THE BEGINNINGS OF METALLURGY. 89 



many places where it is not profitable to mine, that afford washings of 

 tin of considerable richness. We thus see that the metal was useful, 

 and that there was a sufficiency of rich, easily-worked ores. The con- 

 ditions were, then, favorable for a long blossoming of the civilization 

 of the bronze age. 



The oldest historical information on this subject is furnished to us 

 by the Egyptian inscriptions. From them we conclude that that highly 

 civilized nation was in possession of metals from the beginning of its 

 history. While the Indian Indra appears armed with the thunderbolt, 

 " Akman " of meteoric stone, and the German god, Thor, carries his 

 stone Mjolnir, the Egyptian gods are provided with metallic weapons ; 

 an evidence that the people were already acquainted with metals. 

 Moreover, we find the spear designated after the name of a metal in 

 the earliest inscriptions. As we say of weapons, " the sharp steel," as 

 the Greeks and Romans described their weajaons as of bronze and later 

 of iron, so the Egyptians designated their lances by the name of bronze, 

 and when describing bronze gave the sign for a metal, and explained 

 it by the addition of that for a lance. Bronze was the prevailing metal. 

 The metallic vessels, tools, and weapons of the ancient empire are rep- 

 resented in red, not in blue. It was the same essentially in the new 

 empire, although the Egyptians had then become acquainted with 

 articles of iron, and had obtained them by conquest and trade. 



We meet this form of civilization again in reviewing the history 

 of Mesopotamia and Syria. Babylon ruled over an alluvial plain, and 

 was obliged to get all its metals from abroad by trade or conquest ; 

 Assyria possessed copper and iron within its own territory, but was 

 dependent on other countries for tin. The countries whence this metal 

 was obtained in antiquity were Midian, the Hindoo-Koosh, Farther 

 India, and, at a later j^eriod, Spain and Britain ; but the Phoenicians 

 managed and controlled the trade in the indispensable mixed metal. 

 Inasmuch as one of the essential metals was not found within the ter- 

 ritories of the old nations of civilization, it will not do to ascribe the 

 discovery of the manufacture of bronze to them. We must unques- 

 tionably look for the metallurgists of primeval times in other coun- 

 tries ; and, in fact, traditions are not wanting to support such an 

 assumption. The Hittites are mentioned by the Egyptians as the 

 iron-workers of ancient times. The Mosaic books mention Tubal-Caiu 

 (a personified people) as the inventors and masters of metallurgy ; and 

 the Greeks" designate, not the Phoenicians nor the Babylonians or 

 Egyptians, but the Phrygians, as the ancient masters of art in bronze 

 and iron, and praise the Chalybes of the Black Sea as distinguished 

 steel-smiths. 



Reviewing the facts we have so far adduced, we find that we have 

 ascertained, first, that the ancient nations of civilization were predomi- 

 nantly in a bronze age ; second, that they were dependent on other 

 nations for the production of bronze ; and, third, that peoples strange 



