Dr. Schliemann questions the popular assertion that the age of Hesiod and of Homer ignored alloys and fusion, knowing only plating, the plates being hammer-wrought (‘Od.’ iii. 425). This explorer found the strata of copper and lead scoriæ at the so-called Troy from twenty-eight to twenty-nine and a half feet deep. He notes also small crucibles and a mould of mica-schist (twenty-six feet deep), which was probably intended for bronze casting. He finds no iron; but copper and its alloy, bronze, are abundant. M. Damour of Lyon[275] analysed the drillings of two ‘copper’ battle-axes from ‘Ilium,’ in fact, from ‘Priam’s Treasury’; they contained 0·0864 and 0·0384 parts tin to 0·9067 and 0·9580 copper. Nearly the same proportion of alloy was found in a common two-edged axe dug at a depth of three and a quarter feet, and therefore in the remains attributed to a Greek colony. Dr. Percy analysed, with the following results, the handle of a bronze vase and a Sword:

Copper (mean)86·36
Tin (mean)13·06
———
99·42

The specific gravity (at 60° F.) was 8·858. The extreme proportions of the alloy in other articles were 10·28 tin to 89·69 copper (a usual ratio in ancient bronzes[276]), and 0·09 tin to 98·47 copper, the latter being almost pure.

Fig. 83.—Bronze Knife, from the Pile-Villages of Neuchâtel.
(Half-size.)

Fig. 84.—Peruvian Knife, Metal Blade, secured in a Slit in the Haft by strong Cotton Twine.

Mongez, of the Institut, describing a bronze Sword found in France, gives the proportions as 87·47 per cent. of copper to 12·53 of tin. Analyses of Greek bronzes in the British Museum yielded 87·8 per cent. copper to 12·13 tin. A bronze knife has been found in the Palafittes (Pile-villages) of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.[277] Worsäae (‘Primæval Antiquities’) makes the Bronze Period in Denmark and Northern Europe begin about b.c. 500 to 600, and last some 1,100 years. It is not found among the Normans. But it was developed in Ireland and Scotland, in China and Japan, in Mexico and in Peru: Cieza de Leon notes the admirable bronze work of the Ynkarial empire.

A Peruvian chisel, analysed by M. Vauquelin, contained 0·94 copper to 0·06 tin. In other tools the proportion of the latter metal varied from two to four, six and even seven per cent. As a rule the people used only half the proper proportion of tin, which they called Chayantanka—a name suggesting the Old-World ‘Tanuk.’ Humboldt mentions a cutting tool found near Cuzco with ninety-four per cent. of copper and six of tin. Rivero (i. 201) notices in Peru brass (?) hammers and bellows-nozzles, axes, adzes, bill-hooks, and other tools, of bronze as well as copper. The Mexicans cast their tin ingots in T-shape. The Peruvians hardened copper also with silver for quarrying-tools and crow-bars. Velasco (ii. 70) tells us that when the Ynka Huasca was being led to prison by order of his brother, a woman secretly gave him a bar of metal, ‘silver with bronze, brass, or an alloy of silver, copper, and tin’ (Bollaert, p. 90); by means of this he cut through the jail wall during the night. Hutchison (ii. 330) mentions a buckler from Ipijapa in Ecuador, and Ewbank (p. 454) notices an old Peruvian bronze knife.[278]

PROPORTIONS OF ALLOYS.