Am  jour.  Pharm.  \    Romance  of  Chemical  Elements.  480 
July,  191S.      J  '  "  7 
in  comparing  the  different  languages.  The  Teutonic  languages  de- 
rive it  probably  from  the  Arabic  egala  =  shining,  for  we  have  in 
Swedish  and  Dutch — guld,  German — gold,  and  even  in  Finn— kulta. 
The  Romanic  languages  from  the  Latin  aurum  =  gold,  from  aurora 
and  the  Hebrew  awr  =  light,  fire,  e.  g.,  in  French — or  Italian  and 
Spanish — oro. 
Another  prehistoric  metal  is  silver,  which  occurs  more  frequent 
in  Assyrian  and  Egyptian  inscriptions,  indicating  that  it  was  more 
common  than  gold.  The  Latin  word  argentum  is  derived  from  the 
Greek  apyvpos,  argyros  =  silver,  which  in  turn  comes  from  apyos, 
argos  =  gleaming,  and  is  connected  with  the  Sanscrit  arj-una  =  light 
and  raj-ata  =  white.  In  the  Teutonic  languages  we  have  in  Ger- 
man— silber,  Swedish — silfver,  Danish — solv,  Dutch — zilver,  the 
origin  of  which  is  doubtful. 
While  gold  and  silver  have  always  been  precious  metals  and 
their  use  by  primitive  man  restricted  to  ornaments,  the  first  metal 
to  be  used  in  implements  was  undoubtedly  copper.  In  tracing  the 
records  of  the  past  by  the  help  of  archaeological  remains  we  always 
find  a  certain  order :  first  the  copper  age,  then  the  bronze  age  and 
last  the  iron  age  (the  stone  age  with  its  several  epochs  is  naturally 
older).  The  oldest  known  civilization  is  regarded  to  be  the  Su- 
merian,  in  which  we  find  copper  as  "  urud,"  which  then  became 
"  eru "  in  the  following  Babylonian  civilization.  But  the  earliest 
record  of  copper  and  copper  mines  dates  back  to  about  4060  B.  C., 
and  tells  of  the  copper  mines  located  on  Mount  Sinai  and  worked 
for  the  Egyptian  king  Dyezer  of  the  III  dynasty,  for  there  were  no 
copper  deposits  in  Egypt.  The  hieroglyph  for  copper  was  the  pic- 
ture of  a  melting  crucible  (Fig.  3),  which  became  later  the  sign  for 
a  metal. 
Fig.  1. 
Fig.  2. 
Fig.  3. 
Silver. 
Copper. 
