Fig. 74.—Soris and the Canaanites at Wady Magharah (oldest Rock Tablets). Fourth Dynasty.
We have ample evidence of extensive working and use of copper, called ‘Khomet,’ by the peoples of the Nile Valley. The ore occurs in the Wady Hammámát, the Egyptian Desert, and the so-called ‘Sinaitic’ Peninsula. As the Pyramids are the oldest of buildings, so the works in Wady Magharah (Valley of Caves) are perhaps the most ancient mines in the world.[191] They were first opened (circ. b.c. 3700–3600) by the eighth king of the Third Dynasty, the Sephouris of Manetho, the Senoferu (‘he that makes good’) of the inscriptions, who lies buried in the pyramid of Mi-tum (Maydúm).[192] A rock-tablet of this Pharaoh, the ‘great god, the subduer, conqueror of countries,’ shows him holding a foreigner by the hair and smiting the captive with a mace. Above his head are carved a graver (pick?) and a mallet. Soris, first Pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, ‘Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt, ever living,’ also strikes down an enemy and shows the same symbols. They again appear in the tablet of Souphis, the Shufu or Khufu of the Tables of Abydos and Sakkara,[193] and the Cheops of the Great Pyramid, whilst they are wanting in that of his brother Nu-Shufu (Souphis II.) or Khafra (Cephren) of the Pyramid.
Fig. 75.—Tablet of Suphis and Nu-Suphis at Wady Magharah. (Fourth Dynasty.)
The diggings were not abandoned till the days of Amenemhat, of the Twelfth Dynasty, when the labourers were removed to Sarábit-el-Khádim, the ‘Men-hirs’ (not heights) of the Servant in the Wady Nasb or Valley of Sacrificial Stone. Here gangs of miners, guarded by a strong force, extracted (as the slag-heaps show) Mafka or Mefka[194] (copper? malachite?[195] turquoise?), ‘black metal’ (copper), ‘green stones’ (malachite?), manganese, and iron. Supt and Athor or Hathor (Venus), the Isis of pure light, who presided over the Mafka-land, and who was the ‘goddess of copper,’ are mentioned in a tablet. Other hieroglyphs contain the names and titles of the rulers, and fragments of vases bear the name of Mene-Pthah,[196] one of the supposed Pharaohs of the Exodus. The ‘hands’ left their marks by graffiti or scribblings, and there are extensive remains of slave-quarters, of deep cuts, and of rock-sunk moulds for running the metal into ingots, Sarábit-el-Khádim continued working until Ramses IV. (Twentieth Dynasty), the last royal name there found: his date in round numbers would be b.c. 1150. Agatharchides (b.c. 100) reports that chisels of chalcos (λατομίδες χαλκαῖ) were found buried in the ancient gold mines of Egypt, and hence he deduces that the use of iron was unknown.
COPPER IN AFRICA AND ASIA.
From Kemi or Χημία, ‘black-earth land,’ alias Egypt, the art of metallurgy doubtless extended southwards into the heart of Africa. Hence travellers wonder when they see admirable and artistic blacksmiths amongst races whose sole idea of a house is a round hut of wattle and dab. The only coppers in South Africa with which I am familiar are those of Katanga in the Cazembe’s country,[197] where the Portuguese have long traded. Captain Cameron[198] was shown a calabash full of nuggets found when clearing a water-hole. In Uguhha he procured a ‘Handa’ from Urua, a Saint Andrew’s cross with central ribs to the arms, measuring diagonally fifteen to sixteen inches by two inches wide and half an inch thick: the weight was two and a half to three pounds. The people prefer this ‘red copper’ to the ‘white copper,’ as they call gold. In the Pantheon of Yoruban Abeokuta, ‘Ogun,’ the local Vulcan and Wayland Smith, god of metal-workers and armourers, is symbolised by a dwarf spear of copper or iron, and human sacrifices are, or were, made to it. Barth (vol. iii.) notes the copper (ja-n-Karfi) in El-Hofrah (‘the Diggings’) of Waday, south of Dar-For; and in the Kano, the Runga, and the Bute countries. Copper wire is worn by the women of the hill-lands of Gurma, but it is supposed to be brought from Ashanti (?). Africa, however, is as yet unexplored as regards its mineral wealth, and we are only beginning to work our old-world California—the Gold Coast. Farther south the highly-important copper-mines of Pemba, now Bemba, and other parts of the inner Congo and Benguella regions, were discovered by the Capitão-Mór, Balthazar Rebello de Aragão, in 1621–23.[199] Still more to the south, Namaqua-land supplies chalcitic ores, a native carbonate, reduced with cow-chips.
In Asia mines were worked by the ancient Assyrians for copper as well as lead and iron, and the former was applied to their weapons, tools, and ornaments.[200] The Kurds and Chaldæans still extract from the Tiyari heights about Lizan and the valley of Berwari various minerals—copper, lead, and iron; silver, and perhaps gold. Upon the Steppes of Tartary, and in the wildest parts of Siberia, the remains of old copper-furnaces, small and of rude construction, are met with. The Digaru Mishmís of Assam have copper-headed arrows.
The Chinese declare that in olden times men used the metal for arms, which in the days of the Thsin (b.c. 300) began to be made of iron. Sir John Davis (i. 230) confirms the fact that the Chinese Sword and backsword, both wretched weapons, were originally of copper, long ago changed to iron. Dr. Pfizmaier tells us that about b.c. 475 the King of U sent a steel blade to his minister, U-tse-tsui, wherewith to behead himself. According to Pliny, the Seres exported iron to Europe together with their tissues and their skins. The Chinese distinguish between Thse-thung (purple copper) and Thing-sung (green copper) or bronze. They prefer the ‘Tze-lae,’ or natural ore, gathered in the torrent-beds of Kwei-chow and Yun-nan, and the latter exclusively produces the famous Pe-tung,[201] or white copper, which takes a fine polish like silver. They made copper the base of their coinage as well as their weapons. Amongst their many charms and talismans are the ‘money-swords,’ a number of ancient copper coins pierced with a square central hole, and connected by a metal bar shaped like a cross-hilted Sword. These are suspended over the testerns of beds and sleeping-couches, that the guardianship of the kings in whose reigns the money was issued may keep away ghosts and spirits.
The Japanese copper[202] is of the finest quality, and is used as a standard of comparison. The superiority of the metal, which contains a percentage of gold, enabled the self-taught native workmen to produce those castings which are the admiration and the despair of the European artist. The copper delivered at Nagasaki and Kwashi is from Beshki, Akita, and Nambu; other places produce the more ordinary kinds. The rich red surface is due to a thin and tenaciously adhering film of dioxide: this has been imitated in England. The famous Satzuma copper, held to be the best in the world, was prepared under Government officials, none being sold privately. The ore was roasted in kilns for ten to twenty days, smelted in large furnaces with charcoal, and cast in water to make the well-known Japanese ingots. These were bars measuring about half an inch on the side, by seven to nine inches in length, and weighing some ten taels, nearly equal to one pound. They were packed in boxes each weighing a picul (= 125 to 133⅓ lbs. avoir.), about the load of a man. The price of course greatly varied. The trade was at first wholly in the hands of the Hollanders, who made a good thing of their monopoly. There was also an old traffic in Japanese copper on the eastern coast of India, especially Coromandel. The opening of the empire has caused revolutionary changes.