[59] It must be remembered, however, that, according to Aristotle, the copper of the Mossynœci in Northern Asia Minor was brilliant and white, owing to its mixture with a species of earth, the exact nature of which was kept a secret. The Babylonian ideograph for “bronze,” therefore, may have been a similar kind of hardened copper, which was transferred to denote “bronze” when the alloy of copper and tin became known.
[60] See Garstang, El-Arâbah, p. 10. Dr. Gladstone, however, after giving the results of his analysis of the Sixth-dynasty copper discovered by Professor Petrie at Dendera, suggests that the small amount of tin observable in it (about one per cent.) may have been added to it artificially (Dendereh, p. 61). Bronze was “the normal metal” of the Amorite period at Gezer (Macalister, Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, April 1904, p. 119), and the three cities which represent this period go back beyond the age of the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty, to at least B.C. 2900 (see Quarterly Statement, January 1905, pp. 28–9). At Troy also Schliemann found numerous bronze weapons in the Second (prehistoric) city (Ilios, pp. 475–9). In Krete bronze daggers of the Early Minoan period (coeval with the Middle Empire of Egypt) have been found at Patema and Agia Triada (Annual of the British School at Athens, x. p. 198), and the pottery of the Middle Minoan period (B.C. 2000–1500) was associated at Palaikastro with a bronze button, two miniature bronze sickles, and a pair of bronze tweezers (ibid. p. 202). As for the Caucasus, bronze was not known there till a late date. Wilke (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1904, pp. 39–104) has shown that the bronze culture of the Caucasus was derived from the valley of the Danube, and made its way eastward along the northern coast of Pontus; see also Rössler, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1905, p. 118.
[61] Dendereh (Egypt Exploration Fund), p. 62, for the gold of the Sixth dynasty; The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties, pp. 39–40, for that of the First dynasty.
[62] Vyse, Pyramids of Gizeh, i. p. 276. The clamp was actually found by his assistant Hill, after blasting away the two outer stones behind which it had been placed.
[63] Abydos, part ii. p. 33. An iron pin of the age of the Eighteenth dynasty was found by Garstang at Abydos (El-Arâbah, p. 30).
[64] Illahun, Kahun and Gurob, p. 12. Dr. Gladstone’s analyses give only about 2 parts of tin to 96·35 of copper. The bronze of the Eighteenth dynasty found at Gurob yielded a less proportion of tin (about 7 parts to 90 of copper) than the bronze of the Second Assyrian Empire. A ring of pure tin, however, was also discovered at Gurob.
[65] Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. pp. 367 sqq.
[66] The two dialects were called eme-KU (i.e. eme-lakhkha, W.A.I. iii. 4, 31, 32), “the language of the enchanter,” and eme-SAL, “the woman’s language,” which are rendered in Semitic Babylonian, lisan Sumeri and (lisan) Akkadi, “the language of Sumer” and “the language of Akkad.” In a tablet (81, 7–27, 130, 6, 7) they are said to be “like” one another. Other dialects were termed “the language of the sacrificer” and “the language of the anointer,” as being used by these two classes of priests. They differed, perhaps, from the standard dialects in intonation or the use of technical words. We hear also of “a carter’s language” in which anbarri—which, it is noticeable, is a Sumerian word—meant “yoke and reins,” i.e. “harness” (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, ix. p. 164).
[67] Fick, however, is an exception (Beiträge zur Kunde der indogermanischen Sprachen, xxix. pp. 229–247.)
[68] Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, i. pp. 152–3. Photographs of the two types—Sumerian and Semitic—represented on the early monuments of Babylonia are given by Dr. Pinches in an interesting Paper in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, January 1900, pp. 87–93.