386 report— 1879. 



perhaps lead to an interesting result. So ancient was civilisation among both 

 Egyptians and Chaldseans, that the contest as to their priority in such matters as 

 magical science was going on hotly in the classic ages of Greece and Rome. Looking 

 at the literature and science, the arts and politics, of Memphis and of Ur of the 

 Chaldees, both raised to such height of culture near 5,000 years ago, we ask, were 

 these civilisations not connected, did not one borrow from the other ? There is 

 at present a clue which, though it may lead to nothing, is still worth trial. The 

 hint of it lies in a remark by Dr. Birch as to one of the earliest of Egyptian monu- 

 ments, the pyramid of Kochome, near Sakkara, actually dating from the first dynasty, 

 no doubt beyond 3000 B.C., and which is built in steps like the seven-storied Baby- 

 onian temples. Two other Egyptian pyramids, those of Abu-sir, are also built in 

 steps. Now whether there is any connection between the building of these pyra- 

 mids and the Babylonian towers, does not depend on their being built in stages, but 

 in the number of these stages being seven. As to the Babylonian towers, there is 

 no doubt, for though Birs-Nimrud is now a ruinous heap, the classical descriptions 

 of such temples, and the cuneiform inscriptions, put it beyond question that they 

 had seven stages, dedicated to the seven planets. As to the Egyptian pyramids, 

 the archaeologists Segato and Masi positively state of one step-pyramid of Abu-sir, 

 that it had seven decreasing stages, while, on the other hand, Vyse's reconstruction 

 of the step-pyramid of Sakkara shows there only six. Considering the ruinous 

 state of all three step-pyramids, it will require careful measurement to settle whether 

 they originally had seven stages or not. If they had, the correspondence cannot be 

 set down to accident, but must be taken to prove a connection between Ckaldsea 

 and Egypt as to the worship of the seven planets, which will be among the most 

 ancient links connecting the civilisations of the world. I hope by thus calling 

 attention to the question, to induce some competent architect visiting Egypt to 

 place the matter beyond doubt, one way or the other. 



While speaking of the high antiquity of civilisation in Egypt, the fact calls for 

 remark, that the use of iron as well as bronze in that country seems to go back 

 as far as historical record reaches. Brugsch writes in his 'Egypt under the 

 Pharaohs,' that Egypt throws scorn on the archaeologists' assumed successive 

 periods of stone, bronze, and iron. The eminent historian neglects, however, to 

 mention facts which give a different complexion to the early Egyptian use of 

 metals, namely, that chipped flints, apparently belonging to a prehistoric Stone 

 Age, are picked up plentifully in Egypt, while the sharp stones or stone knives 

 used by the embalmers seem also to indicate an earlier time when these were the 

 cutting instruments in ordinary use. Thus there are signs that the Metal Age in 

 Egypt, as elsewhere in the world, was preceded by a Stone Age, and if so, the high 

 antiquity of the use of metal only throws back to a still higher antiquity the use of 

 stone. The ancient iron-working in Egypt is, however, the chief of a group of facts 

 which are now affecting the opinions of anthropologists on the question whether 

 the Bronze Age everywhere preceded the Iron Age. In regions where, as in Africa, 

 iron ore occurs in such a state that it can after mere heating in the fire be forged 

 into implements, the invention of iron-working would be more readily made than 

 that of the composite metal bronze, which perhaps indicates a previous use of copper, 

 afterwards improved on by an alloy of tin. Professor Rolleston,in a recent address 

 on the Iron, Bronze, and Stone Ages, insists with reason that soft iron may have 

 been first in the hands of many tribes, and may have been superseded by bronze as 

 a preferable material for tools and weapons. We moderns, used to fine and cheap 

 steel, hardly do justice to the excellence of bronze, or gun-metal as we should now 

 call it, in comparison with any material but steel. I well remember my own surprise 

 at seeing in the Naples Museum that the surgeons of Herculaneuni and Pompeii used 

 instruments of bronze. It is when hard steel comes in, that weapons both of bronze 

 and wrought iron have to yield, as when the long soft iron broad-swords of the 

 Gauls bent at the first blow against the pikes of Flaminius' soldiers. On the whole, 

 Professor Virchow's remarks in the Transactions of the Berlin Anthropological 

 Society for 1876, on the question whether it may be desirable to recognise instead 

 of three only two ages, a Stone Age and a Metal Age, seem to put the matter on 

 a fair footing. Iron may have been known as early as bronze or even earlier, but 

 nevertheless there have been periods in the life of nations when bronze, not iron, 



