ADDRESS. Ixxiii 



excited more wonder than it deserves. Moreover, Fergusson has gone far to 

 show that the date assigned to many of them hitherto has been far too remote, 

 most, and possibly all, of those in northern and western Europe having been 

 erected since the time of the Eoman occupation. And to this day the same 

 author shows that menhirs, single stones often weighing over 20 tons, arc 

 erected by hill-tribes of India in close proximity to stone buildings of 

 elaborate design and finished execution, erected by another race of men *. 



For whatever purpose these vast stones were selected (whether to enhance 

 the value or to i^rolong the endurance of the buildings of which they formed 

 a part), the tax on tho ingenuity of those who moved and placed them must 

 have tended to advance the knowledge of mechanical appliances. 



Tho ancient Assyrians and Egyptians had possibly more knowledge of 

 mechanical appliances than they are generally credited with. In the wall 

 paintings and sculptures which show their mode of transporting large blocks 

 of stone, the lever is tho only mechanical power represented, and which they 

 appear to have used in such operations ; nor ought we to expect to find any 

 other used, for, where the supply of human labour was unlimited, the most 

 expeditious mode of dragging a heavy weight along woiild be by human power; 

 to have applied pulleys and capstans, such as would now be employed in 

 similar undertakings, would have been mere waste of time. In some countries, 

 even now, M'herc manual labour is more plentiful than mechanical apjjliances, 

 large numbers of men are employed to transport heavy weights, and do the 

 work in less time than it could be done with all our modern mechanical ap- 

 pliances. In other operations, such as raising obelisks or the large stones 

 used in their temple palaces, where human labour could not be applied to 

 such advantage, it is quite possible that the Egyptians used mechanical aids. 

 On one of the carved slabs* which formed part of the wall-paneUing of the 

 palace of Sardanapalus, which was built about 930 years before our era, a 

 single pulley is clearly shown, by which a man is in the act of raising a bucket 

 — probably drawing water from a weHf. 



It has sometimes been questioned whether the Egyptians had a knowledge 

 of steel. It seems unreasonable to deny them this knowledge. Iron was 

 known at the earliest times of which wo have anj^ record. It is often men- 

 tioned in the Bible and in Homer ; it is shown in the early paintings on the 

 walls of the tombs at Thebes, where butchers are represented as sharpening 

 their knives on pieces of metal colonred blue, which were most probably pieces 

 of steel J. Iron has been found in quantity in the ruined palaces of Assyria ; 

 and. in the inscriptions of that country fetters are spoken of as having been 

 made of iron, which is also so mentioned in connexion with other metals as 

 to lead to the supposition that it was regarded as a base and common metal. 



* Fergusson's 'Eude Stone Monuments,' pp. 461-465. 

 t Layard's 'Nineveh and its Eemains,' vol. ii. p. 31. 

 J Wilkinson's ' Ancient Egyptians,' vol. iii. p. 247. 



