is poisoned by being thrust into a putrid corpse. Hence, they say, Commodore Goodenough met his death.

[83] P. 258, _Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Royal Irish Academy_, by the late (Sir) William R. Wilde. The Greeks, from the days of Homer, followed by the Romans, considered the use of poisoned arrows a characteristic of the barbarian.

[84] The learned author adds, ‘thus confirming the opinion (deduced from the size of the hafts of our bronze Swords) that the hands of the race who used them were very small.’ I can hardly agree with him, and will give reasons in a future page.

[85] Wilde writes: ‘_Sceana_, which is the plural of _scjan_, a knife,’ the Scotch _sgian-dhu_, or _skene_ (Rev. Paul O’Brien’s _Practical Grammar and Vocabulary of the Irish Language_, Dublin: Fitzpatrick, 1809).’

[86] It is better to write Crannog, lest the word be pronounced ‘crannoje.’ It derives from the Irish _crann_ (a tree, e.g. _crann ola_ = an olive-tree), and properly means a platform or plank-floor.

[87] Pliny, the grumbler, complains (xxxiii. 54): ‘Our very soldiers, holding even ivory in contempt, have their _capuli_ (sword-hilts) inlaid or chased (_cælentur_) with silver; their _vaginæ_ (scabbards) are heard to jingle with their silver _catellæ_ (chains), and their belts with the plates of silver (_baltea laminis crepitant_) that inlay them.’ It will be seen that Divus Cæsar had juster and more soldier-like views. Scipio the younger, when shown a fine shield by a youth, said: ‘It is really beautiful; but a soldier should rely more on his right arm than on his left arm.’

[88] Of Lund, Sweden. _The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia_, &c., translated by Sir John Lubbock. Nilsson is quoted and illustrated by Col. A. Lane Fox (_Prim. War._ p. 135), and by Wilde (p. 254) from the _Scandinaviska Nordens Ur-Invanare_, 1843.

[89] Chapter III.

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

[91] Pemberton, _Travels_.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[113] Lib. iv. 4, § 3.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[128] In Bacon’s day (_Aphorisms_, book ii.) gummy woods were supposed to be rather a Northern growth, ‘more pitchy and resinous than in warm climates, as the fir, pine, and the like.’ They are as abundant near the Equator, where the viscidity preserves them from the alternate action of burning suns and torrential rains; moreover, they are harder and heavier than the pines and firs of the Temperates.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[143] Stephens, _Yucatan_, i. 100.

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

[145] See Chap. I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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