Alloys known to the Ancients. 87 



In the days of Herodotus iron must have already come into 

 general use, as when his interpreter reads to him an inscrip- 

 tion on one of the Egyptian Pyramids relative to the amount 

 of money expended on radishes, onions, and garlic for the 

 workmen employed in its construction, he makes the reflec- 

 tion, that if this were true, how much more must have been 

 paid for iron tools and bread !* 



It would again seem almost incredible that these stupen- 

 dous structures could themselves have been erected without the 

 aid of steel, both for quarrying and shaping the stone, as well 

 as for cutting the hieroglyphics so common in the earliest spe- 

 cimens of Egyptian architecture. If then, we allow that iron 

 tools were employed in building these monuments, we must 

 suppose this metal to have been in common use during the 

 reign of the shepherd kings who conquered Egypt and occu- 

 pied the throne of the Pharaohs during some part of the inter- 

 val which elapsed between the birth of Abraham and the 

 captivity of Joseph, t 



In speaking of iron, Pliny says :J " After copper comes 

 iron, both the most useful and most fatal instrument of 

 life. With iron man delves the earth, plants trees, prunes 

 his orchard, trims his vines, cutting off the older branches, 

 and thereby throwing more vigour into the grapes : by its aid 

 man builds houses, cuts stone, and prepares a thousand other 

 implements ; but by it war, atrocity, and villany is effected 

 and rendered common." He also describes iron as occurring 

 in almost every part of the known world, but particularly in 

 the Island of Elba, where the colour of the earth indicated 

 the presence of the ore. 



We are moreover informed that the ores of iron shoidd be 

 treated like those of copper, in order to extract the metal, 

 and that it was a disputed point in Cappadocia, whether the 

 principle of iron was aqueous or earthy in its nature, as the 

 water of a certain river of that country when thrown on the 

 eai*th, produced iron, precisely similar to that obtained from 

 a furnace. He then goes on to say, that there are two dis- 

 tinct kinds of forges, as some produce steel {nucleus ferri\ 



* Uerod. Euterpe, ii., 125. t Russel's Egypt, 89. | Pliny, xxxiii., 14. 



