[490] This process resembles our niello (nigellum) inlaying. The oldest composition contained most silver and no lead. Percy (Metallurgy, p. 23) gives us its history: the first treatise by Theophilus, alias Rugerus, a monk of the early eleventh century, was translated by Robert Hendrick (London, 1847).
[491] Plutarch relates (De Isid. 2) of Ochus (Thirty-first Dynasty), who, amongst other acts of tyranny, caused the sacred bull Apis to be made roast beef, that he was represented in the Catalogue of Kings by a Sword.
[492] Ḳrsha, Krasher, or Krershra. The determinative is a squatting archer with bow and arrows. Marvellous to say, Brugsch (i. 51) mentions ‘clubs, axes, bows and arrows,’ utterly neglecting the Sword.
[493] Egyptian national names give derivation to, but do not derive from, Greek. According to Pollux (vii. 71), however, Hemitybion is Egyptian, evidently corrupted.
[494] The horse, apparently unknown to the First Dynasty of Memphis, was familiar to the Second. Mr. Gladstone (Primer of Homer, p. 97: Macmillan, 1878) supposes that the animal came from Libya or Upper Egypt; but the African horse probably originates from Asia. The first illustrations of horses and chariots are found at Eileithyias, temp. Aah-mes, Amos, Amosis, b.c. 1500.
[495] The pole-axe was three feet long, the handle being two; the blade varied from ten to fourteen inches, and below it was a heavy metal ball, some four inches in diameter, requiring a powerful arm. The club in the British Museum, armed with wooden teeth, is not represented on the monuments, and probably belonged to some barbarous tribe.
[496] I have already discussed the Stone Age in Egypt and in Africa (chap. iii.). We must not, however, determine it to be pre-metallic without further study. Herodotus first notices it when he tells us that the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes used stone-tipped arrows.
[497] I cannot but suspect the word of being a congener of our ‘chop.’ Mr. Gerald Massey, author of A Book of the Beginnings, favoured me with his opinion upon the ‘scymitar Khopsh.’ He identifies it with the hinder thigh (
, Shepsh, or