CHAPTER VI.

Chapter 107,281 wordsPublic domain

THE PROTO-SIDERIC OR EARLY IRON AGE OF WEAPONS.

‘Of all metallurgical processes, the extraction of malleable iron may be regarded as amongst the most simple.’—Percy, _Iron, &c._ p. 573.

We now come to the King of Metals that ‘breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things’; the only ore friendly as well as fatal to the human form; the most useful and the most deadly in the hand of man[320]—Iron.[321]

According to the Parian Chronicle (Arundelian Marbles), followed by Thrasyllus (Clemens Alex. in ‘Strom.’), and by a host of writers, iron-working was discovered in B.C. 1432 or 248 years before the Trojan war. The latter, a crucial date, is, as will appear, wholly undetermined; the various authorities have made it range through nearly seven hundred years. But the life of Hellas is one great ‘appropriation clause’: the Greeks were doughty claimants, childish in their _naïveté_ of conceit; they were burglars of others’ wits (convey, the wise it call), and they made themselves do all things. Their legends, for instance, accredit ‘Glaucus the Chian’ with having invented the art and mystery of steel-inlaying. De Goguet (A.D. 1761) tells us that the Phœnicians ranked amongst their oldest heroes two brothers who discovered iron-working; the Cretans referred it to the oldest period of their history,[322] and the Idæan Daktyls learnt it from the ‘mother of the gods.’ Prometheus (in Æschylus) boasts of having taught mankind to fabricate all metals: he also wears an iron ring supposed to be a chain not an ornament; and it possibly symbolises the union of fire and ore. The art of iron-working is referred, now to the Cyclopes, of Sicily, then to the Chalybes,[323] who extended from Colchis to Spain: Clemens (Alex.) refers the discovery of making malleable iron to the Noropes of Danubian Pannonia, who dwelt between Noricum (Styria) and Mæsia; and finally, to quote no more, Mr. J. Fergusson, a careful writer, tells us that ‘the Aryans (?) were those who introduced the use of iron, and with it dominated over and expelled (?) the older races.’

Modern discovery has proved that the invention, and indeed the general adoption, of ‘Mars’ (♂) dates from the very dawn of history; and that it is a mere theory to assume everywhere preceding millennia of bone and stone, copper and bronze. It is clear, for instance, in Central Africa, where copper and tin were unprocurable, that man must first have used iron.[324] A good authority, Mr. St. John V. Day[325] (C.E.), who was in charge of iron works in Southern India, claims for iron—cast as well as wrought, and even for its carburet, steel—the credit of being ‘unquestionably the earliest of substances with which man was acquainted.’ This writer, however, denies, contrary to all tradition, a ‘progressive rise in the quality of materials used by man’: that is, from the soft and yielding to the hard and refractory. He holds that Man, once master of metallurgy, ‘would be better able to deal with the much more easily manipulated bones, stones, or wood.’ He supposes all the metals, noble and ignoble, as well as gems and precious stones, to have become familiar amongst Eastern races, ‘whether they be Semitic, Aryan, Hamitic, Sporadic, or Allophyllian, by virtue of a civilisation due to a natural innate insight.’ Hence he declares Egypt an enigma to those who accept the dictum of ‘man’s gradual evolution from the condition of a savage, an ignoramus,’ and he opines that this grim being is simply a retrograde.[326]

These ideas trench upon old metallurgic superstitions and seem to run into extremes. We _know_ nothing concerning the home of Proto-man, which is perhaps deep under the waters. Anthropologists, who locate him in Mesopotamia, ‘Aryaland’ (Central Asia), or Ethiopia, look only to the origin of the present species, and the historic cycle. Our studies, as far as they go, suggest that Man began in the Polar regions, and that in hoar antiquity each racial centre had its own material—wood and horn, bone and stone, copper, bronze, and iron.[327]

[Heading: _METAL IN EGYPT._]

For our first lesson in iron we must go back as usual to Kahi-Ptah (the Ptah-region), that Nile Valley which is the motherland of all science, of all art. Here Bunsen[328] provides us with the following table:

Mr. Day (who has drawn it up) observes that ‘BA’ [Hieroglyph] is a constant in the phonetic values assigned to the uncertain hieroglyphs for iron, and feels disposed to believe it synonymous with χαλκός, base metal in general. He would translate the Saidic ‘ΒΕΝΙΠΕ’ and the Coptic ‘ΠΕΝΙΠΕ’ by ‘stone (ΒΕ) of (ΝΙ) sky or heaven (ΠΕ)’; in fact, ‘sky-stone,’ alluding to meteoric iron, probably the first utilised. Dr. Birch holds ‘BA’ to be a general term for metal made particular, as in Greece, by prefixed adjectives (white, black, yellow) denoting the quality of the ore. And hence the determinative of ‘BA’ (metal, stone, or hard wood) is the cube or parallelogrammic block which denotes building and building materials.

Native iron may be distributed into two great divisions, extra-terrestrial and terrestrial. The former is known as meteoric or nickeliferous. Mr. Day (pp. 22–23) gives analyses of this form, and takes, from Chladni[329] and others, a list of masses that fell in Siberia, Thuringia, and Dauphiné; in West African Liberia, and in American Sta. Fé de Bogotá, and Canaan, Connecticut. Though many trials have been made in working extra-terrestrial metal, all have hitherto failed; the phosphorus, nickel and its _alter ego_, cobalt, render the forgings, in our present state of technology, too brittle for use. Terrestrial or telluric iron is again divided into two classes—the nearly pure ore and the native steel. According to the schedule of Rosset:

Iron is a metal not cast and malleable. Steel „ cast and malleable. Pig-iron „ cast and not malleable.

That iron was common amongst the ancient Egyptians we may assume as proved. Mr. A. Henry Rhind, when opening the tomb of Sebau (nat. B.C. 68), noted on the massive doors ‘iron hasps and nails,’ ‘as lustrous and as pliant as on the day they left the forge.’ Belzoni, who died in 1823, found an iron sickle under the feet of one of the Karnak Sphinxes dating from B.C. 600. In June 1837, Mr. J. R. Hill, employed by Colonel Howard Vyse, when blasting and excavating the Jízeh[330] Pyramid, came upon a piece of iron, apparently a cramp, near the channel-mouth of one of the air-passages: it had thus been preserved from rust, and its authenticity cannot be doubted. Some suggested that it was used for scraping and finishing; others for finally levelling the faces of dressed stone, but it tapers off from the middle to an edge on either side and it narrows at one end.[331] This relic can hardly be of later date than B.C. 4000–3600, when Khufu (Cheops) built his burial-place and inscribed in it his hieroglyphic shield[332] or cartouche [Hieroglyph]. Stowed away in the British Museum, it excited scant attention till Dr. Lepsius at the Congress of Orientalists (London, 1874), suggested that it was of steel. A trial was made (Sept. 18); it yielded readily to a few turns of the drill, and the surfaces of the hole showed the whiteness and the brightness of newly-cut malleable iron. Since that discovery, sacrificial iron knives have been found in the Nile Valley, despite the ready oxidation of the metal in a climate of the hot-damp category. In the Bulák Museum (Salle de l’Est), with the wooden Swords, was a straight and double-edged iron blade that had two ribs running along its length. Another room showed a straight, double-edged, and round-pointed dagger of gilt iron. Of the latter weapon there are three fine specimens (Salle du Centre).

[Heading: _IRON IN EGYPT._]

The literature of Egypt abounds in allusions to the use of iron.[333] The Rev. Basil H. Cooper[334] believes that Mibampes the ‘Iron King,’ sixth successor of primæval Mena (circ. B.C. 4560),[335] bore on his cartouche the word ‘Benipe’; and that no less than three records[336] entitle him ‘Lover of Iron’ (i.e. the Sword); ‘thus attesting, not only the extreme antiquity of the use of iron, but unfortunately (?) of that most dreadful evil of all which are the scourges of humanity—war (?).’ And so we see the nineteenth century repeating the Herodotian half-truth, ‘Iron has been discovered to the hurt of Man’; and looking only at one side of the question, the evils of War, without which, I repeat, strong races could not supplant the weaker to the general benefit of mankind. The Epos of Pentaur, the jovial temple scribe[337] (circ. B.C. 1350), mentions ‘iron’ thrice; and Pharaoh Mene-Ptah II., whose ‘Sword gave no quarter,’ had vessels of iron. In later hieroglyphic literature the notices become too numerous to justify quotation.

The old Egyptians, according to Plutarch,[338] held iron to be the ὀστέον Τυφῶνος, or bone of Set; whereas the σιδηρίτις λίθος, or magnet, was that of his foe-god Horus, degraded to Charon in Greece and Rome. This siderite was known to the Hellenes in its religious aspect as Ἡράκλεια λίθος or Ἡράκλειον, either from Heraclea-town or from Hercules (Pliny, xxxvi. 25). Siderite or loadstone, termed ‘Magnet’ from its supposed discoverer, was also entitled ‘live iron,’ and its wounds were supposed to be more deadly than those of the common ore.

The Nile-dwellers had not far to go for iron, which abounds in the well-known Wady Hammámát, one of the earliest centres of Egyptian mining; and, as Mr. Piazzi Smyth showed, it accumulates everywhere in the fissures of the flaky limestone:[339] it is produced in Ethiopia (the Sudan and Abyssinia); and in Midian, where the old Kemites opened the copper mines, it appears in the shape of black sand and large masses of titaniferous[340] and other ores. The monuments (Karnak Table, &c.) specify, amongst objects of tribute, iron from the lands of the Thuhi[341] (‘the fair people’), the Rutennu (Syrians and Assyrians), and the Asi (or rebels generally?); from these countries it was exported in the ore and in bricks and pigs. The tribute-tables of Thut-mes III. (B.C. 1600) mention:—

One beautiful iron armour of the hostile king. One beautiful iron armour of the King of Megiddo. ? lbs. weight, two suits of iron armour from Naharayn. Iron suits of armour (taken by the warriors), and Five iron storm-caps (?).

[Heading: _HEBREW IRON-AGE._]

Mr. Francis Galton[342] first discovered in the ancient copper-diggings of the so-called ‘Sinaitic’ peninsula, a blackish mass, not unlike iron-slag, which he conjectured to date before Moses’ days. A score of years afterwards (early 1873), Mr. Hartland[343] examined the junction of the Wadys Kemeh, Mukattab, and Maghárah, and found the iron-ore imperfectly extracted: assays and analyses of the slags that lay in heaps about the ruined works produced fifty-three per cent. of metal. He determined that the mines at Serábit El-Khádim had been constructed on the principle of the Catalan (or rather the Corsican) forge;[344] and he discovered near them a temple and barracks for the soldier-guards.[345]

It is hard to believe with Mr. Proctor that Abraham, a wandering Chaldæan Shaykh, taught the Egyptians astronomy, astrology, and arithmetic; or with Mr. Piazzi Smyth, that Melchisedek, the petty chief of a village in Palestine, built _the_ Pyramid. Yet it is only reasonable to suppose that the Israelites set out upon their exodus or exodi, for there were probably many, provided with some of the technological wisdom of the Egyptians. Joseph, according to Brugsch (‘Hist.’ I. chap. xii.), rose to the honour of Zaphnatpaneakh (Governor of the Sethroitic home), and Ro-hir or Procurator, under the Shepherd-kings or ‘Hyksos,’ a word which he renders Hek-Shasu,[346] lord of the Shasu (Arabs); he makes the Pharaoh of the Oppression, Ramses II. (B.C. 1333–1300), and Mene-Ptah II. the Pharaoh of the Exodus (B.C. 1300–1266). The Pentateuch, whatever be its date, well knew the use of Barzil (ברזל), the Chaldæan Parzil or Parzillu. According to Sir John Lubbock (‘Prehistoric Man’), ‘iron’ is four times mentioned, and ‘brass’ (copper, bronze?) thirty-eight times in ‘the Law.’[347] From other sources we gather that the metal was either עשות (_ashúth_, that is, ‘the worked,’ from the rad. _ashah_), or מוצק (_muzak_, ‘the melted,’ fused, cast; from the root _zak_). The Lord threatens that He will make ‘the skies as iron and the earth as copper’ (Levit. xxvi. 19). In Deuteronomy (iv. 20), Egypt is compared with an iron furnace; and mention is made of iron shoes (xxxiii. 25). Job includes among riches, cattle, silver, gold, brass (copper?), and iron; he tells us (xxviii. 2) that ‘iron is taken out of the earth and copper is molten out of the stone,’ and he speaks of lithic writing (xix. 24), ‘graven with an iron style and lead in the rock for ever.’ But commentators are not agreed about the age of this author, and in the hands of the Rabbis he seems gradually to be growing younger—more modern—with every generation.

The Hebrews found the Iron-age wherever they went. ‘Barzil’ was among the metals taken from the Midianites by Moses (Numb. xxxi. 22). The ‘bedstead,’ or rather divan, of Og, the King of Bashan, measuring nine cubits of man (each = sixteen inches) in length by four broad, was of iron (Deut. iii. 11). Joshua shows that the Canaanites owned ‘chariots of iron’ (xvii. 16). These tribes, displaced by the Jews, seem to have been accomplished workers in metal.[348] Traces of iron-smelting occur on the Libanus,[349] where I found copper-stone,[350] and where, during the present century, coal and asphalte have been mined. Many parts of the country, as Argob in ancient Bashan, produce an abundance of ironstone.[351] The old Phœnician Sanconiathon, a name which may denote a history or its historian, tells us through the Greek translator Philo of Byblus, that the people were famous for their Technites, artisans and blacksmiths. The warlike Hittites, as will appear, were also iron-workers.

From Egypt the use of iron would spread through Asia Minor[352] eastward to Naharayn,[353] the two-river-land, Mesopotamia. But the date is disputed. The excavations of the late Mr. George Smith yielded no iron articles older than B.C. 1000–800. Mr. Day remarks that ‘whilst Mesopotamia has not, up to the present time, produced any solid evidence in the form of material iron relics belonging to the oldest monarchies; nevertheless, the monuments of those earliest times are numerous, and they yield abundance of testimony to the acquaintance of the contemporary people with iron.’ In later ages he alludes to the rings and bangles of iron in the British Museum, which were possibly chain-links; and particularly to the ‘ombos of a shield,’ as the most exquisite piece of their hammered iron-work he has met with: he doubts if it can in some respects be surpassed by the productions of to-day. The cuneiforms speak of iron fetters, and the people of the great Interamnian plain knew the art of casting bronze over iron,[354] only lately introduced into our metallurgy.

[Heading: _IRON IN ASSYRIA._]

According to Mr. G. Smith there is no pure Assyrian word for ‘iron.’[355] Its cuneiform symbol is [Cuneiform], but the phonetic value or pronunciation has not yet been determined. ‘It must have been in use 2000 B.C.,’ and it is found in inscriptions of all ages. The word is supposed to belong to the ancient Turanian or Proto-Babylonian race (Akkadian[356] or Sumirian) that held the river-plains, and it has been grafted into the more recent Assyrian language. In the inscriptions, each god has his sign, and the symbol above given, accompanies, as his attribute, one of the deities of war and hunting: thus it is a parallel to that found in the cartouche of the Egyptian ‘Iron King.’

Canon Rawlinson,[357] on the other hand, assigns to the symbol the phonetic value of _Hurud_, which thus became the Chaldæan equivalent for ‘iron.’ In concert with his distinguished brother, he came to the conclusion: ‘There are two signs for metals in Assyria, with respect to which there is a doubt which is iron and which is brass (or bronze rather). These are [Cuneiform] and [Cuneiform]. Sir Henry Rawlinson, on the whole, inclines to regard the first as bronze and the second as iron, although the former is nowhere rendered phonetically. The latter is rendered in a syllabary as equivalent to _Hurud_ in Akkadian and _Eru_ in Assyrian. Mr. George Smith reverses the meanings of the two signs. The point is a very doubtful one.’

After the decay of the Proto-Babylonian or Chaldæan empire (B.C. 2300–1500), when the seat of Interamnian rule moved to the Tigris-Euphrates basin, and the three Assyrian periods flourished (B.C. 1500–555),[358] iron was largely used. It was produced, according to Layard (_loc. cit._) in the Tiyari mountains, and it is still found in quantities on the slopes, three or four days’ journey from Mosul. The north-western palace of Nimrúd (Kalah) showed, amongst the rubbish-heaps, much rusty iron and a perfect helmet like that represented in the bas-reliefs. There were Swords and daggers, shields and shield-handles, rods, and the points of spears and arrows, which fell to pieces on exposure. Amongst the few specimens preserved were the head of a trident-like weapon, some Sword-handles, a large blunt spear-pile, the point of a pick, several objects resembling the heads of sledge-hammers, and a double-handed saw of iron or steel (?), about three feet eight inches long by four inches and five-eighths broad, for cross-cutting timber. The British Museum owns a fine collection of Assyrian sheet or plate iron-work; pieces of unfinished forgings; a rude triangular lump through which a round hole has been driven (by a heated punch?); several cylindrical bars, straight and curved; wall-cramps, nails, and door-hinges; a ladle; rings of sizes (one being three inches in diameter); a signet-ring containing a silver bezel or seal; and, lastly, a portion of what seems to have been a double-sided comb. In much later days the Assyrians of Xerxes’ army carried, according to Herodotus, shields, spears, daggers, and wooden clubs spiked with iron.

The Greeks learned their metallurgy, as they did all their arts, from Egypt; and, following in the footsteps of the Phœnicians, diffused them throughout the Western World. In Theseus’ time, according to Wilkinson—that is, B.C. 1235—‘iron is conjectured not to have been known, as he was found buried with a brass (copper, bronze?) Sword and spear.’ They did not use iron weapons, and probably had no iron during their first foreign campaign—the Trojan war. The Parian (Arundelian) Chronicle (dating its notices from Cecrops, B.C. 1582) and the Rhodian myths refer to a conflagration in the Cretan mountains which taught metallurgy to the Idæan Daktyls (Δάκτυλοι Ἰδαῖοι):[359] this would, however, be a comparatively late date when we regard Egypt.[360]

With respect to the metal in the Hissarlik remains, Dr. Schliemann remarks (i. 31): ‘The only objects of iron which I found were a key of curious shape and a few arrows and nails close to the surface.’ It is no proof that it was used because Homer some centuries afterwards spoke of the κύανος (_cyanus_), steel tempered blue, a word which even in antiquity was translated by χάλυψ (_chalybs_, steel). The explorer remarks: ‘Articles of steel may have existed: I believe positively that they did exist; but they have vanished without leaving a trace of their existence; for, as we know, iron and steel become decomposed much more readily than copper.’ Yet, so contradictory is the whole book, and so uncertain are its conclusions, we find,[361] ‘No. 4. Drillings of one of the Trojan sling-bullets, externally covered with verdigris, and internally the colour of iron’; while the assay shows that it consisted chiefly of copper and sulphur. Among the contemporary (?) finds of Mycenæ, which not a few authorities have pronounced to be Byzantine, and another observer Keltic,[362] Dr. Schliemann met with iron in the shape of knives and keys; but he holds these articles to be of comparatively late date, not older than the fifth century B.C.[363] At that time iron must have been general throughout Greece. In the fourth century, Aristotle (‘Meteorologica’) treats at length upon iron and its modifications. One passage runs: ‘Wrought iron may be so cast as to be made liquid and to reharden; and thus it is they are wont to make steel (τὸ στόμωμα); for the scoria of iron subsides and is purged off by the bottom, and when it is often defæcated and cleansed, this is steel. But this they do not often, because of the great waste, and because it loses much weight in refining; but iron is so much the more excellent the more recrement it has.’ Daimachus, Aristotle’s contemporary, says of steels (τῶν στομωμάτων), ‘There is the Chalybdic,[364] the Synopic, the Lydian, and the Lacedæmonian. The Chalybdic is best for carpenters’ tools; the Lacedæmonian for files, drills, gravers, and stone-chisels; the Lydian also is suited for files, and for knives, razors, and rasps.’ Avicenna (Abu Ali Siná), in his fifth book, ‘De Anima,’ according to Roger Bacon, has three species of the metal: (1) Iron, good for hammers and anvils, but not for cutting tools; (2) Steel,[365] which is purer and has more heat in it; it is therefore less malleable, but better able to take an edge; and (3) Andena, ductile and malleable under a low degree of heat, and intermediate between iron and steel. Apparently the latter is the Hindiah or Hindiyáneh, the Ferrum Indicum and the Ondanique of Marco Polo (i. 17).

[Heading: _ROMAN IRON._]

The Romans, a more cosmopolitan people than the Greeks, paid great attention to the mineral wealth of their conquests, and were careful to choose the best _acies_[366] for their weapons. Diodorus Siculus[367] describes the process by which the Celtiberians prepared their iron for Swords. Pliny, who was Procurator of Spain under Vespasian, may have studied iron-mining and ore-working in the country which still produces the Toledo blade. He characterises the metal generally as being universally used and occurring in every part of the world—especially in Ilva, now Elba, where there are mines of oligiste, specular iron or iron glance. His process of steel-making is that of the Greeks. ‘Fornacum maxima differentia est; in eis equidem nucleus ferri’ (the σίδηρος ἐργασμένος or worked iron of Aristotle) ‘excoquitur ad indurandum; aliter alioque modo ad densandas incudes, malleorumve rostra’ (xxxiv. 41). Hence it appears that the Romans had one way to make steel, and another to harden and temper tools, picks, and anvils. ‘Possibly,’ says Dr. Martin Lister, ‘the latter were boiled in “sow-metal,” as the term _densare_ seems to suggest.’

Roman mining-operations were often conducted on a large scale. The Forest of Dean and the Wealds of Kent and Sussex, not to mention other parts of England, show heaps of old slag containing classical pottery and coins of Nero, Vespasian, and Diocletian. They obtained the regulus[368] by the direct process, and used charcoal in rude Catalan furnaces; the work was imperfect, and the scoriæ contain a large percentage of metal. Ancient adits and shafts in Shropshire[369] and elsewhere have preserved the rude implements with which they made the natives labour in _corvée_. The hill-sides of Carthagena on the seaboard of Murcia (South-Eastern Spain) had been explored for lead and silver by the earliest Carthaginian colonists; and the industry was at its height when Nova Carthago, under Roman rule, became (B.C. 200) a flourishing municipium, the centre of a large population. At this time as many as forty thousand hands were regularly employed. In our seventh century the Arab invasion ruined the mines, not only of this district, but of every province occupied by the ‘Moors.’ About the mid-fifteenth century a revival was attempted; but this was checked at the beginning of the sixteenth, when the mines of Spanish America were opened: the Emperor Charles V. also would not see the soil of his European dominions disturbed by digging. The miners emigrated in mass, and New Carthage was forgotten till within the last half-century. According to M. Alfred Massart,[370] the ancient masses of plumbiferous scoriæ were large enough to pay for re-working. A superficial area of eight square leagues yielded some eight hundred thousand tons of iron-ore, of which two-thirds were ferro-manganese, and twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand tons of lead containing thirty thousand kilogrammes of silver. As regards the use of iron for many purposes by the ancient Britons before the Roman conquest, we may fairly, without attaching importance to the legend of ‘Milesius,’ believe that the industry may also have migrated northwards from a Spanish centre. Hence, Mr. Hutton, the local historian of Birmingham, believes that Sword-blades were made there before the landing of Julius Cæsar.

[Heading: _IRON IN INDIA._]

From Assyria the use of iron would extend through Persia to India, to Indo-China, and to China and Japan. Professor Max Müller, as Mr. Day justly observes, differs with himself when he states in one place[371] that ‘iron was not known previously to the breaking up of the Aryan family’; and in another passage,[372] where we are told, ‘Before the separation of the Aryan race ... there can be no doubt that iron was known and its value appreciated.’ Here, evidently, the Sanskritist had changed his first opinion, because he had noticed that ‘Ayas’ may also mean copper or bronze. The Rig Veda mentions mail-coats, hatchets, and weapons of iron; but so far from assigning to this work the age of B.C. 1300, we may fairly hold that its present shape was assumed in the early centuries following Christianity. We have trustworthy notices of the metal in India only at the beginning of authentic history, when the acumen of the Greeks was applied to the gross absurdities of Hindu fable.[373] The Malli and Oxydracæ presented to Alexander a hundred talents’ weight of Indian steel (_ferrum candidum_) in wrought bars, just as Homer’s Achilles (‘Il.’ xxiii. 826), nearly a thousand years before, offered at the funeral games of Patroclus, ‘a rudely-molten mass of iron’ (σόλον αὐτοχόωνον, self-melted?), which had been used for hurling at the foe by Eëtion, and which would supply the farm with metal for five years. The ‘bright iron’ of Ezekiel, named amongst the wares of Tyre (xxvii. 19) with cassia and calamus, was probably the same material. The Periplus mentions sideros indikos and stómoma (steel) as imports to the Abyssinian harbours. Daimachus and Pliny specify, amongst the dearest kinds of steel, the ferrum Indicum and the ferrum Sericum; and Salmasius refers to a Greek chemical treatise ‘On the Tempering (περὶ βαφῆς) of Indian Steel.’

The great iron-working age of India seems to have been in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, when the blacksmiths must have been skilful and commanded an unlimited supply of the best metal. The Lát or iron-pillar of Delhi, to mention no other, is a solid shaft, showing that the people were unable to make a core. This simple piece of wrought metal, calculated to weigh seventeen tons and to contain eighty cubic feet of metal, measures in diameter 16·4 inches tapering to 12·05. The height above ground is twenty-two feet, and excavations of twenty-six feet did not reach the base: the known length therefore is upwards of forty-eight feet.[374] The sundry inscriptions punched upon it are of very various dates: Prinsep[375] assigns our third or fourth century to the Nagari character in which Rajah Dhava thus ‘renowned it’:—

‘By him who, learning the warlike preparations and entrenchments of his enemies with their good soldiers and allies, a monument of fame engraved by his Sword on their limbs, who as master of the seven advantages,[376] crossing over (the Indus?), so subdued the Vahlikas of Sindhu [N.B.: they can hardly be the ‘people of Balkh’] that even at this day his disciplined force and defences on the south (of the river) are sacredly respected by them,’ &c. &c.

Metallurgists dispute as to the way in which this huge iron rod was wrought. One writer,[377] however, seems to have hit upon the solution of the problem: ‘The column may have been forged standing, by welding on, one over another, thin iron plates or dires, the fire being built round the column as it grew; and the ground raised in a mound to keep the top of the column on a level with the workplace.’ Pyramid-building has been explained in the same way—a causeway.

But the Lát is not the only marvel of Hindu metallurgy. Mr. James Fergusson found in the Temple of Kanaruc, or Black Pagoda of the Madras Presidency, beams of wrought iron about twenty-one feet in length and eight inches section, to strengthen the roof, which the Hindus, in their distrust of the arch, formed after their usual bracket-fashion. In the fane of Mahavellipore he discovered sockets for similar supports. He assigns to the Black Pagoda a date between A.D. 1236 and 1241; and to Mahavellipore any time between our tenth and fourteenth centuries.[378] Colonel Pearse, R.A. presented to the trustees of the British Museum a unique collection of archaic tools, iron and steel, gouges, spatulæ, ladles, and similar articles, dug out of tumuli at Wari Gaon, near Kampti. But there are no grounds whatever for dating them ‘about B.C. 1500, or the time of Moses.’

[Heading: _WOOTZ._]

The _ferrum Indicum_[379] of the Classics may still be represented by the famous Wootz or Wutz,[380] the ‘natural Indian steel,’ still so much prized for Sword-blades in Persia and Afghanistan. The specimens first sent in 1795 to the Royal Society of London were analysed by Mr. Josiah M. Heath with the results given below.[381]

Colonel Yule remarks that the Wootz was, in part at least, the famous Indian steel, the σίδηρος Ἰνδικὸς καὶ στόμωμα of the ‘Periplus,’ the Hunduwání of the mediæval Persian traders; the Andanicum or Ondanique of Marco Polo and the Alkinde of the old Spanish. In the sixteenth century the exportation was chiefly from Baticala in Canara. The King of Portugal complains (in A.D. 1591) of the large quantities shipped from Chaul to be sold in the Red Sea to the Turks and on the African coast about Melinde.[382] And I would note that this industry by no means argues civilisation in India or elsewhere:[383] as Dr. Percy remarks, ‘The primitive method of extracting good malleable iron direct from the ore, which is still practised in India and in Africa, requires a degree of skill very inferior to that which is implied in the manufacture of bronze.’

The system of Wootz-making, especially at Salem and in parts of Mysore, has been described by many writers. About a pound weight of malleable iron, made from magnetic ore, is placed, minutely broken and moistened, in a crucible of refractory clay, together with finely chopped pieces of wood (_Cassia auriculata_). It is packed without flux. The open pots are then covered with the green leaves of the _Asclepias gigantea_ or the _Convolvulus lanifolius_, and the tops are coated over with wet clay, which is sun-dried to hardness. ‘Charcoal will not do as a substitute for the green twigs.’ Some two dozen of these cupels[384] or crucibles are disposed archways at the bottom of a furnace, whose blast is managed with bellows of bullock’s hide. The fuel is composed mostly of charcoal and of sun-dried _brattis_ or cow-chips. After two or three hours’ smelting the cooled crucibles are broken up, when the regulus appears in the shape and size of half an egg. According to Tavernier, the best buttons from about Golconda were as large as a halfpenny roll, and sufficed to make two Sword-blades (?). These ‘cops’ are converted into bars by exposure for several hours to a charcoal fire not hot enough to melt them: they are then turned over before the blast, and thus the too highly carburised steel is oxidised.[385]

According to Professor Oldham,[386] ‘Wootz’ is also worked in the Damudah Valley, at Birbhúm, Dyucha, Narayanpúr, Damrah, and Goanpúr. In 1852 some thirty furnaces at Dyucha reduced the ore to _kachhá_ or pig-iron, small blooms from Catalan forges; as many more converted it to _pakká_ (crude steel), prepared in furnaces of different kind. The work was done by different castes; the Hindís (Moslems) laboured at the rude metal, and the Hindús preferred the refining work. I have read that anciently a large quantity of Wootz found its way westward _viâ_ Pesháwar.

When last visiting (April 19, 1876) the Mahabaleshwar Hills near Bombay, I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Joyner, C.E., and with his assistance made personal inquiries into the process. The whole of the Sayhádri range (Western Ghats), and especially the ‘great-Might-of-Shiva’ mountains, had for many ages supplied Persia with the best steel. Our Government, since 1866, forbade the industry, as it threatened the highlands with disforesting. The ore was worked by the Hill-tribes, of whom the principal are the Dhánwars, Dravidians now speaking Hindustani.[387] Only the brickwork of their many raised furnaces remained. For fuel they preferred the Jumbul-wood, and the Anjan or iron-wood. They packed the iron and fourteen pounds of charcoal in layers; and, after two hours of bellows-working, the metal flowed into the forms. The ‘Kurs’ (bloom), five inches in diameter by two and a half deep, was then beaten into Táwás or plates. The matrix resembled the Brazilian, a poor yellow-brown limonite striping the mud-coloured clay; and actual testing disproved the common idea that the ‘watering’ of the surface is found in the metal. The Jauhar (‘jewel’ or ribboning) of the so-called ‘Damascus’ blade was produced artificially, mostly by drawing out the steel into thin ribbons which were piled and welded by the hammer. My friend afterwards sent me from India an inkstand of Mahabaleshwar iron.[388]

I could not learn from Hindus that they bury iron in the earth till the ‘core’ is reached. But they are well acquainted with tempering by cold immersion, as noticed by Salmasius (‘Exercit. Plin.’ 763): they still believe with Pliny, Justin, and a host of others, in ‘a Sword, the icebrook’s temper,’ and all hold that the hardening of metal depends much upon the quality of the water. They quench delicate articles in oil, a method also alluded to by Pliny, but they ignore his statement (xxviii. 41) that rust produced by goat’s blood gives a better edge to iron than the file. I am not aware that they have ever used for quenching purposes quicksilver, the best conductor of heat.

In Burmah, as in India, the chief peculiarity of iron-smelting is the use of green-wood fuel.[389] Throughout the mighty ‘Hollander’ Archipelago of the Farther East, this metal, known in former days only by importation, is now everywhere common. Java received the Egyptian arts from India, which colonised her about the beginning of the Christian era: the now untravelled Hindú was then a voyager and an explorer. Dr. Percy describes the iron-smelting of Borneo,[390] which produces the Parangilang, a peculiar Sword-like weapon equally fit for felling trees and men.[391] At Tahiti (Otaheiti), on the other hand, Captain Cook was unable to make the natives appreciate the use of metal till his armourer wrought an iron adze in shape like the native.

[Heading: _IRON IN CHINA._]

The oldest, and indeed the only, Chinese word for iron is 鐵—_tie_, formerly pronounced _tit_. It is first mentioned among the tribute-articles of Yu in the Yu-Kung section of the Shoo-King,[392] and the latter has been estimated to date from B.C. 2200–2000. If this be fact, hieroglyphic tablet-writing flourished amongst the ‘Bak’ some five hundred years before the age popularly attributed to the Hebrew Scriptures, and when the Greeks had not begun to form a nation.[393] Either then the Sinologues, like the Sanskritists, have been deluded by the artful native into admitting the preposterous claims to antiquity of culture always advanced by semi-barbarous peoples; or, what is hardly likely, China formed a centre of Turanian civilisation wholly independent of Egypt and Chaldæa. Indeed, there appears to have been some contact of ideas in the matter of writing. The Kemite denoted ‘man’ and ‘eye’ by copying nature; and probably the Chinese did the same. But the Turanian symbols have lost, by the law of pictorial evanescence, the original forms: ‘man’ has become 人 = jin (No. 9),[394] a pair of legs; and ‘eye’ 目 = mŭh (No. 109), looks as if copied from a cat. The picture-origin of the Assyrian syllabary has also been satisfactorily established by the Rev. W. Haughton, but the later forms are as degraded as in the hieratic and demotic Egyptian.[395]

The passage above alluded to enumerates the articles of tribute as ‘musical gems-stones,’ iron, silver, steel, stones for arrow-heads, and sounding stones, with the skins of bears, great bears, foxes, jackals, and articles woven with their hair.’ Dr. Legge adds in a note: ‘By 鐵 = _Tie_, we are to understand “soft iron,” and by 鏤 = _Low_ or _Lowe_, “hard iron” or “steel.” At the time of the Han dynasty, “iron-masters” (鐵宧) were appointed in the several districts of the old Leangchou, to superintend the iron-works. Tsa’e refers to two individuals mentioned in the “Historical Records”; one of the surname Ch’o, (卓氏), and the other of the surname Ch’ing (程), both of this part of the empire, who became so wealthy by their smelting that they were deemed equal to princes.’ According to the Rev. Dr. Edkins, ‘with the exception of this passage there is probably no distinct allusion to iron in writings older than B.C. 1000;’ and his statement seems to establish the date of Chinese technology and civilisation.

About B.C. 400 the celebrated author and philosopher Leih-Tze mentions steel, and describes the process of tempering it. In the ‘K’ang-hi-tse-tien’ (康熙字典), better known as ‘Kanghi’s Dictionary,’ published about A.D. 1710, the author represents the Serican contemporary of Aristotle as saying that ‘a red blade will cut Hu (jade or nephrite) as it would cut mud.’ Mr. Day makes this to mean a ‘reddish-coloured blade,’ red being one of the many tints which a clean surface of steel acquires in the process of tempering. It certainly cannot refer to red-hot steel, which would make no impression upon pietra dura. The description of steel-making in B.C. 400 is so far complete that it names and describes the several kinds. The first treatment produces ‘Twan-Kang’ or ball-steel, so called from the rounded bloom,[396] or ‘Kwan-Kang’ (sprinkled steel), because treated with cold affusion. There is also ‘Wei-Tie’ or false steel. The writer says: ‘When I was sent on official business to Tse-Chow and visited the foundries there, I understood this for the first time. Iron has steel within it, as meal contains vermicelli. Let it be subjected to fire a hundred times or more; it becomes lighter each time. If the firing be continued until the weight does not diminish, it is pure steel.’[397]

About the beginning of the Christian era a tax was levied upon iron by the State exchequer, showing that the manufacture had become important. According to the Pi-tan or Pencil-Talk, written probably under the Ming dynasty[398] (A.D. 1366–1644), steel is thus made: ‘Wrought iron is bent or twisted up; unwrought iron (i.e. iron-ore or cast-iron) is thrown into it; it is covered up with mud and subjected to the action of fire, and afterwards to the hammer.’ This is the old and well-known process of steeling practised by the Greeks. Wrought iron was either immersed into molten cast-iron as into a bath, or it was heated with iron-ore and layers of charcoal-fuel covered with alternate strata of clay to exclude atmospheric influence, a treatment somewhat similar to what is still called ‘cementation.’[399] The ore was thus deoxidised by contact with excess of carbon; and a molten carburet was the result. It is not a little curious, as Mr. Day observes, to find Aristotle and Lieh-Tze describing the same process about the same time. But I hesitate to conclude with that able writer that the fact has any bearing upon ‘the old doctrine of the original unity of the human race; each section of mankind carrying off with them that common stock of knowledge which the entire family possessed before separation.’ Mr. Day, I have said, systematically opposes the ‘High Antiquity Theory’ (p. 208); and, though he holds to Revelation and to Biblical chronology, he has a curious tendency towards the mystical etymology of the Jacob Bryant school, and the obsolete Phallic theories revived by the learned and able work of the late Dr. Inman.[400]

The Pent Saow, also attributed to the days of the Mings, speaks of three kinds of steel used for knives and Swords, a division which again reminds us of Daimachus. The first is made by adding unwrought to wrought iron, while the mass is subjected to the action of fire. The second is simply the result of repeated firings as practised in Africa. The third is native steel produced in the south-west at Hai-shan: ‘In appearance it resembles the stone called “Tsze-shih-ying” (purple stone efflorescence).’ It is understood that the process of manufacture is kept secret. The ‘Hankow-steel,’ which comes to Tien-tsin from the upper Yang-tse, is most prized; and commands much higher prices than the best imported English and Swedish; the Chinese, like the ‘Caffirs,’ look upon these as ‘rotten iron.’

China also had her ‘literary blacksmith,’ like Wieland Smith, the northern Dædalus. We read that Hoang-ta-tie of T’ancheu, who lived under the Sung, followed the craft of an ironsmith. Whenever he was at his work he used to call without intermission on the name of Amita Buddha. One day he handed to his neighbours the following verses of his own composing to be spread about:—

Ding-dong! the hammer-strokes fall long and fast, Until the iron turns to steel at last! Now shall the long long Day of Rest begin, The Land of Bliss Eternal calls me in.

Thereupon he died. But his verses spread all over Honan, and many learned to call upon Buddha.

The oldest Chinese iron-works were at Shansi and Chilili in the Ho districts, where there are inexhaustible deposits of ore and coal, and where the metal is worked to the present day. In 1875 Commissioner Li-hung-Chang, raised from the Government-General of Chilili to be Minister of the young King, sent Mr. James Henderson to England with orders to bring out the most modern appliances and apparatus for metal-working. It was proposed to build the new works at Tsze-Chow, a town two hundred miles south-west of Tien-tsin, the head-quarters of the Governor-General. Mr. Henderson had visited (1874) the establishment near Yang-Ching, Shansi, which had before been described by Baron von Richtofen and Dr. Williamson.[401] The iron ore bought at Ping-ding-Chow was found at the Royal School of Mines, London, to contain fifty per cent. of iron, loose hæmatite with little or no sulphur.

M. Sévoz, an engineer of mines long resident in Japan, studied iron-working in the province of Ykouno.[402] He found the people using an imperfect Catalan method, but able to treat at once sixteen thousand kilogrammes of ore, and to produce blooms weighing one thousand three hundred kilogrammes. These huge rods were broken up under a hammer constructed in the style of a pile-driving ram, to which motion was given by a walking-wheel 11·5 mètres in diameter, mounted by men. The description does not promise much; but Japan, though holding to her ancient methods in districts unknown to Europeans, produces iron cheaper than the English. Of her marvellous Swords I shall treat in