[222] Thus we have a blue war-helmet of ring-mail (Lepsius, Denkmäler, iii. 115 &c.), a blue war-hatchet with wooden handle, and spears pointed with brown-red and blue (copper and iron) in the tomb of Ramses III. The war-car of an Æthiopian king, in the days of Tutankamun, has blue wheels and a body of yellow (gold). Lepsius, however, adds: ‘It is very remarkable that in all the representations of the old empire, blue-painted instruments can scarcely be traced.’ This simply proves that iron and steel were rare.
[223] Prehistoric Man, chap. viii.
[224] It was analysed by Mr. E. Tookey, with the following results:
| Copper | 97·12 |
| Arsenic | 2·29 |
| Iron | 0·43 |
| Tin, with traces of gold | 0·24 |
| 100·08 |
The presence of the tin may have been accidental. The proportion of arsenic (2¼ per cent.) might have been expected to harden the metal, yet it was so soft as to be almost useless.
[225] See chap. ix.
[226] It is equivalent to the Roman’s ‘Aliud clausum in pectore, aliud in lingua promptum habere.’
[227] So amongst the Jews the sharp knives for circumcision (Josh. v. 2–3) were of the silex which they learned from the Egyptians; and the custom continued long after the invention of metal blades.
[228] It was opened by Herr Ramsauer, and carefully described in Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt, by Baron E. von Sacken. I shall have more to say of it in chap. xiii.
[229] Prinseps’ Essays (London, 1858), vol. i. p. 222, pl. xliv. fig. 12, and Journ. R. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. vii. pl. xxxii. fig. 12. Long descriptions of copper smelting in India are found in Science Gleanings, pp. 380 et seq., No. 36, Dec. 1831, Calcutta, and in Percy (Metall. p. 387); the latter by Mr. H. F. Blanford, of the Geol. Survey, who made especial studies in Himalayan Sikkim and the Nepaulese Tirhai. The workmen, who are of low caste, win the stone in small blast-furnaces about three feet high, burning charcoal and cow-chips. They work not only the easily reducible carbonates, but sulphuretted ores, copper pyrites, with a mixture of mundic (iron pyrites).