CHAP. in. PRECIOUS METALS. 



of about 1000 years before Christ. The Greeks 

 are scarcely noticed in the historical books of 

 the Old Testament. Some have thought they 

 discovered allusions to that people in passages 

 in the prophetic writings j but the different names 

 given to the places make it very doubtful. The 

 knowledge which the Hebrews had acquired of 

 the other parts of the world seems to have been 

 confined to Egypt, Arabia, and that part of 

 central Asia which they comprehended under 

 the general names of Chaldea or Assyria. Those 

 were the countries most advanced in civilization, 

 and they consequently attracted most attention ; 

 whilst Europe in general, not excepting their near 

 neighbours in Greece, must have been overlooked 

 as barbarians, if their name had ever reached the 

 Israelites. 



Having thus endeavoured to account for the 

 scarcity of the precious metals in Greece at an 

 early age, we may proceed to consider how it 

 could have happened, that at a correspondent 

 period so large a quantity of them should have 

 been collected, as the sacred writers represent 

 to have been possessed by the Israelites when 

 they became settled in Palestine. The institu- 

 tion of archons in Athens, under which the first 

 steps towards improvement were made, nearly 

 corresponds with the period in which Saul, the 

 first king of the Israelites, was installed in that 



VOL. I. I 



