IRON AND STEEL. 59 



speaks of them as " a people of iron workers," and from them steel 

 was named. 



Frequent mention is made of iron and steel in the Hebrew 

 scriptures, but it is to be noted that when Solomon would build the 

 temple, a thousand years before our era, he was obliged to send to 

 the King of Tyre for a man skilled to work " in gold and silver, and 

 in brass and in iron," Chaldean inscriptions speak of iron as having 

 been in use from time immemorial. Nebuchadnezzar in an inscrip- 

 tion telling of his works of improvement in Babylon says, " With 

 pillars and beams plated with copper and strengthened with iron I 

 built up its gates." His daughter Nitocris built a bridge the stones 

 of which were held together by bands of iron fixed in their places 

 by molten lead. At Nineveh, Layard found numerous relics, in- 

 cluding " a perfect helmet of iron, inlaid with copper bands," as 

 well as many other articles of iron. " Two or three baskets were 

 filled with these relics." 



In Egypt iron was used in the earliest times. In 1837 a piece 

 of iron was taken from an inner joint of the great pyramid at Gizeh, 

 which is now in the British Museum. The almost universal opinion of 

 the best Egyptologists places the erection of that edifice at about 

 3,000 years before our era, so that this venerable piece of rusty metal 

 is undoubtedly the oldest piece of manufactured iron of which men 

 have any knowledge. • Wilkinson copies an engraving showing the 

 process of smelting iron by the aid of bellows in the shape of leather 

 bags, trodden by a man who exhausts the air from one while with a 

 string he raises the other and permits it to be refilled. Butchers are 

 depicted on monuments wearing steels such as are used to-day. 

 Sickles and other weapons of steel are pictured in great numbers and 

 colored blue to distinguish them from the bronze weapons which are 

 colored red. Belzoni found an iron sickle under the foot of a sphynx 

 at Karnak, and it is now in the British Museum. Kenrick, in "An- 

 cient Egypt under the Pharaohs," copies an account of a military 

 expedition made by Thothmes I., who reigned about 1700 years 

 before our era. From some of the Deltan Kings this monarch re- 

 ceived as tribute or presents gold and silver, as well as " bars of 

 wrought metal, and vessels of copper, and of bronze, and of iron." 

 From the region of Memphis he received wine, iron, lead, wrought 

 metal, animals etc. When I read that the same king in a successful 



