28 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



not occur at all in the old empire, but only in the new. 1 

 Rawlinson, 2 on the other hand, while conceding the 

 strength of the theory that iron was first introduced into 

 Egypt by the Ptolemies, notes that some implements of 

 the metal have been found in the tombs, with nothing 

 about them indicative of their belonging to a late period ; 

 and that a scrap of iron plate was discovered by Vyse in 

 the masonry of the Great Pyramid. He also points out 

 that the paucity of such instances may be partially, if not 

 wholly, accounted for by the rapid decay of iron in the 

 nitrous Egyptian earth, or when oxidized by exposure to 

 the air; so that, as he says, the most judicious of modern 

 Egyptologists seem to hold that, while the use of iron in 

 Pharaonic times was at best rare and occasional, neverthe- 

 less the metal was not wholly unknown, and may have 

 been brought into the country from Phoenicia, in a manu- 

 factured state. 



In such circumstances it is hardly possible to assume any 

 Egyptian knowledge of the lodestone, due to direct discov- 

 ery of it. The only apparently explicit evidence which 

 has been encountered is the statement of Plutarch, that 

 the Egyptian priest Manetho, who lived about three cen- 

 turies before our era, and who wrote a history of his coun- 

 try for the Greeks who had recently settled there, reported 

 that the Egyptians of a far distant period called the mag- 

 net the "bone of Horus," and the iron the "bone of Ty- 

 phon." But Manetho' s work, when Plutarch wrote about 

 it, was six centuries old and existed only in the form of 

 epitomes which were mutually conflicting, while his chro- 

 nology is now known to be unreliable. 8 



It has been suggested that such iron as has been found 

 in Egypt, and referred to Pharaonic times, may have been 



1 Lepsius : Die Metalle in den Aegyptischen Inschriften, 1872, 105, 114. 

 Peschel : The Races of Man, New York, 1876, 488. 



2 Hist, of Anc. Egypt, i., 505. 



8 Rawlinson, cit. sup., ii , 6, 8. Cox : History of Greece, i., 614, Appen- 

 dix D, wherein Manetho's chronology is fully discussed. 



