The copper obtained from Armenia and other western Asiatic areas was less suitable than Sinaitic copper, being much softer. Sinaitic and Egyptian copper is naturally hard on account of the proportion of sulphur it contains. But after tin was found, and it was discovered that, when mixed with copper, it produced the hard amalgam known as bronze, the Sumerians appear to have entirely deserted the Sinaitic Mine-Land, and left it to the Egyptians.
The Egyptians continued in their Copper Age until their civilization ceased to be controlled by native kings.
Babylonia had likewise a Copper Age to begin with, but copper was at an early period entirely supplanted by bronze, except for religious purposes—a fact which is of great importance, especially when it is found that the religious beliefs associated with copper and gold were disseminated far and wide by the early miners—the troglodytes of Sinai in the early Egyptian texts—who formed colonies that became industrial and trading centres. Votive images found in Babylonia are of copper. A good example of early Sumerian religious objects is the interesting bull’s head in copper from Tello, which is dated c. 3000 B.C. The eyes of this image of the bull-god—[[196]]the “Bull of Heaven”, the sky-god, whose mother or spouse was the “Cow of Heaven”—“are inlaid with mother-of-pearl and lapis-lazuli”. A “very similar method is met with in the copper head of a goat which was found at Fara”.[8] Here we find fused in early Sumerian religious objects complex religious beliefs connected with domesticated animals, sea-shells, and metals.
The opinion, suggested here by the writer, that the battles between rival miners in Sinai compelled the Sumerians to search for copper elsewhere and to discover means whereby the softer copper could be hardened, appears to accord with the view that bronze was first manufactured in Babylonia, or in some area colonized by Babylonia. In his able summary of the archæological evidence regarding the introduction of bronze, Sir Hercules Read shows that “the attribution of the discovery to Babylonia is preferred as offering fewest difficulties”.[9]
Recent archæological finds make out a good case for Russian Turkestan as the “cradle of the bronze industry”.
In Troy and Crete bronze supplanted flint and obsidian. There was no Copper Age in either of these culture centres. The copper artifacts found in Crete are simply small and useless votive axes and other religious objects.
Whence did the Babylonians receive, after the discovery was made how to manufacture bronze, the necessary supplies of tin? Armenia and the Caucasus “appear”, as Read says, “to be devoid of stanniferous ores”. Apparently the early metal-searchers had gone as far as Khorassan in Persia before their fellows had ceased to wage battles with Egyptians in the Sinaitic “Mine-Land”. Tin [[197]]has been located at Khorassan and “in other parts of Persia, near Asterabad and Tabriz.[10]… From such areas as these”, Reid says, “the tin used in casting the earliest bronze may have been derived.” We are now fairly on our way along the highway leading to China. “In Eastern Asia, beyond the radius of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia”, Read continues, “there would seem to be no region likely to have witnessed the discovery (of how to work bronze) nearer than Southern China; for India, which has copper implements of a very primitive type, is poor in tin … while the Malay peninsula, an extremely rich stanniferous region, does not appear to have been mined in very ancient times”.[11] It is unlikely that bronze was first manufactured in China, considering the period of its introduction into Babylonia, which antedates by several centuries the earliest traces of civilization in the Far East.
The history of the development of the industries and commerce of early Babylonia is the history of the growth and dissemination of civilization, not only in western Asia, but in the “Mid East” and the “Far East”.
Babylonia, the Asiatic granary of the ancient world, lay across the trade routes. Both its situation and its agricultural resources gave it great commercial importance. It had abundant supplies of surplus food to stimulate trade, and its industrial activity created a demand for materials that could not be obtained in the rich alluvial plain. “Over the Persian Gulf”, says Professor Goodspeed,[12] “teak-wood, found in Eridu (the seaside “cradle” of Sumerian culture), was brought from India. Cotton also made its way from the same source to the southern cities. Over Arabia, by way of Ur, which stood at the [[198]]foot of a natural opening from the desert … were led the caravans laden with stone, spices, copper, and gold[13] from Sinai, Yemen, and Egypt. Door-sockets of Sinaitic stone found at Nippur attest this traffic.” Cedar wood was imported from the Syrian mountains “for the adornment of palaces and temples. From the east, down the pass of Holwan, came the marble and precious metal of the mountains. Much of this raw material was worked over by Babylonian artisans and shipped back to less-favoured lands, along with the grain, dates, and fish, the rugs and cloths of native production. All this traffic was in the hands of Babylonian traders, who fearlessly ventured into the borders of distant countries, and must have carried with them thither the knowledge of the civilization and wealth of their own home, for only thus can the widespread influence of Babylonian culture in the earliest periods be explained.”
It was evidently due to the influence of the searchers for metals and the traders that the culture of early Sumeria spread across the Iranian plateau. As Laufer has shown,[14] “the Iranians were the great mediators between the West and the East”. The Chinese “were positive utilitarians, and always interested in matters of reality; they have bequeathed to us a great amount of useful information on Iranian plants, products, animals, minerals, customs, and institutions”. Not only plants but also Western ideas were conveyed to China by the Iranians.[15]