1823.] in Purposes to which Iron is now applied^ 409 



Does this passage, besides affording us a valuable notice in the 

 history of the useful arts, lead us to some knowledge in antedi- 

 luvian geography. After the flood, Tubal and Mesech, sons of 

 Japhet, settled on the borders of the Euxine Sea : In EzekieFs 

 time, their descendants traded to Tyre in " vessels of brass ; " 

 and by the Greeks were called Tibareni and Moschi. 



2. Because Moses mentions metal mirrors and tin, I infer, 

 that the Egyptians, before his time, were acquainted with the 

 use of tin in hardening copper for edge-tools ; consequently, 

 that their most ancient arms and mining tools were made of 

 bronze. 



3. %aXxoc and gold among the Egyptians were first made use 

 of at Thebes, in weapons for destroying wild beasts, and in agri- 

 cultural implements.* Hyginus, indeed, expressly affirms that 

 Cadmus, the builder of Thebes, discovered ess at that place ; f 

 and Pliny, that he found mines of gold on Mount Pangacus, and 

 the method of smelting it.J We have seen that under the first 

 kings of Egypt, gold mines were worked with tools of xaAxo?, 

 on account of the scarcity of iron. In the table of Isis, some 

 of the sceptres or spears have heads which very much resemble 

 our bronze Celts in shape.§ But bronze armour was entirely/ 

 out of use in Egypt in the time of Psammitichus, 670 years 

 before Christ. 



4. Weapons of bronze were partly in use in Palsestine, in the 

 time of David, as I have shown in the account of the armour of 

 GoUah, and of his descendant Ishbi-benob. Tn Greece, about 

 the same age, they were general, as the extracts I have given 

 out of Homer and Hesiod decidedly prove. Even the rasp with 

 which the cheese was grated into the cup of wine which Nestor 

 gave to Patroclus, was of that metal. || Seven centuries before 

 Christ, arms of bronze were worn by the Carians and lonians ; 

 and when Herodotus wrote his history, the Massagetse made 

 their battle axes, and the heads of their spears and arrows of 

 bronze ; but all sorts of weapons and tools of that metal, were 

 looked upon as antiquities in the days of Agatharcides and Pau- 

 sanias ; excepting in things which pertained to religious mat- 

 ters, in which bronze implements were employed in the heathen 

 temples long after the Christian era. 



5. That the ancient inhabitants of Italy, in common with the 



♦ Diod. Sic. Re. Antiq. i. 2. — In the early history of Egypt, gold appears to have 

 been applied to the most common purposes. Many of their temples were almost 

 wholly covered with it. A similar profusion of silver was found among the Spaniards, 

 when the Phoenicians first visited Tartessus; and a state of society very much resem- 

 bling that of the Egyptians in the time of Isis and Osiris (i. e. about 1740 years before 

 Christ) prevailed in Mexico and Peru, when they were first discovered, with respect to 

 gold and silver, the use of bronze tools and weapons, the state of statuary, and especially 

 in the use of hieroglyphics. 



t Fab. 247. 



X Lib. vii. 36. 



§ See Pignorius* iRIens, Isiacae Expositio, fol. 11, &c. Ed. Venet. 1605, 



II 11. xi. 639. 



