DISCOVEEERS OF THE ART OF IRON MANUFACTURE BELCK. 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 role in the spread of metallurgic knowledge 

 of iron among other peoples. In the latter class von Luschan partic- 

 ularly includes the Negroes x 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. 



i Compare Zeitschr. Ethnol., 1907, pp. 379-381; and more in detail, ib., 1909, pp. 22-53. 

 38734°— sm 1911 33 



