DISCOVERERS OF THE ART OF IRON MANUFACTURE—BELOK. 513 
especially mention such an extravagantly expensive object, or that 
this valuable and easily transportable article was carried away by a 
host of the Ammonites who sometime afterwards may have invaded 
Bashan (compare Judges iii, 13, where soon after Joshua’s death— 
that is, at a time when iron could certainly not have become much 
cheaper—there is given an account of a victorious campaign of the 
Ammonites, Amalekites, and Moabites against the trans-Jordan Jews). 
So much as to the relation of the Jews to our problem. 
Serious objections, though there was also partial agreement, were 
made to my statements relating to the Egyptians. This is not 
strange concerning a people like the Egyptians, about whom opinions 
are so divided. While some investigators allow to the Egyptians a 
knowledge of iron only since about the fifteenth century B. C. and a 
more extensive employment of the metal only since the beginning of 
the Ptolemaic period, denying them any independence in iron manu- 
factures in the pre-Ptolemaic period, as also the quarrying of iron ores 
or iron casting, others hold almost an entirely opposite view, supported 
by the sporadic finds of iron in the pyramids and temple ruins on 
supposedly untouched sites. These investigators speak of the Egyp- 
tians’ knowledge of iron metal during the fourth or even earlier 
dynasties, and less cautious scholars have claimed these pretended 
hoary finds as proof not only that the Egyptians knew the value of 
iron, but as evidence of a veritable iron industry in those very ancient 
times. 
However, this last bold assertion, supported by Herr Blanckenhorn 
and others, has found few adherents. 
There seems to be no real evidence of the existence of a very ancient 
iron industry among the Egyptians, but on the contrary all circum- 
stances pronounce against it. Serious investigators, such as von 
Luschan, Olshausen, and others, are therefore content to emphasize 
the importance of those very ancient iron finds, whose genuineness 
and age they energetically defend against skeptics, and to merely call 
attention to the frequent representation of iron objects on old Egyp- 
tian mural paintings, in which the blue-colored objects are assumed to 
be made of iron. From these observations they conclude not that 
there existed a native iron industry among Egyptians, but that it 
indicates an intermediary réle in the spread of metallurgic knowledge 
of iron among other peoples. In the latter class von Luschan partic- 
ularly includes the Negroes! settled in the south of Egypt, and 
recounts many, at first sight seemingly plausible, circumstances to 
show that the iron industry of Europe had its origin among those 
Negro peoples, from whom it spread to other peoples through the 
medium of the Egyptians. 
1 Compare Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1907, pp. 379-381; and more in detail, ib., 1909, pp. 22-53. 
38734°—sm 1911—33 
