504 THE AGE OF BRONZE IN EGYPT. 



he says (p. 295), "The religious impurity of an object has never sufficed 

 to prevent the use of such object. To cite but a single example, 

 pork also was dedicated to Typhou and considered impure; they were 

 bred however in droves, and the number of these animals was con- 

 siderable enough, at least in certain cantons, to allow the good Herod- 

 itus to relate that tbey were let loose in the fields after the harvests in 

 order to press down the earth and bury the grain. Besides, in Egypt 

 each individual object was not exclusively pure or impure, but some- 

 times one, sometimes another, according to circumstances. It is thus 

 that the boar and the sow, despite their Typhonian character, were 

 the animals of Isis, and consequently share the Osirien purity. Iron, 

 which certain traditions call the bone of Typhon, is commonly called 

 "bonipit," the substance of heaven; it is hence pure in certain aspects, 

 and impure in certain others." 



Keligious scruples had not placed any obstacle to the employment of 

 iron in Egypt at the epoch when this useful metal was really known, 

 for divers iron instruments have been found in contemporaneous 

 tombs. Many of these objects have been deposited in the museum of 

 the Louvre ; they are all probably posterior to the fifteenth century b. c. 

 and very near to that date. The most ancient — if we do not consider 

 the fragments already mentioned which come from the j^yramids — 

 that are known in Egypt, and the age of which can be established, is 

 a curved blade resembling a reaping hook, which Belzoni one daj^ put 

 under one of the Sphinxes at Karnak, but the age of this blade does 

 not go beyond the seventh century B. c* Maspero, who supposes the 

 use of iron in Egypt to be very ancient, has endeavored in two instances 

 to find an explanation of the rarity of this metal. He thinks, in the 

 first place, that iron utensils which could not be employed have been re- 

 melted. But this does not explain to us the reason why in Egyptian 

 museums objects in iron are more rare than objects in bronze. The re- 

 casting of bronzes out of use was at least practiced as much. 



In the second place, Mr. Maspero, and with him many others, have 

 desired to explain the absence of iron by arguing its destruction by rust. 

 Buc it is necessary to recall that Egyptian tombs are so dry that here, 

 less than anywhere else, could iron have been corroded by oxidation. 

 Besides, rust has not the consuming activity which is sometimes 

 believed. A great deal of time is required to accomplish its work of 

 destruction ; and in point of fact this rust could not entirely disappear. 



* Day: PreMstoric Use of Iron and Steel, p. 14. Compare Journal of the Anthropolo(j- 

 ical Institute, , March 25, 1883. The autheuticity of this discovery is qnestioued by 

 Rhiud {Thebes, ]}. 228). An iron chisel -was found under au obelisk atKaruak, which 

 should date from the eighteenth dynasty (Arcelin, in the Materiaux, 18G9, p. 377), 

 but the determination of the age of the chisel is perhaps questionable. If it were 

 even correct, the discovery nevertheless is posterior to the beginning of the New 

 Empire. 



