Copper, on the other hand, he believes to have been discovered in Egypt. The inhabitants of this country had, in neolithic days, been in the habit of mining malachite in the Sinaitic peninsula, and grinding this mineral on slate palates into a powder, which they applied to their eyes. Green powder thus applied is said to save the wearer from the ill-effects of glaring sunlight, and perhaps served also to keep away the flies, which are a constant source of ophthalmia. Professor Elliot Smith suggests that an Egyptian grinding his lump of malachite on his decorated slate palate, one day met with an unusually hard lump, which he could not grind satisfactorily. In a fit of temper he threw the offending morsel into the fire, doubtless with words of objurgation; later on in the ashes he found a small red bead of copper. A repetition of this action, no doubt with the same formula, produced an identical result, and so the discovery of the reduction of copper from its ore was made.[84] I must admit that at one time I doubted the possibility of this explanation, as I questioned whether the heat of a fire of dung, now and probably then also, the only available fuel, would be sufficient to reduce the ore. To satisfy me on this point, Mr. R. H. Rastall of Cambridge kindly made a laboratory experiment upon a piece of malachite, and as a result assured me that the heat of a dung fire would be ample for the purpose.
While admitting that Professor Elliot Smith’s theories are both possible and suggestive, I feel inclined to offer another, albeit more prosaic solution to these problems. Primitive men, whether in prehistoric times or among backward peoples to-day, and, dare I say it, this is perhaps more true of primitive women, have a habit, not, I believe, quite extinct even in more advanced circles, of collecting small objects with natural perforations, or through which holes could readily be drilled, and stringing them upon a thread or wire to make necklaces or bracelets for the adornment of their persons. Such customs carry us back a long way. The old Grimaldi woman from the Grotte des enfants wore two bracelets composed of perforated shells, while her son, if indeed he were her son, had worn on his head a chaplet of the same materials.[85] The Alpine inhabitants of the North Italian lake-dwellings used the vertebræ of pike for the same purpose.[86] Whether the use of strings of beads originated in some religious practice I know not, for it may be that such religious associations, though found to-day among Buddhists, Moslems and Christians, may be relatively modern. That in later days it proved a safe and convenient way of storing accumulated wealth seems more certain, and for this purpose the custom is still practised. Perhaps after all the Preacher was right and this, like everything else, was vanity.
Leaving the cause unsolved, we may be content to note that the practice dates from the first arrival of modern man in Europe, and may be much older. But shells and the vertebræ of fish are easily damaged, and store would have been set by perforated stones, which would have been much more durable. Pebbles of clear quartz, with natural perforations, were worn sometimes by our Saxon forefathers,[87] but such stones are scarce and would have been prized accordingly.
I picture to myself the first discoverer of gold as a young man wishing to obtain the favour of a maid, or perhaps to purchase her from her father. I imagine such a youth going in search of some object, rare and durable and capable of being strung on a necklace. Walking down to a clear stream, perhaps to wash, though more probably to drink or to fish, he noticed in its bed a brilliant yellow stone of quite exceptional beauty. Picking it up and examining it he found he could bend it where it was thin, so that with the aid of a stone he was able to fashion it into the much sought-for bead. Here he had something which was perforated, strong, rare and also beautiful. We can imagine that his success would have been assured. Then would have followed the first gold rush.
Now copper, too, is found in a native state, and is also malleable and easily modelled with a stone hammer; it, too, is capable of exhibiting a bright metallic lustre when clean. Though it could not compare with gold for beauty, or in the permanence of its natural lustre, it could well take second place, and being less rare it soon came to be used freely for decorative purposes. At first it was obtained only in a native state, and was hammered, not melted, as was the case until recent times around Lake Superior.[88] Later some copper ornaments probably fell into the fire, and it was thus discovered that it could be melted. Later still experiments were made with other metallic-looking ores, such as chalcopyrite, and the metal age had come.
Where these discoveries were made is still a matter of uncertainty. Copper objects have been found not uncommonly in tombs of the second predynastic period in Egypt, and sometimes in those of the first.[89] So rare, however, are they in the latter, that, since the two cultures must to some extent have overlapped, it seems possible that the knowledge of this metal was introduced into Egypt by the second pre-dynastic people. It has been suggested recently that these people, with a copper culture, bringing the knowledge of wheat and the cult of Osiris, came from North Syria, from somewhere between Damascus and Beyrut,[90] and if Breasted’s views upon the Egyptian calender are sound, we may expect that they entered the Delta 4241 B.C. or thereabouts.[91]
In Mesopotamia we are not very sure of our dates at so early a period, nor have we got any clear evidence of the earliest copper civilisation of that region, but the beautiful copper lions brought back from Tell-el-’Obeid, near Ur, by Dr. H. R. Hall[92], show that at the time when they were made the art of working copper must long have been known, and Dr. Hall tells me that their date may be placed with fair certainty between 3500 and 3000 B.C. Small foundation figures, cast solid in copper, have been found which date from the time of Ur-Ninâ, about 3000 B.C.[93], while Mr. Raphael Pumpelly, describing his excavations at Anau in Turkestan, states that he found copper implements in a deposit, which on other grounds he dates between 8000 and 7000 B.C.[94] While there is no doubt that copper was found in the lowest layer of the Anau village site, there are few people who agree with the early date claimed for it by Mr. Pumpelly. Taking all the available evidence into consideration, it seems likely that copper was known and used in western Asia as early as 4500 B.C. and might conceivably have been known as early as 5000 B.C.; that it was known before that seems unlikely as far as we can judge from the evidence available at present.
Gold, as we have seen, seems to have been the first metal to be discovered, though we have no sufficient reason for believing that its discovery preceded that of copper by any considerable period. Objects of gold have been found in graves of the second pre-dynastic period in Egypt, as well as some of silver and of lead,[95] so that before 3500 B.C. the metal age had passed its infancy.
It will be seen from what has gone before, that the discovery of metal must have taken place somewhere in western Asia; in Asia Minor, Armenia or Persia. The knowledge spread first of all from tribe to tribe and from city to city, and the objects were traded like the stone axes of Le Grand-Pressigny and Graig Llwyd; but about 4241 B.C. this knowledge was carried into Egypt with an invading people. So far, then, there is no evidence of organised trade, for the gold, silver and lead, which have been found in the pre-dynastic tombs, may have arrived in the same way. Gold, it is true, was found in quartz veins in the granite mountains by the shores of the Red Sea, and in the Wadi Foakhir,[96] but it is not clear that these sources were tapped before the fourth or fifth dynasties; in later days the principal source of supply was Nubia which had, however, been inaccessible to traders until Mernere had made the first cataract passable for navigation about 2570 B.C.[97] Silver was always imported from abroad, probably from Cilicia.[98]
There are reasons for believing that some, at any rate, of the gold used during the period of the Old Kingdom was of foreign origin. Professor Flinders Petrie tells me that Dr. Gladstone made for him an analysis of the gold object found in the tomb of King Khasakhemui, of the second dynasty, who reigned, according to the chronology we are using, about 3200 B.C. He found on this gold object a red crust, which he stated was antimoniate of gold. Now it appears that antimony will only combine with gold in the presence of tellurium, and Professor Petrie tells me that he has been advised that there is no known source of this ore, telluride of gold and antimony, except in Transylvania. I have been informed that all the gold found within the Carpathian ring is of this nature, but as the richest sources lie in Transylvania, where gold was worked by the Romans, the conclusion is the same, that before 3200 B.C. the Egyptians were obtaining gold from Central Europe.