. Stowed away in the British Museum, it excited scant attention till Dr. Lepsius at the Congress of Orientalists (London, 1874), suggested that it was of steel. A trial was made (Sept. 18); it yielded readily to a few turns of the drill, and the surfaces of the hole showed the whiteness and the brightness of newly-cut malleable iron. Since that discovery, sacrificial iron knives have been found in the Nile Valley, despite the ready oxidation of the metal in a climate of the hot-damp category. In the Bulák Museum (Salle de l’Est), with the wooden Swords, was a straight and double-edged iron blade that had two ribs running along its length. Another room showed a straight, double-edged, and round-pointed dagger of gilt iron. Of the latter weapon there are three fine specimens (Salle du Centre).
IRON IN EGYPT.
The literature of Egypt abounds in allusions to the use of iron.[333] The Rev. Basil H. Cooper[334] believes that Mibampes the ‘Iron King,’ sixth successor of primæval Mena (circ. b.c. 4560),[335] bore on his cartouche the word ‘Benipe’; and that no less than three records[336] entitle him ‘Lover of Iron’ (i.e. the Sword); ‘thus attesting, not only the extreme antiquity of the use of iron, but unfortunately (?) of that most dreadful evil of all which are the scourges of humanity—war (?).’ And so we see the nineteenth century repeating the Herodotian half-truth, ‘Iron has been discovered to the hurt of Man’; and looking only at one side of the question, the evils of War, without which, I repeat, strong races could not supplant the weaker to the general benefit of mankind. The Epos of Pentaur, the jovial temple scribe[337] (circ. b.c. 1350), mentions ‘iron’ thrice; and Pharaoh Mene-Ptah II., whose ‘Sword gave no quarter,’ had vessels of iron. In later hieroglyphic literature the notices become too numerous to justify quotation.
Fig. 103.—Egyptian Sacrificial Knives (Iron).
The old Egyptians, according to Plutarch,[338] held iron to be the ὀστέον Τυφῶνος, or bone of Set; whereas the σιδηρίτις λίθος, or magnet, was that of his foe-god Horus, degraded to Charon in Greece and Rome. This siderite was known to the Hellenes in its religious aspect as Ἡράκλεια λίθος or Ἡράκλειον, either from Heraclea-town or from Hercules (Pliny, xxxvi. 25). Siderite or loadstone, termed ‘Magnet’ from its supposed discoverer, was also entitled ‘live iron,’ and its wounds were supposed to be more deadly than those of the common ore.
The Nile-dwellers had not far to go for iron, which abounds in the well-known Wady Hammámát, one of the earliest centres of Egyptian mining; and, as Mr. Piazzi Smyth showed, it accumulates everywhere in the fissures of the flaky limestone:[339] it is produced in Ethiopia (the Sudan and Abyssinia); and in Midian, where the old Kemites opened the copper mines, it appears in the shape of black sand and large masses of titaniferous[340] and other ores. The monuments (Karnak Table, &c.) specify, amongst objects of tribute, iron from the lands of the Thuhi[341] (‘the fair people’), the Rutennu (Syrians and Assyrians), and the Asi (or rebels generally?); from these countries it was exported in the ore and in bricks and pigs. The tribute-tables of Thut-mes III. (b.c. 1600) mention:—
One beautiful iron armour of the hostile king.
One beautiful iron armour of the King of Megiddo.
? lbs. weight, two suits of iron armour from Naharayn.