The nature of fuel was determined by the supply of the country. That of Egypt probably consisted of cattle-chips, a material still used by the Fellahs. A later allusion to this article is found in the legend of ‘Wieland Smith’: he mixes iron-filings with the meal eaten by his geese, carefully collects the droppings, and out of them forges a blade which cuts a wool-flock or cleaves a man to the belt without turning edge.
I conclude this chapter with the following table,[425] printed by Mr. Day at the end of his ‘High Antiquity of Iron and Steel.’ It gives at one view the languages, the characters, the phonetic values, the English equivalents, and the oldest known dates of the metals to which he refers. I differ from him in sundry points, and these I have taken the liberty to point out in italics.
General Table of Terms.
| Language | Characters | Phonetic Value | English Equivalent | Oldest known date of | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Family | ||||
Egyptian Hieroglyphs. | Hamitic, with Semitic Infusion. |
| Ba. | Earth, Metal. | 2200 |
| Ba. | Iron. | |||
| Ba’a. | Iron, Earth. | |||
| Ba’aenpe. | Iron. | |||
| Bet. | Iron. | |||
Akkadian. | Semitic. |
| Hurud. | Iron. | Oldest Monuments, at least 2000 b.c. (b.c. 4000?) |
Assyrian. |
| Eru. | Iron. | ||
Hebrew. | נחושה | n’ghōshāh | Steel. | From | |
ברזל | barzel | Iron. | |||
ברזל עשות | barzel yāshūth | Bright Iron. | |||
ברזל מוצק | barzel mūtzāq | Cast Iron. | |||
Chinese.[426] | Sporadic or Allophyllian (Turanian). | 鏤 | Low, Lowe. | Steel. | 2000 |
鐵 | Tie (pronounced Tit). | Iron. | |||
金 | Kin. | Metal. | |||
鐵 宧 | — | Iron-masters. | |||
Sanskrit. | Aryan. | आर | Ára. | Iron. | Oldest Sanskrit. Probably b.c. 1500. (b.c. 400?) |
अयस् | Ayas. | Iron. | |||
Greek. | χάλυψ | Khalyps. | Steel. | Homeric | |
σίδηρος | Sideros. | Iron. | |||
κύανος | Cyanos. | Blue Metal, prob. tempered Steel. | — | ||
ἀδάμας | Adamas. | Steel. | Hesiod. | ||
CHAPTER VII.
THE SWORD: WHAT IS IT?
Having now reached the early Iron Age, which ends prehistoric annals, it is advisable to answer the question—‘What is a Sword?’
The word—a word which, strange to say, has no equivalent in French—is the Scandinavian Svärd (Icel. Sverð); the Danish Sværd; the Anglo-Saxon Sweord and Suerd; the Old German Svert, now Schwert, and the Old English and Scotch Swerd. The westward drift of the Egyptian Sf, Sefi, Sayf, Sfet, and Emsetf, gave Europe its generic term for the weapon.[427] The poetical is ‘brand’ or ‘bronde,’ from its brightness or burning; another name is ‘laufi,’ ‘laf,’ or ‘glaive,’ derived through French from the Latin gladius. Of especial modern forms there are the Espadon, the Flamberg, Flammberg, or Flamberge,[428] the Stoccado, and the Braquemart; the Rapier and the Claymore, the Skeyne and Tuck, the small-Sword and the fencing-foil, beside other varieties which will occur in the course of the following pages. ‘Sword’ includes ‘Sabre,’ which may also derive from the Egyptian through the Assyrian Sibirru and Akkadian Sibir, also written Sapara; our ‘Sabre’ is the Arabic Sayf with the Scandinavian terminative r (Sayf-r). Ménage would derive Sabre from the Armoric Sabrenn: Littré has the Spanish Sable, the Italian Sciabola, Sciabla, and in Venice Sabala, from the German Sable or Säbel, which again identifies with other languages, as the Serb Sablja and the Hungarian Száblya. The chief modern varieties of the curved blade are the Broadsword, the Backsword, the Hanger, and the Cutlass, the Scymitar and Düsack, the Yataghan and the Flissa. These several modifications will be considered in the order of their invention. Lastly the Egyptian ‘Sfet’ originated through Keltic the word Spata or Spatha[429] (Spatarius = a Swordsman) conserved to the present day in the neo-Latin names of the straight foining weapon—espada, espé, espée, épée.
Physically considered, the Sword is a metal blade intended for cutting, thrusting, or cut-and-thrust (fil et pointe). It is usually, but not always, composed of two parts. The first and principal is the blade proper (la lame, la lama, die Klinge). Its cutting surface is called the edge (le fil, il filo, die Schärfe),[430] and its thrusting end is the point (la pointe, la punta, die Spitze or der Ort, the latter mostly opposed to the Mund or sheath-mouth).
The second part, which adapts the weapon for readier use, is the hilt, hilts or heft (la manche, la manica, die Hilse or das Heft), whose several sections form a complicated and a prodigiously varied whole. The grip is the outer case of the tang, alias the tongue (la soie, la spina, or il codolo; der Stoss, die Angel, die Griffzunge or der Dorn), the thin spike which projects from the shoulders or thickening of the blade (le talon or l’épaulement, il talone, der Ansatz or die Schulter) at the end opposed to the point. Sometimes there are two short teeth or projections from the angles of the shoulders, and these are called ‘the ears’ in English, in German, and in the neo-Latin tongues.