14 WILLIAM M. HAMLET. 



which are given by M. J. De Morgan ; x while later on, but still 

 in pre-historic times, as well as during the earlier dynasties, copper 

 tools, vases and weapons were in use in Egypt. It is easy to 

 suppose that bright ruddy copper should be linked in name with 

 the sun, and the Sun-god Ra, whose symbol in cartouche and 

 hieroglyphic was 0. This supposition finds support in the sur- 

 vival of the word 'rame,' used to this day by the Italians to denote 

 the metal copper. Rame seems to be derived from other sources 

 than decayed Latin, for if we bear in mind that the people now 

 speaking Italian, inhabit the very same country of ancient Etruria' 2 

 and knowing the persistence with which some words survive, even 

 the decay of empires, it seems to me to be by no means a far 

 fetched theory to account for the word rame, as the survival of a 

 word that has come down to us from Egyptian and Etruscan 

 sources, it is, I think, more than a mere coincidence. It is also a 

 curious fact that the word in the Etruscan 

 language denoting the country itself, is — /»n3Z/^ T 

 Rasena (read from right to left). The word for copper would be 



in Etruscan — OTtl AQ ^ we ^ orm tne wor< ^ phonetically 

 from the little ** ■ / I we know of Etruscan — that un- 

 classed solitary remnant of the languages of the past. 



Passing from the question as to the derivation of the word 

 'rame' as an existing European name for copper, I would point 

 out another link connecting the antiquity of ancient Egypt with 

 our present day science; that link is to be found in the word given 

 to the volatile alkali — that familiar, pungent, tear-exciting liquid — 

 spirits of hartshorn, which, when vapourised, is the alkaline air of 

 our forefathers— ammonia. 3 The Greek conquerors noted with what 

 esteem Ammon was held by the Egyptians, and we have seen its 

 importance in the anointing of kings. Among Greek gods, the 



1 M. De Morgan — Recherches sur Forigine d'Egypte. 



2 The Cities and Countries of Etruria by Geo. Dennis London Murray. 



3 Ammonia, as a gas, was discovered by Priestly in 1774 ; the solution 

 was, however, known to the alchemists of the fifteenth century as Spiritus 

 salis urinoe. 



