644 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
8. Iranian Tribes of the Ottoman Empire. By Marx Syxzs. 
9. Egyptian Soul-houses and other Discoveries, 1907.1 
By Professor W. M. FuinpErs Petrig, 2.2.8. 
10. The Excavations at Deir-cl-Bahari. By Professor E, NAvinue. 
MONDAY, AUGUST 5. 
The following Papers and Reports were read :— 
1. The Beginnings of Iron. By Professor Ripceway, J.A., Litt.D. 
Formerly it was generally believed that iron was the gift of Africa to mankind, 
and, if not of Afriva, most certainly of Asia. Modern research has shown that 
Egypt did not use iron until about 800 B.c., that the Libyans were not using it in 
480 B.c., and that the Semitic peoples did not use it from a remote past, but that 
they borrowed it comparatively late. I urged in 1896 and in 1902 that Central 
Europe was the true centre of the use of iron as a metal, and that it was first 
diffused from Noricum. At Hallstatt iron was seen coming into use first to 
decorate bronze, then to form the edge of cutting implements; next it gradually 
replaced bronze weapons, and finally took new forms of its own. Everywhere 
else iron as a metal came into use per saltum. Man probably found it ready 
smelted by Nature, as the Eskimo discovered it at Regent’s Bay and at Ovifak. 
Some still imagine that it was used very early in Egypt, because its name occurs 
in early documents ; but this is readily explained, since hematite was known and 
used very early in Egypt, and the same material was used very commonly in the 
Aigean long before the Bronze Age. But it was treated not as a metal to be 
smelted, but as a stone to be ground into axes and beads. The Egyptians thus 
knew the mineral and had a name for it, which they continued to employ when 
they had learned its use as a metal from Europe. Others also cling to the belief 
that iron was worked in Central Africa from a remote time. But in Uganda, 
which was in touch with Egypt by means of the great lakes and the Nile, iron, as 
I am informed by the Rev. J. Roscoe, became first known in the reign of a king 
about nineteen reigns back (about five hundred or four hundred years ago). This 
renders it very unlikely that the metal was worked until very late in Central Africa. 
It is certain that the peoples beyond the Caspian, as well as those along the Indian 
Ocean, did not use iron till quite late; that India herself did not know it at an 
early date; and that Japan only got it about 4.v. 700; yet some still imagine that 
it must have been known to the Chinese from remote antiquity. But the earliest 
mention of iron in Chinese literature is about 400 8.c., whilst a bronze sword 
belonging to Canon Greenwell has an inscription read by Professor Giles which 
dates it between 247 B.c. and 220 B.c. There is evidence that bronze swords were 
being used till a.p. 100, and that it was only then that iron swords were coming 
in. It is now clear that the use of iron as a metal is due to Central Europe, 
2. The Sigynne of Herodotus: a Problem of the Early Iron Age.? 
By Professor J. L. Myres, J/.A. 
Herodotus® describes the Sigynnee as a people who live mainly north of the 
Ister (Danube), but extend nearly to the head of the Adriatic, ‘near the Veneti.’ 
They wear ‘ Median dress,’ 7.e., trousers,* and drive (but do not ride) small shaggy 
1 Published in Man, 1907. 
2 Published in full in Anthropological Essays presented to Edward Burnett Tylor, 
p. 255, vy, 9. 4 Cf. Herodotus, v. 49. 
