EARLY USE OF TIN.—DERIVATION OF THE NAME OF BRITAIN.
(Vol. viii., p. 290.)
Many questions are proposed by G.W., to which it is extremely improbable that any but a conjectural answer can ever be given. That tin was in common use 2800 years ago, is certain. Probably evidence may be obtained, if it have not been so
already, of its use at a still earlier period; but it is unlikely that we shall ever know who first brought it from Cornwall to Asia, and used it to harden copper. It is, however, a matter of interest to trace the mention of this metal in the ancient inscriptions, Egyptian and Assyrian, which have of late years been so successfully interpreted. Mistakes have been made from time to time, which subsequent researches have rectified. It was thought for a long time that a substance, mentioned in the hieroglyphical inscriptions very frequently, and in one instance said to have been procured from Babylon, was tin. This has now been ascertained to be a mistake. Mr. Birch has proved that it was Lapis lazuli, and that what was brought from Babylon was an artificial blue-stone in imitation of the genuine one. I am not aware whether the true hieroglyphic term for tin has been discovered. Mention was again supposed to have been made of tin in the annals of Sargon. A tribute paid to him in his seventh year by Pirhu (Pharaoh, as Col. Rawlinson rightly identifies the name; not Pihor, Boccharis, as I at one time supposed), king of Egypt, Tsamtsi, queen of Arabia, and Idhu, ruler of the Isabeans, was supposed to have contained tin as well as gold, horses, and camels. This, however, was in itself an improbable supposition. It is much more likely that incense or spices should have been yielded by the countries named than tin. At any rate, I have recently identified a totally different word with the name of tin. It reads anna; and I supposed it, till very lately, to mean "rings." I find, however, that it signifies a metal, and that a different word has the signification "rings." When Assur-yuchura-bal, the founder of the north-western palace at Nimrúd, conquered the people who lived on the banks of the Orontes from the confines of Hamath to the sea, he obtained from them twenty talents of silver, half a talent of gold, one hundred talents of anna (tin), one hundred talents of iron, &c. His successor received from the same people all these metals, and also copper.
It is already highly probable, and farther discoveries may soon convert this probability to certainty, that the people just referred to (whom I incline strongly to identify with the Shirutana of the Egyptian inscriptions) were the merchants of the world before Tyre was called into existence; their port being what the Greeks called Seleucia, when they attempted to revive its ancient greatness. It is probably to them that the discovery of Britain is to be attributed; and it was probably from them that it received its name.
In G. W.'s communication, a derivation of the name from barat-anac, "the land of tin," is suggested. He does not say by whom, but he seems to disclaim it as his own. I do not recollect to have met with it before; but it appears to me, even as it stands, a far more plausible one than bruit-tan, "the land of tin:" the former term being supposed to be Celtic for tin, and the latter a termination with the sense of land: or than brit-daoine, "the painted (or separated) people."
I am, however, disposed to think that the name is not of Phœnician origin, but was given by their northern neighbours, whom I have mentioned as their predecessors in commerce. These were evidently of kindred origin, and spoke a language of the same class; and I think it all but certain, that in the Assyrian name for tin (anna) we have the name given to it by this people, from whom the Assyrians obtained it. "The land of tin" would be in their language barat (or probably barit) anna, from which the transition to Britannia presents no difficulty. I assume here that b-r-t, without expressed vowels, is a Phœnician term for "land of." I assume it on the authority of the person, whoever he may be, that first gave the derivation that G. W. quotes. I have no Phœnician authority within reach: but I can readily believe the statement, knowing that banit would be the Assyrian word used in such a compound, and that n, r, and b are perpetually interchanged in the Semitic languages, and notoriously so in this very root. Ummi banitiya, "of the mother who produced me," is pure Assyrian; and so would banit-anna, "the producer of tin," be; all names of lands being feminine in Assyrian.
It would be curious if the true derivation of the world-renowned name of Britain should be ascertained for the first time through an Assyrian medium.
Edw. Hincks.
Killyleagh, Down.