224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Gudeab, a king who belongs to the most ancient age of which relics 

 have yet been found in Mesopotamia — M. Oppcrt attributing to him 

 an antiquity of four thousand years b. c. We are thus carried back 

 to extremely remote times of metallurgical history. The figurine 

 is covered with a thick, green patina, below which is a red layer, 

 formed by the oxidation of the metal in the greater part of its thick- 

 ness. Then comes a red metallic nucleus, having the appearance and 

 tenacity of copper. It is the last remainder of the primitive metal, 

 which has been progressively destroyed by natural actions. I have 

 analyzed these different parts. The superficial green patina is a mixt- 

 ure of oxide of copper and a hydrated oxychloride of copper, the lat- 

 ter compound being known by mineralogists as ataJcandte. It is 

 formed by the action on the metal of brackish waters, with which the 

 figurine had been in contact, through the course of ages. The middle 

 layer is a nearly pure protoxide of copper, free from notable quanti- 

 ties of tin, antimony, lead, or any similar metal. It results from a slow 

 alteration of metallic copper. The nucleus was pure metallic copper. 



The absence of any other metal than copper in this figurine de- 

 serves to be noticed. Objects of this kind are usually made with 

 bronze, an alloy of tin and copper which is harder and more easily 

 M'orked. The absence of tin from the Tello copper has a peculiar his- 

 torical significance. Tin is much less diffused over the surface of the 

 earth than copper, and its transportation has always been the object 

 of a special commerce, in ancient days as well as in ours. In Asia, in 

 particular, there had not till very lately been any deposits of tin found 

 in any abundance except those of the Sunda Islands and the southern 

 provinces of China. The ti*ansportation of this tin to Western Asia 

 was formerly carried on by sea, to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, 

 by long and arduous voyages ; and it was carried thence to the coasts 

 of the Mediterranean, where it came in competition with the tin of the 

 British Isles which had been brought across Gaul, and with the less 

 abundant deposits of Central Gaul, and, perhaps, also of Saxony and 

 Bohemia. Voyages so long and arduous, and systems of navigation 

 so difficult could not have been established till after many centuries 

 of civilization. The Phoenicians, who had come from the borders of 

 the Persian Gulf to those of the JMediterranean, seem to have been 

 the first promoters of this navigation. 



But I have recently become cognizant with two documents, which 

 tend to fix a less distant origin for the tin of the bronzes of Assyria 

 and Egypt. According to a note published by M. G. Bapst, a Rus- 

 sian traveler, M. Ogorodnikoff, was informed by the inhabitants of 

 Meshed that there were at one hundred and twenty kilometres from 

 that city, and at various places in Khorassan, mines of tin now worked. 

 These statements should, however, be received with caution, on ac- 

 count of the uncertain quality of the oral declarations of Tartars. But 

 it is a remarkable fact that they agree to some extent with a passage 



