The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions

by A. H. Sayce

HEAD OF ONE OF THE STATUES FROM TELLO.

[See p. [73].

VASE OF SILVER, DEDICATED TO NINGIRSU, BY ENTENA PATESI OF LAGAS.

[See p. [58].

But now comes a fact which is difficult to explain, so contrary is it to the archæological evidence. As we have seen, no traces of bronze have been found in the Assyro-Babylonian region before the beginning of the Assyrian age—let us say about B.C. 2000. Nevertheless, by the side of the simple ideograph which denotes the Sumerian urudu, “copper”—erû in Semitic Babylonian—we find a compound ideograph signifying “bronze,” called zabar in Sumerian, from which the Semites borrowed their ’siparru. It is true that it is a compound ideograph, but it occurs in the cuneiform texts, not only in the era of Gudea (B.C. 2700), but even before the age of Sargon of Akkad (B.C. 3800). And an analysis of its earliest form seems to indicate that it really must have meant bronze from the first, and that consequently there was no transference of signification in later days. Literally it means “white copper,” the word for “copper” being phonetically-written ka-mas, with which the Semitic Babylonian kemassu is closely connected. Lead cannot be intended, as that was denoted by a different word and different ideographs, and I do not see what else “white copper” can be in contradistinction to red copper except bronze. Polished copper could be termed “bright,” but hardly “white.”[59]

The possibility remains that tin might have been the metal originally denoted by the compound ideograph. If so, both the ideograph and the words expressed by it had lost all reference to tin before the beginning of the Assyrian period, and neither the Assyrian word for “tin” nor the Sumerian word, if any existed, is now known. Tin, moreover, was archæologically late in making its appearance. The earliest examples of pure tin of which I know are of the time of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. On the other hand, bronze first appears in Egypt in the age of the Twelfth dynasty,[60] though it does not become common until the Hyksos predecessors of the Eighteenth dynasty had made themselves masters of the valley of the Nile. From about B.C. 1600 onwards, enormous quantities of it were employed in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean and the adjoining lands, necessitating an equally large supply of tin. What the source of this tin may have been it is not my present purpose to inquire. But the persistence of the copper age in Babylonia, as well as in the tumuli of Askabad, east of the Caspian, indicates that the manufacture of bronze must have migrated from the north-west to the Babylonian plain. We find it first in Assyria, not in Babylonia, and it may well be that the Assyrians derived it from Armenia and the population of Cappadocia, where, as I shall show in a subsequent chapter, they had established colonies at an early period. At all events, the earliest examples of bronze yet met with were discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the Second prehistoric city at Troy.

It was to this region that classical tradition referred the origin of working in iron. An analysis of the gold of the first six Egyptian dynasties submitted to Dr. Gladstone by Professor Petrie proved that it was mixed with silver, and hence must have been derived from Asia Minor.[61] Egyptian legend made “the followers of Horus,” who founded dynastic Egypt, metallurgists and smiths whose metal weapons enabled them to subdue the older neolithic population. The story as it has come down to us declares the smiths to have been workers in iron; iron, however, must be the substitute of the later version of the story for some other metal, since, though Vyse claims to have discovered an iron clamp in the great pyramid of Giza,[62] and Petrie has found a mass of iron in a Sixth-dynasty deposit in the temple of Osiris at Abydos,[63] ironsmiths can hardly have existed in the pre-dynastic age. It is probable, therefore, that copper was the metal which the dynastic Egyptians introduced into their new home, and which was already in use in Babylonia. But the intercourse with Asia Minor, which the gold of the First dynasty indicates must even then have been going on, makes it possible that it was from this quarter of the world that the earliest knowledge of the manufacture of bronze was brought to the valley of the Nile. Even in the time of the Twelfth dynasty, however, the tools found by Professor Petrie in the workmen’s huts at Kahûn are of copper rather than of bronze.[64] The colossal statue of King Pepi of the Sixth dynasty, discovered at Hierakonpolis, is of hammered copper, and we have to wait for the advent of the Eighteenth dynasty before bronze becomes the predominant metal.

That such was the case points to the Hyksos period as that in which bronze succeeded in superseding the older copper. It may be that the Hyksos brought the extended use of it with them from Syria. In Southern Palestine, Mr. Macalister’s excavations at Gezer have shown that bronze rather than copper was largely employed throughout the so-called Amorite period, which went back to an earlier age than that of the Twelfth dynasty, and it is just here that in the time of the Eighteenth dynasty bronze itself began to make way for iron. Mr. J. L. Myres has recently traced the polychrome pottery of Southern Canaan to the Hittite lands of Cappadocia,[65] where the red ochre was found by which it was characterized, and a knowledge of bronze may have travelled along the same road.

But these are speculations which may or may not be verified by future research. For the present we must be content with the fact that, in spite of the philological evidence to the contrary, copper, and not bronze, was the metal which preceded the use of iron in Babylonia, whereas in the northern kingdom of Assyria bronze was already known at a comparatively early date. So far as the existing evidence can carry us, it seems to indicate that Babylonia was the primitive home of the copper industry, while bronze, on the other hand, made its way eastward from Asia Minor and the north of Syria. Where bronze was first invented is still unknown to us; all that seems certain is that it must have been in a land where copper and tin are found together.