Æratæ sonant galeæ: sed ne pote quisquam
Undique nitendo corpus discerpere ferro.[172]
Even during her most luxurious days Rome, like Hetruria, retained in memoriam the use of copper (or bronze?) for the sclepista or sacrificial knife. When founding a city they ploughed the pomœrium with a share of æs. The Pontifex Maximus and priests of Jupiter used hair-shears of the same material, even as the Sabine priests cut their locks with knives of æs. The Ancile or sacred shield was also of æs.
Pope, and other writers of his time, translated copper and bronze by ‘brass’ (copper and zinc); and in older English ‘native brass’ was opposed to ‘yellow copper’ (cuivre jaune). The same occurs in the A. V. Tubal Cain (the seventh in descent from Adam) is ‘an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron’[173] (Gen. iv. 22). Moses is commanded to ‘cast five sockets of brass for pillars’[174] (Exod. xxvi. 37). Bezaleel and Aholiab, ‘artists of the tabernacle,’ work in brass (Exod. xxxi. 4). We read of a ‘land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass’ (Deut. viii. 9). Job tells us, ‘Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.’[175] Hiram of Tyre was ‘cunning to work all works in brass’ (casting and hammer-wrought), for Solomon’s Temple, which dates from about two centuries after the time of the Trojan war (b.c. 1200). In Ezra (viii. 27) the text mentions ‘two vessels of fine copper, precious as gold;’ and the margin reads ‘yellow or shining brass.’ Nor is the old word quite forgotten: we still speak of a ‘brass gun.’
‘In the Brazen Age,’ unphilosophically says Schlegel (‘Phil. of Hist.’ sect. ii.), ‘crime and disorder reached their height: violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were of copper, and their implements and utensils brass or bronze.’ I should generally translate, with Dr. Schliemann and Mr. Gladstone, the Homeric χαλκός, ‘copper,’ not bronze, chiefly because the former is malleable and is bright, two qualities certainly not possessed by the alloy. There are alloys which are malleable,[176] and others (Dowris copper) which shine; but this is not the case with common bronze, and no poet would note its brilliancy as a characteristic.
Pure copper, however, would generally be used only in lands where tin for bronze, and zinc for brass, were unprocurable: isolated specimens may point only to a temporary dearth. Thus, the Copper Age must have had distinct areas. M. de Pulsky and M. Cartenhac (‘Matériaux,’ &c.) held to a distinct Copper Age between the Neolithic and the Bronze. Dr. John Evans considers the fabrication due to want of tin or to preference of copper for especial purposes. But the types of copper tools, &c., are not transitional.
The native ore was used in many districts of North America. Celts of various shapes from Mhow, Central India, were analysed by Dr. Percy, who found no tin in them. Tel Sifr in Southern Babylonia and the island of Thermia in the Greek Archipelago supplied similar articles. They are also discovered exceptionally in Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Hungary, France, Italy, and Switzerland. I have noticed the use of the unmixed metal in the Crannogs of Styria. It seems to have prevailed in Istria: at Reppen-Tabor near Trieste, the supposed field of battle with the Romans that decided the fate of the Peninsula (b.c. 178), was found a fine lance-head of pure copper eight and a half inches long: it is now in the Museo Civico. The same was the case with Dalmatia; at Spalato and elsewhere I saw axe-heads of unmixed metal. And we have lately obtained evidence that old Lusitania, like Ireland,[177] was in similar conditions.
Thus the Age of Copper would be simply provisional in certain localities, separating the periods of horn and bone, teeth and wood, from that of alloys; even as the latter led, in the due line of development, to the general adoption of iron and steel for Swords and other weapons. But we have no need for dividing the epochs with the perverse subtilties of certain naturalists, who use and abuse every pretext for creating new species. If there be any sequence, it would be copper, bronze, and brass. In most places, however, the ages were synchronous, and some races would retain the use of the pure metal, even when tin and zinc lay at their doors.
The Venus (♀) of alchemy was called in the Semitic tongues nhs or nhsh, in Arab nahás, and in Hebrew nechosheth (נחשת). The term is popularly derived from a triliteral root signifying a snake, the crooked reptile, the serpent that is in the sea (Job xvi. 13; Is. xxvii. 1; Amos ix. 3, &c.); either because the metal is poisonous, like the Ophidæ, or from its brightness of burnish. Similarly, dhahab (זהב), gold, was named from its splendour; and silver, also meaning money (argentum, argent), was kasaf (כסף), the pale metal, the ‘white gold’ of Egypt. Both nechosheth and nahás apply equally to copper, bronze, and brass; hence we must probably read ‘copper Serpent’ for ‘brazen Serpent,’ and ‘City of Copper’ for ‘City of Brass.’
COPPER IN CYPRUS.