CHAPTER IV.

THE PROTO-CHALCITIC OR COPPER AGE OF WEAPONS.

I will begin by noticing that the present age has settled a question which caused much debate, and which puzzled Grote (ii. 142) and a host of others half a century ago, before phosphor-bronze was invented. This was the art of hardening (not tempering) copper and its alloys. All knew that these metals had been used, in cutting the most refractory substances,[156] granite, syenite, porphyry, basalt, and perhaps diorite,[157] by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Trojans, and Peruvians. But none knew the process, and some cut the knot by questioning its reality. When you cannot explain, deny—is a rule with many scientists. The difficulty was removed by the Uchatius-gun,[158] long reported to be of ‘steel-bronze,’[159] but simply of common bronze hardened by compression. At the Anthropological Congress of Laibach[160] (July 27–29, 1878), Gundaker Graf Wurmbrandt, of Pettau, exhibited sundry castings, two spear-heads and a leaf-shaped blade of bright bronze (Dowris copper) adorned with spirals to imitate the old weapons. They were so indurated by compression that they cut the common metal.

Again, at the Anthropological Congress of Salzburg (August 8, 1881), Dr. Otto Tischler, of Prussian Königsberg, repeated the old experiment, showing how soft copper and bronze could be hardened by the _opus mallei_ (simple hammering). Moreover his metal thus compressed could cut and work the common soft kinds without the aid of iron or steel. He exhibited two bronze plates in which various patterns had been punched by bronze dies. The hammering, rolling, beating, and pressing of copper for the purpose of hardening are well known to modern, and doubtless were to ancient workmen. The degree of compression applied is the feature of the discovery, or rather re-discovery.[161]

It may be doubted whether old Egypt and Peru knew our actual process of hydraulic pressure, whose simplest form is the waterfall. But they applied the force in its most efficient form. The hardest stones were grooved to make obelisks; the cuts were filled with wedges of kiln-dried wood, generally sycomore; and the latter, when saturated with water, split the stone by their expansion. And we can hardly deny that a people who could transport masses weighing 887 tons[162] over a broken country, from El-Suwan (Assouan) to Thebes, a distance of 130 miles, would also be capable of effecting mechanical compression to a high degree.

Buffon (‘Hist. Nat.’ article ‘Cuivre’) believed in the ‘lost art.’ Rossignol[163] (pp. 237–242) has treated of the _trempe_ (διά τινος βαφῆς) _que les anciens donnèrent au cuivre_; and relates that the chemist Geoffrey, employed by the Comte de Caylus, succeeded in hardening copper and in giving it the finest edge; but the secret was not divulged. Mongez, the Academician, held that copper was indurated by immersion and by gradual air-cooling, but that _la trempe_ would soften it.[164] In 1862 David Wilson, following Proclus and Tzetzes, declares the process of hardening and tempering copper so as to give it the edge of iron or steel, a ‘lost art.’ Markham[165] supposes that the old Peruvians hardened their copper with tin or silica; and he erroneously believes that tin is scarcely found in that section of South America.

Modern archæological discovery has suggested that in many parts of the world we must intercalate an age of virgin Copper between the so-called Stone and Bronze Periods. The first metal, as far as we know, was the stream-gold, washed by the Egyptians; and, as Champollion proved, the hieroglyphic sign for Núb (gold) is a bowl with a straining-cloth dripping water.[166] The fable of glass-discovery by the Sidonians on the sands of the Belus,[167] a tale which has _le charme des origines_, explains, I have said, how a bit of metalliferous stone, accidentally thrown upon the fire in a savage hut, would suggest one of the most progressive of the arts. And soon the ‘featherless biped,’ like the Mulciber and the Mammon of Milton—

Ransack’d the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother earth For treasures better hid.

The greater antiquity of copper in Southern Europe was distinctly affirmed, as has been seen, by the Ancients. The use of sheeting, or plating, on wood or stone was known as long ago as the days of Hesiod (B.C. 880–850?):

Τοῖς δ’ ἦν χάλκεα μὲν τεύχεα, χάλκεοι δέ τε οἶκοι, Χαλκῷ δ’ εἰργάζοντο, μέλας δ’ οὐκ ἔσκε σίδερος.—_Erga_, 149.

Copper for armour and arms had they, eke Copper their houses, Copper they wrought their works when naught was known of black iron.[168]

Copper sheets[169] were also used for flooring, as we learn from the χάλκεος οὐδός (Copper threshold) of Sophocles (‘Œdip. Col.’); and the treasury-room of Delphi, as opposed to the λάϊνος οὐδός (stone threshold). So in the Palace of Alcinous (‘Odys.’ vii. 75) the walls and threshold were copper, the pillars and lintels were silver, and the doors and dogs of gold.

The same practice was continued in the Bronze Period, as Dr. Schliemann proved when exploring the Thalamos attached to the Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenus. Nebuchadnezzar, in the ‘Standard Inscription,’ declares that he plated with copper the folding-doors and the pillars of the Babylon rampart, and it is suspected that gold and silver sheeted the fourth and seventh stages of the Temple of Belus, _vulgò_ the Tower of Babel.

Lucretius[170] is explicit upon the priority of copper—[171]

Posterius ferri vis est ærisque reperta, Sed prior æris erat quam ferri cognitus usus. Ære solum terræ tractabant, æreque belli Miscebant fluctus et volnera vasta ferebant.—V. 1286.

He justly determines its relation to gold—

Nam fuit in pretio magis æs, aurumque jacebat, Propter inutilitatem, hebeti mucrone retusum.—V. 1272.

And he ends with the normal sneer at his own age—

Nunc jacet æs, aurum in summum successit honorem.—V. 1274.

Virgil, a learned archæologist, is equally explicit concerning the heroes of the Æneid and the old Italian tribes—

Æratæ micant peltæ, micat æreus ensis.—Æn. vii. 743.

And similarly Ennius—

Æratæ sonant galeæ: sed ne pote quisquam Undique nitendo corpus discerpere ferro.[172]

Even during her most luxurious days Rome, like Hetruria, retained in memoriam the use of copper (or bronze?) for the sclepista or sacrificial knife. When founding a city they ploughed the pomœrium with a share of æs. The Pontifex Maximus and priests of Jupiter used hair-shears of the same material, even as the Sabine priests cut their locks with knives of æs. The Ancile or sacred shield was also of æs.

Pope, and other writers of his time, translated copper and bronze by ‘brass’ (copper and zinc); and in older English ‘native brass’ was opposed to ‘yellow copper’ (_cuivre jaune_). The same occurs in the A. V. Tubal Cain (the seventh in descent from Adam) is ‘an instructor of every artificer in _brass_ and iron’[173] (Gen. iv. 22). Moses is commanded to ‘cast five sockets of _brass_ for pillars’[174] (Exod. xxvi. 37). Bezaleel and Aholiab, ‘artists of the tabernacle,’ work in _brass_ (Exod. xxxi. 4). We read of a ‘land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig _brass_’ (Deut. viii. 9). Job tells us, ‘Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and _brass_ is molten out of the stone.’[175] Hiram of Tyre was ‘cunning to work all works in _brass_’ (casting and hammer-wrought), for Solomon’s Temple, which dates from about two centuries after the time of the Trojan war (B.C. 1200). In Ezra (viii. 27) the text mentions ‘two vessels of fine copper, precious as gold;’ and the margin reads ‘yellow or shining _brass_.’ Nor is the old word quite forgotten: we still speak of a ‘_brass_ gun.’

‘In the _Brazen_ Age,’ unphilosophically says Schlegel (‘Phil. of Hist.’ sect. ii.), ‘crime and disorder reached their height: violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were of _copper_, and their implements and utensils _brass_ or bronze.’ I should generally translate, with Dr. Schliemann and Mr. Gladstone, the Homeric χαλκός, ‘copper,’ not bronze, chiefly because the former is malleable and is bright, two qualities certainly not possessed by the alloy. There are alloys which are malleable,[176] and others (Dowris copper) which shine; but this is not the case with common bronze, and no poet would note its brilliancy as a characteristic.

Pure copper, however, would generally be used only in lands where tin for bronze, and zinc for brass, were unprocurable: isolated specimens may point only to a temporary dearth. Thus, the Copper Age must have had distinct areas. M. de Pulsky and M. Cartenhac (‘Matériaux,’ &c.) held to a distinct Copper Age between the Neolithic and the Bronze. Dr. John Evans considers the fabrication due to want of tin or to preference of copper for especial purposes. But the types of copper tools, &c., are not transitional.

The native ore was used in many districts of North America. Celts of various shapes from Mhow, Central India, were analysed by Dr. Percy, who found no tin in them. Tel Sifr in Southern Babylonia and the island of Thermia in the Greek Archipelago supplied similar articles. They are also discovered exceptionally in Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Hungary, France, Italy, and Switzerland. I have noticed the use of the unmixed metal in the Crannogs of Styria. It seems to have prevailed in Istria: at Reppen-Tabor near Trieste, the supposed field of battle with the Romans that decided the fate of the Peninsula (B.C. 178), was found a fine lance-head of pure copper eight and a half inches long: it is now in the Museo Civico. The same was the case with Dalmatia; at Spalato and elsewhere I saw axe-heads of unmixed metal. And we have lately obtained evidence that old Lusitania, like Ireland,[177] was in similar conditions.

Thus the Age of Copper would be simply provisional in certain localities, separating the periods of horn and bone, teeth and wood, from that of alloys; even as the latter led, in the due line of development, to the general adoption of iron and steel for Swords and other weapons. But we have no need for dividing the epochs with the perverse subtilties of certain naturalists, who use and abuse every pretext for creating new species. If there be any sequence, it would be copper, bronze, and brass. In most places, however, the ages were synchronous, and some races would retain the use of the pure metal, even when tin and zinc lay at their doors.

The Venus (♀) of alchemy was called in the Semitic tongues _nhs_ or _nhsh_, in Arab _nahás_, and in Hebrew _nechosheth_ (נחשת). The term is popularly derived from a triliteral root signifying a snake, the crooked reptile, the serpent that is in the sea (Job xvi. 13; Is. xxvii. 1; Amos ix. 3, &c.); either because the metal is poisonous, like the Ophidæ, or from its brightness of burnish. Similarly, _dhahab_ (זהב), gold, was named from its splendour; and silver, also meaning money (_argentum_, argent), was _kasaf_ (כסף), the pale metal, the ‘white gold’ of Egypt. Both _nechosheth_ and _nahás_ apply equally to copper, bronze, and brass; hence we must probably read ‘copper Serpent’ for ‘_brazen_ Serpent,’ and ‘City of Copper’ for ‘City of _Brass_.’

[Heading: _COPPER IN CYPRUS._]

There is the same ambiguity in the Greek and the Roman terms. The word χαλκός (_chalcus_) is popularly derived from χαλάειν, ‘to loose,’ because easily melted: I should prefer Khal or Khar, ‘Phœnicia,’ whose sons introduced it into Greece. The Hellenes dug it in Eubœa, where Chalcis-town[178] gave rise to the ‘stone’ χαλκῖτις (_chalcitis_, Pliny, xxxiv. 2). They also knew the ore as ἡ κύπρος; and when the Romans, who annexed Cyprus in B.C. 57, worked the mines, their produce, says Josephus, was called χαλκὸς κύπριος. _Chalcos_ is essentially ambiguous unless qualified by some epithet, as ἔρυθρος (red), μέλας (black), αἴθιοψ (Ethiopian colour = ruddy brown), πόλιος (iron-grey), and so forth. In fact, like _æs_, it is a generic term for the so-called ‘base metals’ (iron,[179] copper, tin, lead, and zinc), as opposed to the ‘noble metals’—gold and silver, to which we should add platinum.

Worse still, χαλκεύς (_khalkefs_), a copper-smith, was applied to the blacksmith,[180] and even to the _chrysochoös_, or gold-caster, at the court of Nestor (‘Od.’ iii. 420, 432); and to χαλκεῖα or χαλκήϊα, smithies in general. The Roman _æs_, opposed to the _cyprium_ or _æs cyprium_[181] of Pliny (xxxiv. 2, 9), and _smaragdus cyprius_ or malachite, is equally misleading unless we render it ‘base metal.’ We know not how to translate Varro[182] when he speaks of the cymbals at the feast of Rhea: ‘Cymbalorum sonitus, ferramentorum jactandorum vi manuum, et ejus rei crepitus in colendo agro qui fit, significant quod ferramenta ea ideo erant ære’ (copper, bronze, brass?), ‘quod _antiqui_ illum colebant ære antequam ferrum esset inventum.’ Here he wisely limits the dictum to Greece and Rome.

According to S. P. Festus (_sub voce_), ‘ærosam appellaverunt antiqui insulam Cuprum,[183] quod in eâ plurimum æris nascitur.’ We now derive the Sacred Island from ‘Guib’ (pine-tree), ‘er’ (great), and ‘is’ (island); ‘Guiberis,’ alluding to its staple growth. General Palma (di Cesnola[184]) prefers the Semitic ‘kopher’ (_Lawsonia inermis_), the henna-shrub, even as Rhodes took its name from the rose or malvacea; and he finds in Stephanus Byzantinus[185] that the plant was then abundant. The diggings are alluded to by all the great geographers of antiquity, Aristotle (‘de Anim.’ v. 17[186]), Dioscorides (v. 89), Strabo (xvi. 6), and Pliny (xii. 60, xxxiv. 20). In Ezekiel (xxvii. 13) the trade in copper vessels is attributed to Javan (Ionia), Tubal, and Meshech; the latter are the Moschi of Herodotus (vii. 78), a Caucasian people who may have originated the ‘Moscows’ or Russians. Agapenor and his Arcadians were credited with having introduced copper-mining into Neo-Paphos; yet there is no doubt that the Phœnicians had worked metal there before the Greek colonisation. Menelaus (‘Od.’ iv. 83–4) visits Cyprus for copper; and Athene-Mentor fetches it, as well as ‘shining iron’ (steel?), from Temése (Τεμέση, ‘Od.’ i. 154).[187] These diggings, together with those of Hamath (Amathus, Palæo-Limassol), Soli, Curium, and Crommyon, are mentioned by Palma, who also alludes to an ‘unlimited wealth of copper.’ Yet, despite this and the general assertion that copper was the most important production of Cyprus, we have found only the poorest mines at Soli in the Mesaoria-plain, the counterslope of the Pedia. The island, it is true, has been wasted and spoiled by three centuries of the ‘unspeakable Turk.’ But the researches of late travellers and collectors—and these have been exhaustive since the British occupation—have hitherto failed to find extensive traces of mining. The rarity, together with the poverty of the matrix, would suggest the following explanation.

Cyprus was probably not so much a centre of production as a depôt of trade which collected the contributions of adjacent places—e.g. the isle of Siphanos (Sifanto), where copper has been found with iron and lead. Such was the general history of islands and archipelagos outlying barbarous and dangerous coasts on the direct lines of commerce, various sections of the world’s great mercantile zone and highway of transit and traffic. The Cassiterides, also, served as storehouses for the stream-tin and the chalcopyrite (copper pyrites) of Cornwall and of Devonshire, whilst they enjoyed the fame of producing it. During the Middle Ages, Hormuz or Ormuz (Armuza), in the Persian Gulf, served, and Zanzibar still serves, as a centre of import, export, and exchange, as a magazine and as a shipping station for its mainland.

One of the ores which occurs in the greatest number of places[188] and in the largest quantities; having a specific gravity ranging from 8·830 to 8·958; harder and more elastic than silver; the most tenacious of metals after iron and platinum; malleable when cold as well as when hot, so as not to require the furnace; melting at a temperature between the fusion points of silver and gold (1196° F.); and readily cast in sand-beds and moulds, Copper must have been used in the earliest ages, and has continued to our day, when the art of smelting it—at Swansea, for instance, in South Wales—is perhaps more advanced than that of any other ore. When the stone-and-bone weaponed peoples began their rude metallurgy, they would retain, with similar habits of thought, the same principles of design. The old Celtis, Celt, or chisel of serpentine or silex, would be copied in the newly-introduced and gradually-adopted weapon-tool of metal; and the transition would be so gradual that we trace without difficulty the process of development. The first metal blade was probably a dagger of copper, preserving the older shape of wood, horn, and stone: possibly it resembled the copper knife found at Memphis in 1851 by Hekekyan Bey; and this afterwards would grow to a Sword. Wood, stone, copper, and bronze, iron and steel, must long have been used simultaneously, slowly making way for one another, as the musket took the place of the matchlock, the rifle of the musket.

According to Pliny (vii. 57), ‘Aristotle supposes that Scythes, the Lydian, was the first to fuse and temper copper; while Theophrastus,[189] in Aristotle’s day, ascribes the art to Delas, the Phrygian. Some give the origin to the Chalybes, others to the Cyclopes.’ Achilles, the pupil of Chiron (ibid. v. 20), is represented in pictures as scraping the _ærugo_[190] or verdigris off a spear into the wound of Telephus, the effect of which diacetate would soon be followed by the discovery of blue-stone (sulphate of copper, blue copperas) or blue vitriol, still a favourite in the East. Pausanias (‘Æliaca’) further informs us that Spanish copper, or copper from Tartessus, was the first used. The classics agree that Cadmus (not ‘the foreigner,’ but the ‘old man,’ _El-Kadim_, or the ‘Eastern man,’ _El-Kadmi_) introduced metallurgy into Greece.

[Heading: _EGYPTIAN COPPER MINES._]

We have ample evidence of extensive working and use of copper, called ‘Khomet,’ by the peoples of the Nile Valley. The ore occurs in the Wady Hammámát, the Egyptian Desert, and the so-called ‘Sinaitic’ Peninsula. As the Pyramids are the oldest of buildings, so the works in Wady Magharah (Valley of Caves) are perhaps the most ancient mines in the world.[191] They were first opened (circ. B.C. 3700–3600) by the eighth king of the Third Dynasty, the Sephouris of Manetho, the Senoferu (‘he that makes good’) of the inscriptions, who lies buried in the pyramid of Mi-tum (Maydúm).[192] A rock-tablet of this Pharaoh, the ‘great god, the subduer, conqueror of countries,’ shows him holding a foreigner by the hair and smiting the captive with a mace. Above his head are carved a graver (pick?) and a mallet. Soris, first Pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, ‘Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt, ever living,’ also strikes down an enemy and shows the same symbols. They again appear in the tablet of Souphis, the Shufu or Khufu of the Tables of Abydos and Sakkara,[193] and the Cheops of the Great Pyramid, whilst they are wanting in that of his brother Nu-Shufu (Souphis II.) or Khafra (Cephren) of the Pyramid.

The diggings were not abandoned till the days of Amenemhat, of the Twelfth Dynasty, when the labourers were removed to Sarábit-el-Khádim, the ‘Men-hirs’ (not heights) of the Servant in the Wady Nasb or Valley of Sacrificial Stone. Here gangs of miners, guarded by a strong force, extracted (as the slag-heaps show) Mafka or Mefka[194] (copper? malachite?[195] turquoise?), ‘black metal’ (copper), ‘green stones’ (malachite?), manganese, and iron. Supt and Athor or Hathor (Venus), the Isis of pure light, who presided over the Mafka-land, and who was the ‘goddess of copper,’ are mentioned in a tablet. Other hieroglyphs contain the names and titles of the rulers, and fragments of vases bear the name of Mene-Pthah,[196] one of the supposed Pharaohs of the Exodus. The ‘hands’ left their marks by graffiti or scribblings, and there are extensive remains of slave-quarters, of deep cuts, and of rock-sunk moulds for running the metal into ingots, Sarábit-el-Khádim continued working until Ramses IV. (Twentieth Dynasty), the last royal name there found: his date in round numbers would be B.C. 1150. Agatharchides (B.C. 100) reports that chisels of chalcos (λατομίδες χαλκαῖ) were found buried in the ancient gold mines of Egypt, and hence he deduces that the use of iron was unknown.

[Heading: _COPPER IN AFRICA AND ASIA._]

From Kemi or Χημία, ‘black-earth land,’ _alias_ Egypt, the art of metallurgy doubtless extended southwards into the heart of Africa. Hence travellers wonder when they see admirable and artistic blacksmiths amongst races whose sole idea of a house is a round hut of wattle and dab. The only coppers in South Africa with which I am familiar are those of Katanga in the Cazembe’s country,[197] where the Portuguese have long traded. Captain Cameron[198] was shown a calabash full of nuggets found when clearing a water-hole. In Uguhha he procured a ‘Handa’ from Urua, a Saint Andrew’s cross with central ribs to the arms, measuring diagonally fifteen to sixteen inches by two inches wide and half an inch thick: the weight was two and a half to three pounds. The people prefer this ‘red copper’ to the ‘white copper,’ as they call gold. In the Pantheon of Yoruban Abeokuta, ‘Ogun,’ the local Vulcan and Wayland Smith, god of metal-workers and armourers, is symbolised by a dwarf spear of copper or iron, and human sacrifices are, or were, made to it. Barth (vol. iii.) notes the copper (ja-n-Karfi) in El-Hofrah (‘the Diggings’) of Waday, south of Dar-For; and in the Kano, the Runga, and the Bute countries. Copper wire is worn by the women of the hill-lands of Gurma, but it is supposed to be brought from Ashanti (?). Africa, however, is as yet unexplored as regards its mineral wealth, and we are only beginning to work our old-world California—the Gold Coast. Farther south the highly-important copper-mines of Pemba, now Bemba, and other parts of the inner Congo and Benguella regions, were discovered by the Capitão-Mór, Balthazar Rebello de Aragão, in 1621–23.[199] Still more to the south, Namaqua-land supplies chalcitic ores, a native carbonate, reduced with cow-chips.

In Asia mines were worked by the ancient Assyrians for copper as well as lead and iron, and the former was applied to their weapons, tools, and ornaments.[200] The Kurds and Chaldæans still extract from the Tiyari heights about Lizan and the valley of Berwari various minerals—copper, lead, and iron; silver, and perhaps gold. Upon the Steppes of Tartary, and in the wildest parts of Siberia, the remains of old copper-furnaces, small and of rude construction, are met with. The Digaru Mishmís of Assam have copper-headed arrows.

The Chinese declare that in olden times men used the metal for arms, which in the days of the Thsin (B.C. 300) began to be made of iron. Sir John Davis (i. 230) confirms the fact that the Chinese Sword and backsword, both wretched weapons, were originally of copper, long ago changed to iron. Dr. Pfizmaier tells us that about B.C. 475 the King of U sent a steel blade to his minister, U-tse-tsui, wherewith to behead himself. According to Pliny, the Seres exported iron to Europe together with their tissues and their skins. The Chinese distinguish between Thse-thung (purple copper) and Thing-sung (green copper) or bronze. They prefer the ‘Tze-lae,’ or natural ore, gathered in the torrent-beds of Kwei-chow and Yun-nan, and the latter exclusively produces the famous Pe-tung,[201] or white copper, which takes a fine polish like silver. They made copper the base of their coinage as well as their weapons. Amongst their many charms and talismans are the ‘money-swords,’ a number of ancient copper coins pierced with a square central hole, and connected by a metal bar shaped like a cross-hilted Sword. These are suspended over the testerns of beds and sleeping-couches, that the guardianship of the kings in whose reigns the money was issued may keep away ghosts and spirits.

The Japanese copper[202] is of the finest quality, and is used as a standard of comparison. The superiority of the metal, which contains a percentage of gold, enabled the self-taught native workmen to produce those castings which are the admiration and the despair of the European artist. The copper delivered at Nagasaki and Kwashi is from Beshki, Akita, and Nambu; other places produce the more ordinary kinds. The rich red surface is due to a thin and tenaciously adhering film of dioxide: this has been imitated in England. The famous Satzuma copper, held to be the best in the world, was prepared under Government officials, none being sold privately. The ore was roasted in kilns for ten to twenty days, smelted in large furnaces with charcoal, and cast in water to make the well-known Japanese ingots. These were bars measuring about half an inch on the side, by seven to nine inches in length, and weighing some ten taels, nearly equal to one pound. They were packed in boxes each weighing a picul (= 125 to 133⅓ lbs. avoir.), about the load of a man. The price of course greatly varied. The trade was at first wholly in the hands of the Hollanders, who made a good thing of their monopoly. There was also an old traffic in Japanese copper on the eastern coast of India, especially Coromandel. The opening of the empire has caused revolutionary changes.

[Heading: _THE COPPER AGE._]

Copper was abundantly produced in Europe, and the pure metal was used throughout the continent with the exception of Scandinavia, where specimens are exceedingly rare. The iron age of Denmark begins with the Christian era, and was preceded only by bronze and stone. We know nothing of the discovery of copper in Ireland. It is supposed in legend to have been introduced by the Fir-bolgs (bag-men, Belgæ?), or by the Tuatha (gens) de Danaan (the Danes?). These oft-quoted races, known to us only by name, have been affiliated with a host of continentals, even with the Greeks.[203] It would be mere guess-work to consider the Irish style of treating the ores—by spalling or breaking the stone, by wasting, fluxing, or smelting. We have, however, many specimens which explain the casting. The metal was called by the natives Uma or Umha, a Keltic word; also Dearg Umha, red copper, opposed to Ban[204] Umha (white copper) or tin; and this term afterwards became ‘stan,’ evidently from stannum (Gall. Estain). There are still traditions of copper mines having existed at an early period; and, among the wonders related by Nonnius (Archæol. Soc. Ireland), we find Loch Lein, now Killarney, surrounded by four circles of copper, tin, lead, and iron. Of late years ‘miners’ hammers,’ the native name for stone pounders, have been dug up in the neighbourhood of that lake, in Northern Antrim, at an ancient mine in Ballycastle, and in sundry parts of Southern Ireland.[205] The metal occurs in small quantities at Bonmahon (Waterford); copper and cobalt at Mucross, and grey copper ore in Cork, Kerry, Tipperary, and Galway. In 1855 some 1157 tons were shipped to Swansea.

The Greenlanders and Eskimos cut and hammer their pure native copper, without smelting, into nails, arrow-piles, and other tools and weapons. Mackenzie (second voyage) tells us that pure copper was common among the tribes on the borders of the Arctic Sea, whose arrow-heads and spear-heads were cold-wrought with the hammer. Columbus (fourth voyage), before touching the mainland of Honduras, saw at Guanaga Island a canoe from Yucatan[206] laden with goods, amongst which he specifics ‘copper hatchets, and other elaborate articles, cast and soldered; forges, and crucibles.’[207] At Hayti the great Admiral (first expedition) had mentioned masses of native copper weighing six arrobas (quarters).[208] When the Spaniards first entered the province of Tupan they mistook the bright copper axes for gold of low touch, and bought with beads some six hundred in two days:[209] Bernal Dias describes these articles as being very highly polished, with the handle curiously carved, as if to serve equally for an ornament and for the field of battle.

[Heading: _COPPER IN AMERICA._]

In North America there are two great copper regions which supplied the whole continent[210]—Lake Superior and the lower Rio Grande. The former shows the first transitional steps from stone to metal. The ore occurs in the igneous and trappean rocks that wall in the vast fresh-water sea, and is found in solid blocks: one, fifty feet long, six feet deep, and six feet in average thickness, was estimated to weigh eighty tons. At Copper Harbour, Kawunam Point, a single vein yielded forty thousand pounds. The largest mass in the Minnesota Mine (Feb. 1857) occupied Mr. Petherick and forty men for twelve months: it was forty-five feet long, thirty-two feet broad (max.), and eight feet thick; containing over forty per cent. ore, and weighing four hundred and twenty to five hundred tons. Malleable and ductile, representing an average of 3·10 per cent. native silver, and with a specific gravity of 8·78 to 8·96, it required no crucible but Nature’s; it wanted only beating into shape, and it needed nothing of the skilled labour necessary for the ores of Cornwall and Devon, which contributed so largely to the wealth of Tyre. The workings are supposed to belong to the race conveniently called ‘Mound-builders,’ and to date from our second century, when the Damnonians of Cornwall were in a similar state of civilisation. ‘Cliff Mine’ supplied fine specimens of weapons and tools, arrow-piles and spear-heads, knives and three-sided blades like the old bayonet. The socket was formed by hammering flat the lower end, and by turning it over partially (without overlapping) at each side, so as to make a flange. Professor James D. Butler (‘Prehistoric Wisconsin’) facsimiles twenty-four copper implements. The ‘Indians’ called the metal Miskopewalik (red iron), opposed to black iron. As is also proved by the Brockville relics, the people had the art of hardening copper.

The mines of the lower Rio Grande supplied Mexico with materials for arms and tools. According to Captain R. H. Bonnycastle,[211] the metal was found in New Mexico and in the volcanic rocks of Mechoacan (Valladolid, New Spain). Mexico, like Peru, used the crucible and added bronze to copper. The metals were under the god Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec Tubal Cain-ben-Lamech.

Another great centre of the Copper Age was the land ‘where men got gold as they do iron out of Biscay.’ The Peruvian army, a host of three hundred thousand levied from a total population of twenty millions, was armed with bows and arrows, clubs, pikes, javelins, war-axes (of stone and copper), and the paddle-sword;[212] while the people of Anahuac (Mexico) had bows and spears, clubs and axes, knives and Swords one-handed and two-handed, the Mahquahuitl set with obsidian teeth. In the former country the pre-Ynkarial Aymaras, who dug for gold and silver, copper and tin, and who employed alloys, almost ignored for their ‘Ayri’ (cutting implements) the use of iron and steel, which they called Quella (Khellay). The Andes range is popularly derived from the Quichua word Anta[213] (copper): the native ore occurred in the parts above the cultivation-line, and it abounded in the cupriferous sandstones of Bolivian Corocoro. The Huaunanchuco country (Rivero and Tschudi, p. 203),[214] conquered by the ninth Ynka, produced a fine collection of stone and copper axes, chisels, pins, and tweezers. Blas Valera, one of the earliest writers, still often quoted, tells us that ‘Anta’ served in place of iron, and that the people worked it more than other ores, preferring it to gold (_Khori_) and silver.[215] Of it were made their knives, carpenters’ tools, women’s dress-pins (_Tupies_), polished mirrors, and ‘all their rakes and hammers.’ Garcilasso de la Vega adds: ‘pikes, clubs, halberts, and pole-axes,[216] made of silver, copper, and some of gold, the “tears of the sun,” having sharp points, and some hardened by the fire’; also carpenters’ axes; adzes and hatchets; bill-hooks of copper, and blow-pipes of the same metal about a yard long applied to earthen or clay pots which they carried from place to place. A nugget or loose pebble acted as bell-clapper, and copper statuettes were coated or plated with precious metals. The ‘Royal Commentaries of the Yncas’ tells us that copper served in place of iron for making weapons of war: the people valued it highly because more useful than gold and silver; the demand was greater than for any other metal, and it paid tribute (vol. i. pp. 25, 43, 48). We find notices of copper hammers, bellows-nozzles, adzes, axes, and bill-hooks (i. p. 102). Cieza de Leon (chap. lxiii.) tells us that the Peruvians placed a piece of gold, silver, or copper in the corpse’s mouth. He mentions vases of copper and of stone (chap. civ.), and small furnaces of clay where they laid the charcoal and blew the fire with thin canes instead of bellows (ibid.). The Introduction (p. lii) notes the Peruvian use of copper-trowels for smoothing and polishing walls, and a ‘terrible weapon of copper in the shape of a star.’ According to Rivero and Tschudi (chap. ix.) the Peruvians could not work copper as well as gold or silver; yet they made idols, vases, solid staves a yard long with serpents inlaid, and sceptre-heads decorated with condor-like birds. The household _vaisselle_ of the Ynkas consisted of gold and silver, copper and stone. Rivero, analysing Peruvian weapons and tools (hatchets and chisels), found from five to ten per cent. silica: he could not determine whether it was an artificial or an accidental impurity. Tschudi (1841) discovered copper arms in a tomb three leagues from Huaco, and established the fact that the Peruvians used the paddle-sword and the scymitar.[217] A copper axe, found in a Huaca (old grave) at the now well-known Arica, was associated with a thong-sling and with other primitive instruments.

The people of New Granada, according to the tale of Bollaert,[218] ‘gilt’ their copper by ‘rubbing the juice of a plant on it and then putting it into the fire, when it took the gold colour’—a process which reminds us of Pliny’s ox-gall varnish. Ecuador forged copper nippers for tweezers. The Chitchas, or Muiscas (i.e. men), of Bogota, who knew only gold and ignored copper, tin, lead, and iron, made their weapons and tools of hard wood and stone. Thomas Ewbank,[219] of New York, catalogues as breast-plates two laminæ of copper and one of bronze, the latter being notably the lighter. Out of sundry ‘bronzes’ from Peru he found four of pure copper. Chile had abundant mines of copper, and her metal is held to be the toughest: a bar three-eighths of an inch thick will bend backwards and forwards forty-eight times before breaking. Her chief centres are Copiapo (i.e. ‘turquoise’), Huasco, Coquimbo, Aconcágua and Caléo. The Couche range at Guatacondo, in sight of the desert of Atacama, which gave a name to Atacamite (submuriate of copper), is said to supply from the same vein gold, silver, copper, and coquimbite or white copperas called Pampua (packfong?).[220] Gillis (Plate viii. 12, 3) described, amongst the antiquities found near the great Ynkarial High-road, a cast copper axe, weighing about three and a quarter pounds: he doubts, however, that the ancient Chilians worked in that metal. The wild Araucanians called gold ‘copper’ (Bollaert, p. 184). According to Molina, the Puelche tribe extracted from the mines of Payen a copper containing half its weight (?) in gold; and the same natural alloy was found in the Curico mines.

[Heading: _COPPER._]

Returning to the Old World, we see copper tools denoted in Egyptian hieroglyphs by a reddish-brown tint;[221] iron and steel, as in Assyria, being coloured, not grey, but water-blue.[222] With these yellow tools the old workmen are seen cutting stone blocks and fashioning colossal statues. Dr. John Forbes, of Edinburgh,[223] had a large chisel of pure copper, showing marks of use, found with a wooden mallet in an Egyptian tomb. A flat piece of copper, apparently a knife-blade, was turned up when boring thirteen feet below the surface where stands the statue of Ramses II. (B.C. 1400).[224] The Abbé Barthélemy proved, to the satisfaction of P. J. Rossignol, that the arms of the Greeks were first of copper; that iron was introduced about the date of the Trojan war (circ. B.C. 1200),[225] and that after this time ‘Athor-Venus’ was no more in use. Ulysses (‘Iliad,’ i. 4, 279) offers Achilles all the gold and copper he can collect, and Achilles will carry off all the gold, the red copper (χαλκὸν ἐρυθρόν), women, and iron or steel (σίδηρον), when Peleides returns that noble answer:

Hostile to me is the man as the hatefullest gateway of Hades, Whoso in thought one thing dare hide and utter another.[226]

Numa ordered the priests to cut their hair with copper, not iron, scissors.[227] Copper vases and kettles as tomb-furniture were found by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenæ: the museum of the Warwakeion at Athens contains seven of these funeral urns. They have also been met with at Etruscan Corneto and Palestrina, and in Austrian Hallstatt,[228] a cemetery which dates from the days when iron was coming into use, and apparently belongs to a much later period than Mycenæ. The Hindús had a copper coinage, and that of the sub-Himalayan Gangetic provinces appears older than Greek art. There is a copper coin bearing on the reverse the rude figure of a horse, and on the obverse a man with legend in old Buddhist (Pali) letters Khatrapasa Pagámashasa.[229] The Jews, who, like the Etruscans, had a copper coinage, used the metal for offence and defence. As amongst the Philistines, Phœnicians, and Carthaginians, whose relics have been found in the Cannæ Plain, the metal was at first pure. The ‘bow of steel’ (Job xx. 24, Ps. xviii. 34) should be rendered ‘bow of copper,’ either copper-plated or (more probably) so tempered as to be elastic. Goliah of Gath (B.C. 1063), who measured nine feet six inches, carried a target, greaves, a spear with an iron head, and a scale-coat[230] of copper: the spear-head weighed six hundred and the armour five thousand shekels (each 320 grains Troy), or 33·33 and 277·77 lbs.[231] David was armed (1 Sam. xvii. 38) with a helmet of copper. Ishi-benob (B.C. 1018), who was ‘of the sons of the giant,’ carried a spear weighing three hundred shekels (about sixteen and a half pounds) of copper. Finally, Buffon believes that the arms of the ancient Asiatics were cuprine.

[Heading: COPPER IN EUROPE.]

Mr. John Latham declares:[232] ‘Copper is a metal of which, in its unalloyed state, no relics have been found throughout England. Stone and bone first, then bronze or copper and tin combined, but no copper alone. I cannot get over this hiatus, cannot imagine a metallurgic industry beginning with the use of alloys.’ But this is a negative argument. The simple mineral would soon disappear to make bronze, and we have some pure specimens. Sir David Brewster[233] describes a large battle-axe of pure copper found on the blue clay, twenty feet deep below the Ratho Bog. Philips[234] gives the analysis of eight so-called ‘bronzes,’ including three Swords, one from the Thames and two from Ireland: the spear-head was of impure but unalloyed copper, 99·71 to 0·28 sulphur. Dr. Daniel Wilson[235] analysed in 1850 seven British ‘bronzes,’ and found one Scottish axe-head, rudely sand-cast, of almost pure copper, the natural alloy of gold and silver not reaching to one per cent. Moreover, the Romans certainly smelted copper in England, where lumps of pure metal, more or less rounded, have been found, but always in association with bronze articles. Pennant describes a relic discovered at Caerhun (or Caerhen), the old Conovium, near Conway and Llandudno, which still works copper: it was shaped like a cake of beeswax, measuring eleven inches by three and three-quarter inches in thickness; it weighed forty-two pounds, and the upper surface bore in deep impression, ‘Socio Romæ’ (to the partner at Rome). Obliquely across the legend ran in smaller letters, ‘Natsoc.’ It had evidently been smelted upon the spot. In later days our country imported her copper from Sweden and Hungary: this appears in the specification of patent to George Danby, Jan. 21, 1636. Calamine was shipped as ballast. Our great works began during the last century and culminated in Swansea.

Wilde (p. 490) expresses the general opinion when he asserts that ‘the use of copper invariably preceded that of bronze.’ He well explains by two reasons why so few antique implements of pure copper have been found in Ireland: either a very short period elapsed between the discovery of treating the pure ores and the introduction of bronze; or the articles, once common, were recast and converted into the more valuable mixed metal. The latter cause is made probable by the early intercourse with Cornwall, one of the great tin emporia. ‘Tin-stone’ (native peroxide of tin or stannic acid) is produced in small quantities by Ireland, and Dr. Charles Smith[237] declares that he collected it.

Wilde also notices, in the Royal Irish Academy, weapons, tools, and ornaments of red metal or pure copper. These are thirty celts of the greatest simplicity and the earliest pattern, rudely formed tools, a few fibulæ, a trumpet, two battle-axes, and several Sword-blades of the short, broad, and curved shape usually called scythes.

The pure copper celts, formed upon two or three types, are the oldest in the Dublin collection, and were probably the immediate successors of the stone implement. As a rule they have one side smoother than the other, as if they had been run into simple stone moulds; they are also thicker and of rougher surface than the bronze article. For the most part they are rude and unornamented wedges of cast metal: a few are lunette-shaped and semilunar blades. The cleansed specimens show a great variety of colour. When first found, the brown crust, peculiar to the oxidised metal, readily distinguishes them from the bronze patina, the beautiful varnish of æruginous or verdigris hue, artificial malachite resembling in colour the true native carbonate of copper.

[Heading: _COPPER SWORDS._]

The broad scythe-shaped Swords, numbering forty-one, are supposed to be ‘specially and peculiarly Irish.’ The straight blades are shown by their large burrs, holes, and rivets either to end in massive handles of metal, or to be attached to wooden staves, long or short. Of this kind some are curved. As many are of ‘red bronze’ (pure copper), darkened by oxidation, it is probable that they are of great antiquity, like the celts of that period. Although in some cases the points have been broken off, yet the edges are neither hacked, indented, nor worn; hence the conclusion that they were true stabbing Swords. Yet Mr. John Evans declares that he knows no such thing as a copper Sword. In this matter he partially follows Lévesque de la Ravalière, who declared copper arms unknown to the Greeks[238] and Romans, Gauls and Franks: this savant was refuted and charged with unfairly treating his authorities by the Comte de Caylus in a description of seven copper Swords dug up (1751) at Gensal in the Bourbonnais. The Abbé Barthélemy attributed seven copper blades to the Franks in the reign of Childeric.

We have ample evidence that ‘copper’ is ambiguously used by modern travellers. The modern discoverer of Troy[239] gives us, in his last and revised volume, a full account of exploring fifty-three feet deep of débris and laying bare the stratified ruins of seven cities, including that of the ‘ground floor’ and the Macedonian ruins. The two lowest bear witness to a copper age anterior to bronze, whilst they yielded the only gilded object, a copper knife, and the most advanced art in specimens of hand-made pottery.[240] The second from below was walled, and the third, the most important, was the Burnt City, the city of the golden treasures, identified with Ilios. The explorer claims to have reduced the Homeric Ilium to its true proportions. The grand characteristic in his finds is the paucity of iron, which appeared only in the shape of oxidised ‘sling-bullets’: tin is also absent. Both these metals, it is true, oxidise most readily; yet, had the objects been numerous, they would have left signs, in rust and stains. From ‘Troy’ we learn (p. 22) that ‘all the copper articles met with are of pure copper, without the admixture of any other metal’: the author also finds that ‘implements of pure copper were employed contemporaneously with enormous quantities of stone weapons and implements.’ He will not admit (‘Troy,’ p. 82) that he has reached the bronze period when he discovers in the ‘Trojan stratum,’ at a depth of thirty-three to forty-six and fifty-two feet, nails, knives, lances, and ‘elegantly-worked battle-axes of pure copper.’[241] And we can accept the copper, for much of it was analysed by Professor Landerer, of Athens, ‘a chemist well known through his discoveries and writings.’ He examined the fragments found in the ‘Treasury of Priam,’ and made all of them to consist of pure copper, without any admixture of tin or zinc (‘Troy,’ p. 340). When treating of the Bronze Age, I shall show that alloys were not wanting.