[336]. Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de l’Art, t. i. p. 829; Beck (Gesch. des Eisens, p. 79) considers, however, that no Egyptian bronzes yet analysed go back beyond the eighteenth dynasty, about 1700 B.C.
[337]. Lenormant, Trans. Soc. Bibl, Archæology, vol. vi. p. 344.
[338]. Blümner, Technologie, Bd. iv. p. 199.
But the bronze industry of old must have been seriously hampered in its growth and spread by the scarcity of tin. This metal is of most restricted distribution. The reservoirs of it held by the earth are few and far apart. The two principal, in Cornwall and the Malaccan peninsula respectively, are ‘wide as the poles asunder.’ Yet its discovery goes back to a hoar antiquity, and its prehistoric use was extensive and continuous. This wide dispersion of so scarce an article gives cogent proof of unexpectedly early intercourse between remote populations, and strikingly illustrates the effectiveness of those gradual processes of primitive trade by which desirable commodities permeated continents, and reached the least accessible markets.
The earliest historical source of tin was in the Cassiterides, or ‘tin-islands’ of Britain; and there can be no doubt, geographical mystifications notwithstanding, that the tin thence derived came, directly or indirectly, from Cornwall. Not improbably, the staple of the Phœnician tin-trade was in the Isle of Wight, which accordingly became the representative tin-island.[[339]] But this is questionable. What is certain is, that the metal was transported overland to the Gulf of Lyons long before the Phœnicians passed the Pillars of Hercules, and was available, much earlier still, in Egypt and Assyria. The Cornish was not, then, the first source of supply to be opened, nor was the Malaccan. Tin was, in fact, an article of export from Alexandria to India down to the beginning of the Christian era. The modern discovery, however, of tin-mines in Khorassan, the ancient Drangiana, irresistibly suggests that the primitive bronze-workers derived the less plentiful material of their industry from the Paropamisus, and tends to confirm the Turanian lineage imputed to them by Lenormant.[[340]]
[339]. Blümner, Technologie, Bd. iv. p. 86.
[340]. Von Baer, Archiv für Anthropologie, Bd. ix. p. 266; Blümner, Technologie, Bd. iv. p. 84.
The Homeric name for tin, kassiteros, is at any rate clearly of Oriental origin. The Greeks adopted it from the Phœnicians; the Phœnicians may, it is thought, have picked it up from Accadian bronze-smiths along the shores of the Persian Gulf. It survives in the Arabic kasdîr, and under the form kastîra made its way into Sanskrit, on the occasion of Alexander’s invasion of the Punjâb. Pure tin ranked with Homer almost as a precious metal. Its scarcity gave it prestige; but he had evidently very little acquaintance with its qualities. As Helbig remarks,[[341]] difficulties of interpretation arise wherever kassiteros is brought on the scene. A good deal of critical discomfort, for instance, has been created by the statement that greaves of tin were included in the warlike outfit supplied to Achilles from Olympus. And bewilderment is heightened later on by the defensive power they are made to exhibit in the hardest trials of actual battle. In point of fact, they would have been as ineffective as papier-maché against the thrust of Agenor’s spear; and their clattering would scarcely have produced the awe-inspiring effect ascribed to it in the following passage.
[341]. Das Homerische Epos, p. 285.
He [Agenor] said, and hurled his sharp spear with weighty hand, and smote him [Achilles] on the leg beneath the knee, nor missed his mark, and the greave of new-wrought tin rang terribly on him; but the bronze bounded back from him it smote, nor pierced him, for the god’s gift drave it back.[[342]]