144 Mr. J. D. Smith on Earbj Egrjptian Chemistry. 



by a " solutionist," seeing that it is directly opposed to the plain 

 meaning of the sacred narrative, which tells its tale in as clear, 

 simple, and concise language as could be employed in the pre- 

 sent day, were we desirous of relating the same facts in the most 

 condensed form. These are the words : — " And he took the calf 

 which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to 

 powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children 

 of Israel drink of it." (Exodus, xxxii. 20.) The other version of 

 the translation closely resembles the foregoing : — " And I took 

 your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, and 

 stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was as small 

 as dust ; and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended 

 out of the mount." (Deut. ix. 21.) Can anything be more evi- 

 dent than that the golden calf was reduced to an impalpable 

 powder, and thus rendered potable when mixed with water ? Yet 

 Mr. Herapath, like many before him, writes, — " A probable spe- 

 culation might be raised upon this" (the assumed knowledge of 

 the uses of niti-ic acid by the Egyptians) " to account for the 

 solution of the golden calf by Moses ;" and then, after destroying 

 the Chimsera of the solution of the calf in sulphuret of potassium, 

 tumbles himself into this Charybdis, — " It is therefore more pro- 

 bable that the priests had taught Moses the use of the mixed 

 nitric and hydrochloric acids with which he could dissolve the 

 statue, rather than a sulphuret, which we have no evidence of 

 their being acquainted with," an observation which I have en- 

 deavoured to show is equally applicable to these two acids. 



If it be asked. How did Moses grind this malleable idol " as 

 fine as dust?" the answer seems to me very easy; in the words 

 of the text, " he burnt it with fire ; " that is, he fused and alloyed 

 it with a substance capable of rendering gold brittle. What this 

 was I pretend not to say, but many bodies possess this property ; 

 it might have been arsenic, more probably antimony, but still 

 more probably it was lead ; I say, still more probably, as, although 

 we know the antiquity of the use of sulphuret of antimony for 

 painting the eyes and eyebrows in the East, yet I am unaware 

 of any positive evidence that it was known to the ancient Egyp- 

 tians ; whilst with regard to lead, we have both material evidence 

 and written testimony, — "Only the gold, and the silver, the 

 brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead" (Numbers, xxxi. 12), — that 

 lead was then a common metal ; whilst with respect to the pro- 

 perties of this alloy, L. Gmelin, vi. p. 245 (Cavendish Soc), thus 

 describes an "Alloy of gold and lead: — 11 parts of gold and 

 1 part of lead form a pale yellow alloy, as brittle as glass. The 

 ductility of gold is destroyed by admixture of y^'^ o ^^ lead." 

 Now without pi-esuming to say that lead was actually the mate- 

 rial used by Moses to render the golden calf so brittle as to 



