5G6 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



tang and socket chisels, wide chisels, deep mortise chisels, saws with a 

 uniform rake to the teeth to cut in one direction, great knives of a 

 flamboyant form (fig. 14) with double curves — all due to north 

 Italian genius. About the same time, or a little later, the Chalybes 

 on the Assyrian side were developing iron and steel tools on modern 

 lines, socket and tang chisels, saws, rasps, and the early stages of files 

 and centerbits. These were in use about 700 B. C. It is also notice- 

 able how a great wave of ethical ideas appears in that age in Judaea, 

 Greece, and Eg} r pt ; it seems to have been a potent stage of thought 

 in many branches. 



Some tools which have been, and still are, very usual in other 

 lands, are little known in the West. The adze had a very long career, 

 from the early prehistoric age of Egypt, and is still the common tool 

 of the East. It is often now confused with the axe, under the gen- 

 eral name of celt ; but it is essentially different, being unsymmetrical 

 in side view, and used across the plane of motion. One common 

 form of it, from about 1500 to 400 B. C, has scarcely been noticed 

 hitherto ; it has two projections on the side edge to hold up the lash- 

 ing which attached it to the handle. It is strange to see how a tool 

 which was commonly used in many countries for a thousand years, 

 has now disappeared from life as totally as the mammoth. 



It is too often supposed that because some thousands of years have 

 passed in the history of a tool, therefore we must now be in posses- 

 sion of far better forms than those of past ages. This is true in 

 many cases, but by no means always. The forms of the chisel were 

 perfected 2,500 years ago ; and the beauty of work in the bronze age 

 chisels (fig. 10) with perfectly even blades, dished octagonal flanges 

 to the tang, or square sockets ribbed on the outside for strength 

 (fig. 13), has never been exceeded. In other tools there has been an 

 actual loss of good design. The Egyptian form of the Roman shears 

 has one leg detachable for sharpening (fig. 36) ; it was held in place 

 b} T two slots engaging T-shaped pins, it could be detached in a second, 

 and yet was quite firm. Such a facility for sharpening is a great 

 advantage, but the form has entirely disappeared. Another Egyptian 

 form was the iron sickle (fig. 8) with a trough groove to hold a strip 

 of steel teeth ; this was adapted from the old Egyptian wooden sickle 

 with flint saws inserted, and when steel was valuable it. was a great 

 advantage, yet it entirely died out from use. The use of saws and 

 crown drills with fixed teeth of corundum or gem stones, for cutting 

 quartz rocks, was the regular system of work in Egypt 6,000 j^ears 

 ago, and in Greece 4,000 years ago. The cores produced were so 

 perfect and clean-cut that, as Sir Benjamin Baker said, any engineer 

 would be proud to turn out such good work with the best diamond 

 drills. The saws were over eight feet long, sawing blocks of granite 

 7-J feet long. This splendid work was quite forgotten, the Roman 

 had no such grand tools, and some thousands of years passed before 

 such means were reinvented 50 vears ago. 



