490 
Romance  of  Chemical  Elements.     (Am.  jour.  Pharm. 
J  1        July,  1918. 
Chronologically  follows  the  great  Mycensean  civilization  on  the 
Island  of  Cyprus,  3000-1000  B.  C,  where  beautiful  copper  imple- 
ments were  made.  Cyprus  became  the  distributing  center  of  copper 
for  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  The  Greeks  designated  it  as  xa^K0's> 
Kv-n-pLos,  chalcos  cyprios  =  Cyprian  ore,  and  the  Romans  as  Aes 
cyprium  or  simply  cuprum.  The  beginning  of  the  copper  age  in 
northern  Europe  is  placed  at  about  2500  B.  C,  while  in  China  it 
came  relatively  later,  in  2200  B.  C.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  we 
have  various  evidences  for  the  theory  that  copper  came  before  iron. 
So,  e.  g.,  the  Iliad  mentions  copper  279  times,  iron  23  times.  The 
Odyssee,  written  much  later,  has  80  times  copper  and  29  times  iron. 
Iron  was  at  that  time  more  valuable  than  copper.  Another  evidence 
is  the  fact  that  the  Greek  word  for  smith  =  x^"6"?*  chalceus,  is 
derived  from  copper  =  xaAK0'??  chalcos,  and  not  from  iron  —  0-1877/005, 
sideros. 
Iron. 
Primitive  man  used  always  those  things  which  he  found  and  the 
fact  that  the  oldest  implements  of  iron  contain  a  certain  amount  of 
nickel  is  evidence  that  the  iron  supply  came  at  first  from  meteorites, 
for  no  iron  ore  contains  nickel,  while  all  the  meteorites  consist  of 
an  alloy  of  iron  and  nickel.  Iron  tools  had  a  very  high  value,  for 
the  metallurgy  of  iron  developed  much  later.  The  earliest  known 
iron  tool  is  the  one  found  in  the  Pyramid  of  Kephron  and  dates  back 
to  about  3500  B.  C,  while  some  iron  pieces  in  the  Black  Pyramid 
of  Abusir  date  from  about  3000  B.  C.  Under  the  Egyptian  king 
Thethmosis  III,  at  about  1500  B.  C,  the  iron  metallurgy  in  Egypt 
developed  among  the  priests. 
The  earliest  evidence  of  iron  in  China  dates  back  to  1900  B.  C, 
in  Greece  about  1000  B.  C,  Central  Europe  800  B.  C,  Denmark, 
Ireland  100  A.  D.,  northern  Russia  and  Siberia  800  A.  D.,  which 
shows  a  gradual  and  slow  geographical  spread.  The  making  and 
the  tempering  of  steel  is  described  by  Pliny  (23-79  A.  D.),  while 
the  knowledge  of  cast  iron  began  to  develop  in  the  fourteenth 
century. 
The  origin  of  the  name  iron  is  not  definitely  known,  but  comes 
probably  from  the  Latin  aes  =  ore,  with  the  ending  -arn,  thus  Indo- 
germanic  *  isarn,  from  which  the  Teutonic  languages  develop  the 
names.  Thus  in  Gothic — eisam,  Anglo-Saxon — isern,  old  high  Ger- 
man— isarn,  and  in  modern  German — eisen,  Dutch — yser,  Swedish 
