24 ADDRESS TO THE BEIIISII ASSOCIATION, 1881. 



their libraries ; the cuneiform characters have been de- 

 ciphered, and we can not only see, but read, in the 

 British Museum, the actual contemporary records, on 

 burnt clay cylinders, of the events recorded in the his- 

 torical books of the Old Testament and in the pages of 

 Herodotus. The researches in Egypt also seem to have 

 satisfactorily established the fact that the pyramids 

 themselves are at least 6,000 years old, while it is ob- 

 vious that the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchies can- 

 not suddenly have attained to the wealth and power, 

 the state of social organisation, and progress in the 

 arts, of which we have before us, preserved by the sand 

 of the desert from the ravages of man, such wonderful 

 proofs. 



In Europe, the writings of the earliest historians 

 and poets indicated that, before iron came into general 

 use, there was a time when bronze was the ordinary 

 material of weapons, axes, and other cutting imple- 

 ments, and though it seemed a priori improbable that a 

 compound of copper and tin should have preceded the 

 simple metal iron, nevertheless the researches of archae- 

 ologists have shown that there really was in Europe a 

 ' Bronze Age,' which at the dawn of history was just 

 giving way to that of ' Iron.' 



The contents of ancient graves, buried in many cases 

 so that their owner might carry some at least of his 

 wealth with him to the world of spirits, have proved 

 very instructive. More especially the results obtained 

 by Nilsson in Scandinavia, by Hoare and Borlase, Bate- 

 man, Greenwell, and Pitt Rivers, in our own country, 

 and the contents of the rich cemetery at Hallstadt, left 

 no room for doubt as to the existence of a Bronze Age ; 



