  [1] I refer to a vivacious but one-sided article on ‘The Sword,’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, May 1881. [2] The Past in the Present, &c. (Edinburgh: Douglas, 1880.) [3] Frederick the Great declared that an army moves like a serpent, upon its belly. According to Plutarch, the snake was held sacred because it glides without limbs, like the stars. Fire, says Pliny (Nat. Hist. vii. 57, and xiii. 42), was first struck out of the stone by Pyrodes, son of Cilix—silex, or flint, the match of antiquity; and hence it was called ???; and Vincent de Beauvais explains: ‘Silex est lapis durus, sic dictus eo quod ex eo ignis exiliat.’ It is the Sanskrit ??? (shila), a stone, both words evidently deriving from a common root, shi or si. The ‘religiosa silex’ of Claudian (Rapt. Proserp. i. 201) was probably a block of stone like those representing Zeus Kasios, the Paphian Venus, not to mention the host of stones worshipped in Egyptian and Arab litholatry, and the old Palladium of Troy transported to Rome. ‘Prometheus,’ who taught man to preserve fire in the ferule, or stalk, of the giant fennel, was borrowed by the Hindus and converted into Pramantha. ‘Pramantha,’ however, is the upright fire-stick, first made by Twastu, the Divine Carpenter, who seems to have been a brother of ?????, the Hearth; and hence it has been held to be the male symbol. According to Plato, ??? (whence pyrites = sulphuret of iron), ????, and ???? are Phrygian words; and evidently they date from the remotest antiquity. Pir (sun-heat) is found even in the Quichua of Peru, and enters into the royal name ‘Pirhua.’ The French and Belgian caverns prove that striking fire by means of pyrites was known to primitive man. [4] There are still races which are unable to kindle fire. This is asserted of the modern Andamanese by an expert, Mr. H. Man, Journ. Anthrop. Inst. Feb. 1882, p. 272. The same was the case with the quondam aborigines of Tasmania. [5] This Adam Primus was of both sexes, the biune parent of Genesis (v. 3)—‘male and female created He them;’ hence the pre-Adamites of Moslem belief. The capital error of Biblical readers in our day is to assume all these myths and mysteries as mere historical details. Men had a better appreciation of the Hebrew arcana in the days of Philo JudÆus. [6] I have noted his labours in the list of ‘Authorities.’ [7] Chap. iii. p. 43, translated for the Hakluyt Society by Clements R. Markham, C.B. (London, 1869). It is regretable that a senile Committee of exceeding ‘properness’ cut out so much of this highly-interesting volume. The Spaniard travelled in a.d. 1532–50, published the first part of his work in 1553, and died about 1560. Readers who would study the most valuable anthropological parts of the book are driven to the French translation quoted by Vicente Fidel Lopez (Les Races Aryennes du PÉrou, p. 199. Paris, Franck, 1873). [8] We need not go to the classics, Greek and Roman, for the idea of metamorphosis. It is common to mankind, doubtless arising from the resemblance of beast to man in appearance, habits, or disposition; and it may date from the days when the lower was all but equal to the higher animal. [9] Seven Years in South Africa, 1872–79, vol. i. p. 245, and vol. ii. p. 199 (Sampson Low and Co., 1881). The Simiads were African baboons, which fear man less than those of other continents. [10] Wilkinson, I. 1. Unruliness was punished by ‘stick and no supper.’ The old Nile-dwellers, like the Carthaginians and the mediÆval Tartars, were famous for taming and training the wildest animals, the cat o’ mountain, leopards, crocodiles, and gazelles. The ‘war-lions of the king’ (Ramses II.) are famed in history. They also taught domestic cats to retrieve waterfowl, and decoy-ducks to cater for the table. [11] Thus Lucretius (v. 1301) calls the elephant ‘anguimanus.’ As is well known, there is a quasi-specific difference between the Indian and the African animal. The latter is shorter, stouter, and more compactly built than the former; the shape of the frontal bones differ, the tusks are larger and heavier, and the ears are notably longer. The latter trait appears even in old coins. Judging from the illustrated papers, I should not hesitate to pronounce the far-famed Jumbo to be an Asiatic, and not, as usually held, an African. [12] The word wrongly written ‘Esquimaux,’ which suggests a French origin, is derived from the Ojibwa Askimeg, or the Abenakin Eskimantsic, meaning ‘eaters of raw flesh.’ Old usage applies it to the races of extreme North America, and of the Asiatic shore immediately opposite. Innuit, a more modern term, signifies only ‘the people,’ like Khoi-khoi (‘men of men’), the Hottentots, and like ‘Bantu’ (Folk), applied, or rather misapplied, to the great South African race. Innuit, moreover, is by no means universal. The Eskimos supply a valuable study; amongst other primÆval peculiarities, they have little reverence for the dead, and scant attachment to place. [13] ‘Brave Master Shoe-tye, the great traveller’ (Measure for Measure, iv. 3). The tale of porcupines ‘shooting their quills at the dogs, which get many a serious wound thereby,’ is in M. Polo (i. 28). Colonel Yule quotes Pliny, Ælian, and the Chinese. The animal drops its loose quills when running, and when at bay attempts, hedgehog-like, to hide and shield its head. It is, as the Gypsies know, excellent eating, equal to the most delicate pork; only somewhat dry without the aid of lard. [14] Ammianus Marcellinus (xxiii. chap. 4), quoted in chap. 2. [15] Odyss. xviii. 130, 131. ‘Qui multum peregrinatur, rarÒ sanctificatur,’ said the theologians. Hence the m
llent archery of the Scythians (Turanians) and the Persians. [60] Even in modern days Dr. Woodward suggests that the first model of flint arrow-heads was brought from Babel, and was preserved after the dispersion of mankind. This is admirably archaic. [61] The crossbow is apparently indigenous amongst various tribes of Indo-China, but reintroduced into European warfare during the twelfth century (Yule’s Marco Polo, ii. 143). [62] The military engines of the ancients were chiefly on the torsion principle; those of the mediÆvals were of two types, the sling and the crossbow. The ‘tormentum’ was so called because all its parts were twisted; the ‘scorpion’ (or catapult), because the bow was vertically placed, like the insect’s raised tail; and the ‘onager,’ because the ‘wild asses, when hunted, throw the stones behind them by their kicks, so as to pierce the chests of those who pursue them, or to fracture them.’ So at least says A. Marcellinus (Hist. xxiii. 4). I cannot but suspect that Anna Comnena’s ?????? is a corruption of onager (Yule’s Marco Polo, ii. 144). [63] The National Museum of Prague, Old Graben Street, now Kolowrat, contains a fine collection of war-flails, especially the huge ‘morning star’ of John Zsizka, generally called Ziska. [64] Mostly, not always, as I learnt to my cost. [65] In a subsequent work (Bronzes, &c., pp. 27–30) Dr. Evans discusses the suggestions of Beger and of Mr. Knight Watson (Proc. Soc. Ant. 2nd S. vii. 396) that celte in Job is a misreading for certe. He justly reprobates the fashion of writing ‘Kelt,’ and the newly-coined French plural celtÆ. The truth is that not a few antiquaries have confounded the instrument with the Keltic or Celtic tribes. The word, meaning a stone axe, adze, or chisel, has been erroneously derived from the Celts, properly Kelts, and by older philologists a cÆlando, which would convert it into a congener of cÆlum. It is the Latin celtis or celtes, a chisel, possibly a relative of the Welsh cellt, a flint. The word is found, according to Mr. Evans, only in the Vulgate translation of Job, in Saint Jerome, and in a forged inscription. He first met with its antiquarian use in Beger’s Thesaurus Brandenburgicus (1696), where a metal securis (axe) is called celtes. [66] In 1650 Sir William Dugdale (Hist. of Warwickshire) spoke of stone celts as the weapons of the Ancient Britons, and in 1766 he was followed by Bishop Lyttelton. In 1797 Mr. Frere drew the attention of the Society of Antiquaries to the Drift (palÆolithic) instruments occurring at Hoxne, Suffolk, together with remains of the elephant and other extinct animals. He was one of several; but, as usually happens, the wit of one man collected and systematised the scattered experience of many. The man was M. Boucher de Perthes, whose finds in the drift-gravels of St. Acheul, near Amiens (1858), appeared in the AntiquitÉs Celtiques et AntÉ-diluviennes, and made an epoch, changing the accepted chronology of mankind. [67] The stone-weapon was also called betulus, belemnites, and ceraunius (thunder-stone), ceraunium and ceraunia. So Claudian (Laus SerenÆ, v. 77)— PyrenÆisque sub antris Ignea flumineÆ legere ceraunia nymphÆ. [68] According to Suetonius, the Roman CÆsar presided over the senate with a Sword by his side and a mail-coat under his tunic. [69] De Rer. Nat. v. 1282. He speaks of Italy, where copper and bronze historically preceded iron. [70] Sat. i. 3. [71] Leading to the fourth, or Historic, and the fifth, or Gunpowder, age of weapons. In these ‘ages’ we have a fine instance of hasty and indiscriminate generalisation. They originated in Scandinavia, where Stone was used almost exclusively from the beginning of man’s occupation till b.c. 2000–1000. At that time the Bronze began, and ended with the Iron about the Christian era. Thomsen, who classified the Copenhagen Museum in 1836; Nilsson, the Swede, who founded comparative anthropology (1838–43); Forchhammer and WorsÄae, the Dane, who illustrated the Bronze Age (1845), fairly established the local sequence. It was accepted by F. Keller, of the Zurich Lake (1853), by Count Gozzadini, of Bologna (1854), by Lyell (1863), and by Professor Max MÜller (1863, 1868, and 1873), who seems to have followed the Swiss studies of M. Morlot (Bulletin de la Soc. Vaudoise, tome vi. etc.) Unhappily, the useful order was applied to the whole world, when its deficiency became prominent and palpable. I note that Mr. Joseph Anderson (Scotland in Early Christian Times, p. 19) retains the ‘three stages of progress’—stone, bronze, and iron. Brugsch (History, i. 25) petulantly rejects them, declaring that Egypt ‘throws scorn upon these assumed periods,’ the reverse being the case. Mr. John Evans (The Ancient Stone Implements, &c., of Great Britain, p. 2) adopts the succession-idea, warning us that the classification does not imply any exact chronology. He finds Biblical grounds ‘in favour of such a view of gradual development of material civilisation.’ Adam’s personal equipment in the way of tools or weapons would have been but insufficient, if no artificer was instructed in brass and iron until the days of Tubal Cain, the sixth in descent when a generation covered a hundred years. Mr. Evans divides the Stone Age into four periods. First, the PalÆolithic, River-gravel, or Drift, when only chipping was used; second, the Reindeer, or Cavern-epoch of Central France, and an intermediate age, when surface-chipping is found; third, the Neolithic, or surface stone-period of Western Europe, in which grinding was practise This would mean that after the weapon is thrown it might be drawn back again with a leather thong. Possibly the cateia of Isidore (cateia, to cut or mangle, and catan, to fight; the Irish ca?? and the Welsh kad, a fight or a corps of fighters, Latin caterva), survives in the tip-cat. In the Keltic dialect of Wales catai is a weapon. [116] See his learned note (p. 410) on the weapon and on Isidore (Orig. xviii. 7): ‘HÆc est cateia quam Horatius cajam dicit.’ The disputed word probably derives from the Keltic katten, to cast, to throw. [117] Nile Tributaries, by Sir Samuel W. Baker, p. 51. The word has a curious likeness to the ‘tombat,’ a similar weapon in Australia (Col. A Lane-Fox, Anthrop. Coll. p. 31). [118] The ‘Fans’ of M. du Chaillu, a corruption unfortunately adopted by popular works. In Gorilla-Land (i. 207) I have noticed the NÁyin, or Mpangwe crossbow (with poisoned ebe, or dwarf bolt), which probably travelled up-Nile like the throw-stick. The dÉtente and method of releasing the string from its notch are those of the toy forms of the European weapon. The Museum at Scarborough contains a crossbow from the Bight of Benin. The people of Bornu (North-West Africa) also use a crossbow rat-trap. [119] It is called chakarani in the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar Coast, by Duarte Barbosa or Magellan (?). The Jibba negroes of Central Africa wear a similar weapon as a bracelet, sheathed in a strip of hide. [120] Col. A. Lane-Fox, Anthrop. Coll., p. 33. For a comparative anatomy of the boomerang the reader will consult that volume, pp. 28–61. I have here noticed only the most remarkable points. [121] The Sword stood in Case 2 of the Salle du Centre, numbered 695; and was described in p. 225 of the late Mariette Pasha’s catalogue. I cannot quite free myself from a suspicion that it was also a boomerang of unusual size. Some of the South African tribes still use throw-sticks a yard to a yard and a half long. ‘They are double as thick at one end as they are at the other,’ says Herr Holub (ii. 340), ‘the lighter extremity being in the usual way about as thick as one’s finger.’ [122] This meaningless word (cartuccia, a scrap of paper) was applied by Champollion to the elliptical oval containing a group of hieroglyphics. It is simply an Egyptian shield (Wilkinson, loc. cit. i. chap. 5), and the horizontal line below shows the ground upon which it rested. The old Nile-dwellers, like the classics of Europe and the modern Chinese, use the shield for their characteristics, their heraldic badges, &c. The same was the case with our formal heraldry, which originated about the time of the Crusades, personal symbolism being its base. As Mr. Hardwick shows, the horse, raven, and dragon were old familiar badges; many of our sheep-marks are identical with ‘ordinaries,’ and the tribes of Australia used signs to serve as kobongs, or crests. Thus, too, in fortification the shield became the crenelle and the battlement, and it served to ‘iron-clad’ the war-galleys of the piratical Norsemen. [123] So there are two ways of swimming. The civilised man imitates the action of the frog, the savage the dog, throwing out the arms and drawing the hands towards his chest. [124] Journ. Anthrop. Inst. vol. iii. pp. 7–29, April, 1873. [125] An illustration is given in Mr. J. G. Wood’s Natural History of Man. He also quotes Mr. F. Baines, who describes the paddles of the North Australians with barbed and pointed looms. [126] Capt. James Mackenzie, in a paper read before the Ethno. Soc. by Mr. G. M. Atkinson (Journal, vol. ii. No. 2, of July 18, 1870. The paddle is figured pl. xiv. 2). [127] Translated for the Hakluyt Society (1874) by Mr. Albert Tootal, of Rio de Janeiro, who wisely preserved the plain and simple style of the unlettered and superstition-haunted gunner. [128] In Bacon’s day (Aphorisms, book ii.) gummy woods were supposed to be rather a Northern growth, ‘more pitchy and resinous than in warm climates, as the fir, pine, and the like.’ They are as abundant near the Equator, where the viscidity preserves them from the alternate action of burning suns and torrential rains; moreover, they are harder and heavier than the pines and firs of the Temperates. [129] Historia Geral do Brazil, by F. Adolpho de Varnhagen, vol. i. p. 112 (Laemmert, Rio de Janeiro, 1854). [130] M. Paul Bataillard (p. 409, Sur le Mot Pagaie, Soc. Anthrop. de Paris, 1874) is in error, both when he calls the people of Paraguay ‘Pagayas,’ or ‘carriers of lances,’ and when he identifies Pagaya (not a spear, but a paddle-sword) with the ‘sagaia or assagai.’ The latter word is of disputed origin, and it is meaningless in the tongues of South Africa. Space forbids me to touch its history, except superficially. ‘Azagay,’ a lance, or rather javelin, appears in Spanish history as far back as the days of Ojeda (1509); and in 1497 the Portuguese of Vasco da Gama’s expedition use the term ‘azagayas’ (p. 12, Roteiro or Ruttier, before alluded to). I believe both to be derived from the Arabic el-khazÚk, a spit—in fact, the Italian spiedo, lance. [131] Markham (p. 203, CieÇa de Leon) makes ‘MacanÁ’ a Quichua word; it also belongs to the great Tupi-Guarani family. [132] Antiquarian Researches, quoted by Markham, loc. cit. p. 181. [133] The Godeffroy Collection has produced a huge Catalogue of 687 pages (Die ethnographisch-anthropologische Abtheilung des Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg, vol. i. 8vo (L. Friederichsen u. Co. 1881). It was shown to me by Dr. Graeffe, the naturalist often mentioned in ‘South Sea Bubbles, by the Earl and the Doctor.’ As a rule the Samoans had clubs and spears, but few Swords. [134] This part of Melanesia has been familiar to the home reader by the life, labours, and death of Bishop Patterson. [135] Case 21, Petrie, No. 142. [136] The village of Abu RawÁsh, north of the Pyramids of JÍzah, still works this material in large quantities; and its caillouteurs, or flint-knappers, have produced excellent imitations of the so-called prehistoric weapons. I have described the flint finds of Egypt in the Journ. Anthrop. Instit. (Feb. 1879), and shall have something more to say about them. A Mr. R. P. Greg, who writes in the same Journal (May 1881) on the ‘Flint Implements of the Nile Valley,’ is not aware of the fact that I found worked flints near the larger petrified forest (Cairo). Since that time General Pitt-Rivers made his grand discovery of ‘Chert Implements in stratified Gravel in the Nile Valley’ (Journ. Anthrop. Inst. May 1882). In March 1881, when visiting the Wady, near Elwat El-DÍbÁn (Hill of Flies) amongst the cliffs of Thebes, he came upon palÆolithic flints, flakes worked with bulbs and facets embedded in the hardened grit, six and a half to ten feet below the surface. In the same strata tombs had been cut, flat-topped chambers with quadrangular pillars. The fragments of pottery enabled Dr. Birch to pronounce these excavations ‘not later than the eighteenth dynasty, and perhaps earlier.’ The New Empire in question was founded by Amosis (Mah-mes, or Moon-child) circ. b.c. 1700; it included the three great Tothmes, and lasted about three hundred years, ending with the heretic Amun-hotep IV., slave of Amun, circ. b.c. 1400, and Horemhib, the Horus of Manetho. The worked flints may evidently date thousands of years before that period. This is a discovery of the highest importance, and we may expect, with Mr. Campbell, that the ‘works of men’s hands will be found abundantly underlying the oldest history in the world, in the hard gravel which underlies the mud of the Nile-hollow from Cairo to Assouan.’ At any rate, this find disposes of the scientific paradox that Art has no infancy in Nile-land. The strange fancy has been made popular by the Egyptologist, who threatens to become as troublesome as the Sanskritist. [137] It is figured (p. 8) by Dr. John Evans (Ancient Stone Implements, &c.), who offers another ‘poniard’ (perhaps a scraper) on p. 292. On p. 308 he notes the large thin flat heads called ‘Pechs’’ (Picts’?) knives.’ [138] Nephrite is so called because once held a sovereign cure for kidney disease. Jade is found in various parts of Europe (Page); in the Hartz (or Resin) Mountains; in Corsica (Bristowe), and about Schweinsal and Potsdam (Rudler). Saussurite, the ‘Jade of the Alps,’ appears about the Lake of Geneva and on Monte Rosa. Mr. Dawkins limits Jade proper in the Old World to Turkestan and China. Jade, the Chinese you, is popularly derived from the Persian jÁdÚ = (the) magic (stone). [139] I need hardly notice that the mussel-shell was the original spoon, still a favourite with savages. [140] Humboldt (Pers. Narr. vol. i. p. 100) makes the Guanches call obsidian ‘tabona’; most authors apply the word to the Guanche knife of obsidian. [141] Neuhoff, Travels, &c. xiv. 874. [142] Our word ‘glass’ derives from glese (gless, glessaria), applied by the old Germans to amber (Tacit. De Mor. Germ. cap. 45). Pliny (xxxvii. chap. 11) also notices glÆsum (amber) and GlÆsaria Island, by the natives called Austeravia. [143] Stephens, Yucatan, i. 100. [144] The curious and artistic rock inscriptions and engravings of the South African Bushmen were traced in outline by triangular flint-flakes mounted on sticks to act as chisels. The subjects were either simple figures; cows, gnus, and antelopes, a man’s bust and a woman carrying a load; or compositions, as ostrich and rider, a jackal chasing a gazelle, or a rhinoceros hunting an ostrich. [145] See Chap. I. [146] Voyage Pittoresque autour du Monde, par M. Louis Choris, Peintre, 1822. [147] Trans. Ethno. Soc. vols. i. and ii. p. 290. [148] Quoted by Col. Lane Fox, Prim. War. i. 25. [149] Prehistoric Man, by Daniel Wilson (vol. i. pp. 216–17). [150] Incidents of Travel in Central America, &c., p. 51; by J. Lloyd Stephens. The work is highly interesting, because it shows Egypt in Central America. Compare the Copan Pyramid with that of Sakkarah; the Cynocephalus head (i. 135) with those of Thebes; the beard, a tuft on the chin; the statue and its headdress (ii. 349); the geese-breeding at the palace (ii. 316); the central cross (ii. 346) which denotes the position of the solstices and the equinoxes and the winged globe at Ocosingo (ii. 259). In Yucatan the Agave Americana took the place of the papyrus for paper-making. Indo-China also appears in the elephant-trunk ornaments (i. 156). [151] Prim. War. ii. p. 25. [152] The two latter are in Demmin, p. 84. [153] A specimen is in the British Museum, Department of Meteorolites. (Prim. War. p. 25.) [154] The distinguished physicist, Prof. Huxley, extends on purely anthropological grounds, the name ‘Australioids’ to the Dravidians of India, the Egyptians, ancient and modern, and the dark-coloured races of Southern Europe. I have ventured to oppose this theory in Chap. VIII. Mr. Thomas, curious to say, would make letters (alphabet, &c.) arise amongst the Dravidian quasi-savages. [155] Trans. Anthrop. Inst. May 1881. Mr. Milne brought home some fine specimens of worked stones, one of which (No. 17, pl. xviii.) is a chopper in the shape of the Egyptian flint-knives. [156] Mr. Heath (who directed the Indian Iron and Steel Company) opined that the tools with which the Egyptians engraved hieroglyphics on syenite and porphyry were made of Indian steel. The theory is, as we shall see, quite uncalled for. [157] For instance, the magnificent life-sized statue of Khafra (Cephren or Khabryes) in the Bulak Museum, dated b.c. 3700–3300 (Brugsch, History, vol. i. p. 78). ScarabÆi of diorite can be safely bought in Egypt, the substance being too hard for cheap imitation work. Dr. Henry Schliemann constantly mentions diorite in his Troy and its Remains (1875); for instance, ‘wedges’ (i.e. axes) large and small, (pp. 21, 28, 154): he speaks of an immense quantity of diorite implements (p. 75); of a Priapus of diorite twelve inches high (p. 169); of ‘curious little sling bullets’ (p. 236), and of hammers (p. 285). At MycenÆ he found ‘two well-polished axes of diorite.’ But as he also calls it ‘hard black stone,’ I suspect it to be basalt, as his ‘green stone’ (Troy, p. 21) may be jade or jadeite. [158] Casting the cannon called after the late General Uchatius is still kept a secret; and I have been unable to see the process at the I. R. Arsenal, Vienna. [159] Stahl-bronce = steel (i.e. hardened) bronze. The misunderstanding caused some ludicrous errors to the English press. [160] I reported to the AthenÆum (August 16, 1879) this ‘recovery’ of the lost Egyptian (and Peruvian) secret for tempering copper and bronze, which had long been denied by metallurgists. Copper hardened by alloy is described in the ArchÆologia, by Governor Pownall. Mr. Assay-Master Alchorn found in it particles of iron, which may, however, have been in the ore, and some admixture of zinc, but neither silver nor gold. [161] Of this I shall have more to say in Chap. V. [162] This was the weight of the statue of ‘Sesostris,’ Ramses II., and his father Pharaoh Seti I.; see Chap. IX. The overseer standing upon its knee appears about two-thirds the length of the lower leg (Wilkinson, Frontisp. vol. ii.). Pliny treats of colossal statues, xxxiv. 18. [163] Les MÉtaux dans l’AntiquitÉ, par J. P. Rossignol. Paris: Durand, 1863. [164] So Professor F. Max MÜller, Lectures on the Science of Language, asserted, with a carelessness rare in so learned a writer (vol. ii. p. 255. London: Longmans, 1873), that ‘the ancients knew a process of hardening that pliant metal (copper), most likely by repeated smelting (heating?) and immersion in water.’ This latter is the common process for softening the metal. [165] Cieza de Leon (Introd. p. xxviii.): ‘Humboldt mentions a cutting instrument found near Cuzco (‘the City’) which was composed of 0·94 parts of copper and 0·06 of tin. The latter metal is scarcely ever found in South America, but I believe there are traces of it in parts of Bolivia. In some of the instruments silica was substituted for tin.’ The South American tin is mostly impure; still it was and can be used. [166] Apparently there are two forms of ‘NÚb’ (gold), the necklace and the washing-bowl. See Chapter VIII. [167] Pliny, xxxvi. 65. [168] Here Elton, like others of his age, mistranslates Chalcos by ‘brass’: Their mansions, implements, and armour shine In brass,—dark iron slept within the mine. [169] Engraving on copper-plates is popularly attributed to Maso Finiguerra, of Florence, in 1460; but the Romans engraved maps and plans, and the ancient Hindus grants, deeds, &c. on copper-plates. [170] I regret the necessity of troubling the learned reader with these stock quotations, but they are essential to the symmetry and uniformity of the subject. [171] Sophocles and Ovid make Medea, and Virgil makes Elissa, use a sickle of chalcos. Homer, as will be seen, uses the same material for his arms, axes, and adzes. Pausanias follows him, quoting his description of Pisander’s axe and Meriones’ arrow; he also cites Achilles’ spear in the temple of Athene at Phaselis, with its point and ferrule of chalcos, and the similar sword of Memnon in the temple of Æsculapius at Nicomedia. Plutarch tells us that the sword and spear-head of Theseus, disinterred by Cymon in Scyros, were of copper. Empedocles, who (b.c. 444)— ardentem frigidus Ætnam Insiluit— was betrayed by his sandal shoon with chalcos soles. [172] See Macrob. Sat. vi. 3. [173] Or ‘a furbisher (whetter, sharpener = acuens) of every cutting tool of copper and iron.’ See Chap. IX. [174] I can hardly understand why Dr. Evans (p. 5) insists upon these sockets being bronze, as they could ‘hardly have been done from a metal so difficult to cast as unalloyed copper.’ He greatly undervalues the metallurgy of the Exodist Hebrews, who would have borrowed their science from Egypt. [175] Lead is also mentioned, but not tin. [176] A certain Herr Dromir patented in Germany a process for making malleable bronze. He added one per cent. of mercury to the tin, and then mixed it with the molten copper. [177] For Irish copper swords see the ArchÉologie, vol. iii. p. 555. They will be exhaustively described in Part II. [178] So Chalcis in Mela (ii. 7), now Egripos (Negroponte). [179] The confusion with iron appears in the Sanskrit (Pali?) ayas; Latin Æs for ahes (as we find in aheneus); the Persian Áhan (???); the Gothic ais, or aiz; the High German er (which is the Assyrian eru and the Akkadian hurud), and the English iron. J. Grimm (Die NaturvÖlker) connects ???? with Æs. That Æs and Æris metalla in Pliny mean copper, we learn from his tale of Telephus (xxv. 19), which, by the by, is told by Camoens (Sonnet lxix.) in a very different way. [180] ?a??e?e?? d? ?a? t? s?d??e?e?? ?????, ?a? ?a???a? t??? t?? s?d???? ???a???????. Jul. Pollux, Onomasticon, viii. c. 10. [181] The full term was Æs cyprium, which Pliny apparently applies to the finer kind; then it became cyprium, the adjective, which expressed only locality; and lastly cuprum. The third is first used by Spartianus in the biography of Caracalla (No. 5), Cancelli ex Ære vel cupro (doors of Æs or copper). Ælius Spartianus dates from the days of Diocletian and Constantine (Smith, sub voc.). When Pliny writes in Cypro prima fuit Æris inventio, he leaves it doubtful if Æs be copper or bronze; but we should prefer the former. So he makes the best ‘Missy’ (native yellow copperas) proceed from the Cyprus manufactories (xxxiii., iv. 25, and xxxiv., xii. 31). The word misÍ or missÍ is still used in India for a vitriolic powder to stain the teeth. Cypros, the wife of Agrippa, was possibly named from Kafar = the henna plant: the Cyprus of Pliny (xii. 51) is also the Lawsonia inermis. I have read with interest the able work of M. Vicente F. Lopez, Les Races Aryennes du PÉrou (Paris: Franck, 1871): he derives the word from Pirhua, the first Ynka deified to a Creator. He adopts (p. 17) against Garcilasso de la Vega, who gave the Ynkarial Empire 400 years, the opinions of the learned Dr. Fernando MontÉsinos el Visitador, of the later sixteenth century, who is set aside by Markham, Narratives of the Yncas (Hakluyt, 1873). MontÉsinos derives the Peruvians from Armenia five centuries after ‘the Flood,’ and assigns 4,000 years with 101 emperors to the dynasty; it begins with Manko Kapak, son of Pirhua Manko; and Sinchi Roka (No. xcv. of MontÉsinos) is Garcilasso’s official founder (p. 25). But I cannot follow M. Lopez in his theories of ‘Aryanism’ (Zend and Sanskrit) or ‘Turanianism’ (Chinese and Tartar). The Quichua wants the peculiar Hindu cerebrals (which linger in English), and lacks the ‘l,’ so common in ‘Indo-European’ speech; ‘Lima,’ for instance, should be ‘Rima.’ It has no dual, and no distinction between masculine and feminine. But with the licence which M. Lopez allows himself, any language might be derived from any other. For instance, chinka from sinha, ‘the lion’ (p. 138); hakchikis = hashish, ‘intoxicating herb’; kekenti, ‘humming-bird,’ from kvan, ‘to hum’; huahua, ‘son,’ from su, ‘to engender,’ sunus, &c., (when in Egypt we have su); and mama, ‘mother,’ from mata, ?t??, mater, when we have mut and mute in Nile-land. For mara, ‘to kill,’ ‘death,’ the old Coptic preserves mer, meran, ‘to die’; and for mayu, ‘water,’ mu. I thus prefer the monosyllabic Egyptian for Quichua roots, noting the two forms of pronoun, isolated (nyoka = I = anuk) and affixed (huahua-Í, ‘my son;’ huahua-ki, ‘thy son;’ huahua-u, ‘his son’). The heliolatry of the Andes was that of the Nile Valley; Kon is the Egyptian Tum, ‘the setting sun.’ The god Papacha wears on his head the scarabÆus of Ptah, or Creative Might. The pyramids and megalithic buildings are also Nilotic. The pottery shows three several styles, Egyptian, Etruscan, and Pelasgic. The population was divided into the four Egyptian castes (p. 396), priests (mankos and amautas), soldiers (aucas, aukas), peasants (uyssus), and shepherds or nomads (chakis). According to Cieza de Leon (p. 197) they thought more of the building and adorning of their tombs than of their houses; their mummies were protected by little idols, and the corpse carried the ferryman’s fee. The pyramid of Copan (Yucatan), 122 feet high, with its 6-feet steps, is that of Sakkarah. The Yucatan beard in statues is Pharaohic. The elephant-trunk ornaments (Stephens, ii. 156) are Indo-Chinese. The geese-breeding (ii. 179) is Egyptian. See also the Toltec legend of the House of Israel (ii. 172). [213] The ‘lovely valley, Andahualas,’ is from Anta and Huaylla, pasture—i.e. ‘copper-coloured meadow.’ Anta in Cieza de Leon appears to be copper, whereas other writers make it bronze. [214] Peruvian Antiquities, by Don M. E. de Rivero and J. J. von Tschudi. [215] They abandoned the native silver mines when the ore became too hard, and they smelted it in small portable stoves. They knew also the chemical combinations, sulphate, antimonial, and others; and they worked quicksilver. They had mines of Quella (Khellay, or iron), but they found difficulty in extracting it. Besides smelting, they could use the tacana (hammer), cast in moulds, inlay, and solder. [216] Ewbank, of whom more presently, sketches a well-cast axe (p. 455). He translates anta by bronze (p. 455). [217] Doubtless copied from Old-World articles. On the west side of Palenque the Sword is distinctly Egyptian (Stephens, Yucatan). I have attempted to show how easily castaway mariners could be swept by currents from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. See ‘Ostreiras of the Brazil’ in Anthropologia, No. 1, October 1873. [218] Antiquarian, Ethnological, and other Researches. By William Bollaert. London: TrÜbner, 1860. We must probably change ‘brass’ into ‘bronze’ when he says (p. 90) that ‘the Peruvians used tools of brass.’ [219] Appendix to Life in Brazil (Sampson Low, 1856). [220] This white copperas was detected by Scacchi on the fumaroles after the Vesuvian eruption of 1855. [221] Gold was shown by yellow, and silver by white. Dr. Evans (Bronze, &c. p. 7) suggests that the round blue bar used by butchers (Wilkinson, iii. 247) was not of steel; but his reasons are peculiarly unsatisfactory. The file is a common implement amongst savages, doubtless derived from the practice of cross-hatching wooden grips and handles. Mr. A. H. Rhind (Thebes, &c.) attributes little weight to the diversity of colours employed by ancient Egyptians to depict metallic objects, and he finds red and green confused. [222] Thus we have a blue war-helmet of ring-mail (Lepsius, DenkmÄler, iii. 115 &c.), a blue war-hatchet with wooden handle, and spears pointed with brown-red and blue (copper and iron) in the tomb of Ramses III. The war-car of an Æthiopian king, in the days of Tutankamun, has blue wheels and a body of yellow (gold). Lepsius, however, adds: ‘It is very remarkable that in all the representations of the old empire, blue-painted instruments can scarcely be traced.’ This simply proves that iron and steel were rare. [223] Prehistoric Man, chap. viii. [224] It was analysed by Mr. E. Tookey, with the following results:
The presence of the tin may have been accidental. The proportion of arsenic (2¼ per cent.) might have been expected to harden the metal, yet it was so soft as to be almost useless. [225] See chap. ix. [226] It is equivalent to the Roman’s ‘Aliud clausum in pectore, aliud in lingua promptum habere.’ [227] So amongst the Jews the sharp knives for circumcision (Josh. v. 2–3) were of the silex which they learned from the Egyptians; and the custom continued long after the invention of metal blades. [228] It was opened by Herr Ramsauer, and carefully described in Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt, by Baron E. von Sacken. I shall have more to say of it in chap. xiii. [229] Prinseps’ Essays (London, 1858), vol. i. p. 222, pl. xliv. fig. 12, and Journ. R. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. vii. pl. xxxii. fig. 12. Long descriptions of copper smelting in India are found in Science Gleanings, pp. 380 et seq., No. 36, Dec. 1831, Calcutta, and in Percy (Metall. p. 387); the latter by Mr. H. F. Blanford, of the Geol. Survey, who made especial studies in Himalayan Sikkim and the Nepaulese Tirhai. The workmen, who are of low caste, win the stone in small blast-furnaces about three feet high, burning charcoal and cow-chips. They work not only the easily reducible carbonates, but sulphuretted ores, copper pyrites, with a mixture of mundic (iron pyrites). [230] Scales are apparently implied by kaskassin (1 Sam. xvii.), which in Leviticus and Ezekiel applies to fish-scales. [231] The shekel is usually estimated at 220 grs. (Troy), which would reduce the weights to 22·91 and 190·97 lbs. respectively; but Maimonides makes it = 320 grains of barley = as many grains Troy. See Parkhurst (Lex., s.v. ‘Amat’). Either figure would form a fair burden for a horse; and the spear would have been a most unhandy article, unless used by a man ten feet tall. I shall notice the Gathite’s Sword in chap. ix. [232] Ethnology of the British Islands. We also read: ‘Copper Swords have been found in Ireland; iron among the Britons and Gauls; bronze was used by the Romans, and probably by the Egyptians; and steel of varying degrees of hardness is now the only weapon employed.’ (J. Latham: see chap. vii.) [233] Trans. Edinb. Philos. Soc. Feb. 1822. [234] J. A. Phillips, F.C.S. Memoirs of the Chemical Soc. vol. iv. [235] ArchÆology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, p. 246. [236] See Sir W. Wilde’s Cat. Metallic Materials—Celts, Museum of Royal Irish Academy. [237] History of Kerry, p. 125. [238] Yet Æschylus (Agamem.) uses both chalcos and sideros generically for a weapon. [239] Ilios, &c. (London, Murray, 1880). [240] Some small objects are reported as wheel-made; but this requires confirmation, according to a writer in the AthenÆum (Dec. 18, 1880). [241] The copper bracelet (Troy, p. 150, No. 88) with its terminal knobs is the modern trade ‘manilla’ of the West African coast. This survival will again be noticed in chap. ix. [242] The word in its older form was written ‘allay.’ Johnson derives it from À la loi, allier, allocare: it appears to me the Spanish el ley, the legal quality of coinable metal. We have now naturalised in English ley, meaning a standard of metals. (Sub voc. Dict. of Obsolete and Provincial English, by Thomas Wright; London, Bell and Daldy, 1869.) [243] Recherches sur les MystÈres; and MÉmoire pour servir À la religion secrÈte, &c. &c. [244] The ‘Aglaophemus,’ so called from the initiator of Pythagoras. I see symptoms of a revival in assertions concerning a ‘highly cultivated beginning, with the arts well known and practised to an extent which, in subsequent ages, has never been approached; and from which there has not anywhere been discovered a gradual advancement; but, on the contrary, an immediate and decidedly progressive declension.’ This, however, is a mere question of dates. Man’s civilisation began long before the Mosaic Creation; and science has agreed to believe that savage life generally is not a decadence from higher types, not a degeneracy, but a gradual development. [245] We now divide language into three periods: 1st, intonative, like the cries of children and lower animals; 2nd, imitative, or on onomatopoetic; and 3rd, conventional, the civilised form. [246] Axieros (the earth-goddess), Axiokersa (Proserpine of the Greeks), Axiokersos (Hades), and Casmilos (Hermes or Mercury). Ennemoser may be right in making the Kabeiroi pygmies (i.e. gnomes), but not in rendering Dactyloi by ‘finger-size.’ [247] The lame and deformed ‘artificer of the universe,’ who became HephÆstos (Vulcan) in Greece, and Vishvakarma in India. Sokar has left his name in the modern ‘SakkÁrah.’ [248] The Assyrian cuneiforms allude to ‘the (Great) Bear making its crownship,’ that is, circling round the North Pole. [249] The temples of the Cabiri have lately been explored by Prof. Conze for the Austrian Government at Samothrace, and we may expect to learn something less vague concerning these mysterious ancients. [250] The Rev. Basil H. Cooper believes that the Phrygian was the original Ida, which gradually passed to Crete; and here the IdÆi were priests of Cybele. He is disposed to connect with it the Greek S?d(???); the German Eisen (and our iron), and the Ida feldt and Asi of the Norse myths (Day, p. 133).] [251] The name is derived by Bochart from Heb. Lub or Lelub, ??????, chiefs of the Libu or Ribu, as the old Egyptians called the Libyans. Hence the Prom. LilybÆum (Li-LÚb) and the Sinus ad Libyam or Lilybatanus. [252] We have satisfactory details concerning the Chalybes, who border on Armenia, in the Anabasis (iv. 5, &c.). They dwell two days from Cotyora, the colony planted by Sinope; they are subject to the Mossynoeci, and they subsist by iron-working (v. 5). Though few, they are a most warlike people, full of fight. Their armour consists of helmets, greaves, and cuirasses of twisted linen cords, reaching to the groin. They carry spears about fifteen cubits long, ‘having one spike’ (i.e. without ferule); and at their girdles a short faulchion, as large as a Spartan crooked dagger, with which they cut the throats of all whom they can master; and then, lopping off their heads, bear them away (iv. 7). Strabo makes the Chalybes the same as their neighbours the ChaldÆi. [253] The well-known inscription on the tomb of Midas, and another given by Texier (Asie Mineure, ii. 57) show the Phrygian tongue to have been a congener of Greek. Even the BÉkos of Herodotus (ii. 2) is allied to our ‘bake,’ and BÉdu to our ‘water.’ We are greatly in want of further information about Phrygia, and it is to be hoped that Colonel Wilson and Mr. W. M. Ramsay will complete the labours of Texier and Hamilton. [254] The Aryans of Herodotus, about the Arius river (Heri-rÚd), are an undistinguished tribe, a mere satrapy. Strabo’s Aria (xi. 9) is a tract about 250 by 40 miles. In Pliny (vi. 23) Ariana includes only the lands of the Gedrosi (Mekran), the Arachoti (KandahÁr), the Arii proper (Herat), and the ParapomisadÆ (Kabul). It has been truly said that even if Aryan and Turanian man (first) centred in and emerged from these areas (the table-lands of Asia), the so-called history is entirely based on the philological discoveries of the Sanskritist school. [255] Therasia and Therassia, now Santorin. Here have been found ruins of prehistoric cities buried by the great central volcano. According to most geologists the latter was exhausted in b.c. 1800–1700. [256] I have personally noticed this, and described it in Midian Revisited, vol. i. p. 143. [257] Beckmann (s.v. ‘Tin’) tells us that the metal ‘never occurs in a native state.’ He forgets stream-tin. He also denies that the oldest ‘cassiteron’ and ‘stannum’ were tin; and considers them to mean the German Werk, a regulus of silver and lead. His vasa stannea are vessels covered with tin in the inside. In the fourth century ‘plumbum candidum’ or ‘album’ was superseded by ‘stannum.’ Speaking of electrum, Beckmann asserts that ‘the ancients were not acquainted with the art of separating gold and silver.’ ‘Britain,’ Ynis Prydhain Island, where the god Prydhain was worshipped, or rather ‘Isle of the Brythons,’ has been fancifully derived by the energetic Semitiser from Barrat-et-Tanuk = Land of Tin. [258] Ezekiel tells us that the Tyrians received tin, as well as other metals, from Tarshish, or Western Tartessus, in the Bay of Gibraltar. [259] M. Emile Burnouf, ‘L’Age de Bronze,’ Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1877, also brings tin from Banca. The island is about 150 miles long by 36 broad; it has no mountain backbone, but the peak of Goonong Maras rises some 3,000 feet above the sea-level. Chinese coolies still work the mines of Mintok, and in 1852 the yearly yield was some 50,000 piculs (each = 133? lbs.) at the cost of nine rupees per picul. [260] Beckmann (loc. cit.), like Michaelis, is surprised at the Midianites possessing tin in the days of Moses. These were the views of the last century. I have suggested (AthenÆum, Nov. 24, 1880) that the old Nile-dwellers extended through Midian to El-HejÁz and El-Yemen, where they worked the mines which became known to the Hebrews. [261] In 1866 De Rougemont made Phoenicia supply bronze to Europe, the copper being brought from Cyprus. Besides the Mediterranean, we find a Uralian and a Danubian branch of the industry. Before 1877 France had supplied 650 bronze Swords and daggers, Sweden 480, and Switzerland 86. [262] Alias the Œstrymnides. Borlase was of opinion that the group formed one block, with several headlands, of which ‘Scilly’ was the highest, outermost, and most conspicuous. He conjectures the original name to be SyllÉ, Sulla, or Sulleh, a flat rock dedicated to the sun; hence the Lat. SilirÆ, Silures, and Sigdeles; the Engl. Sylley, Scilley, and lately Scilly; the Fr. Sorlingues; and the Span. Sorlingas. The Keltic name of the chief feature was Inis Caer. [263] ArchÆology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Part II. ‘The Archaic or Bronze Period.’ Daniel Wilson. [264] Pliny represents the Cassiterides as fronting Celtiberia. He considers it a ‘fabulous story’ that the Greeks fetched ‘white lead’ from the islands of the Adriatic. [265] Prehistoric Times, by Sir John Lubbock, 4th edit. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1878.) [266] The identification is not settled; some propose the Isle of Thanet. [267] Beckmann, sub voce ‘Tin.’ [268] According to Messrs. Wibel, Fellemberg, and Damour, who investigated even 10/1000 parts, the average proportions were ? tin to 9 copper; and ¼ tin for hard metal, as chisels, &c. M. E. Chauntre, Age de Bronze. 3 vols. (Paris: Baudry.) [269] The late General Uchatius, who ‘trusted in princes,’ and whose tragical death was greatly lamented by his friends, always declared that he had rediscovered (not discovered) the hardening of copper and bronze; and that he hoped to arrive at other secrets. His career was cut short before he learned to make the metal and the alloy resilient. [270] Thut, Tuth, Toth, Thoth, &c., the moon-god who became Hermes Trismegistus. [271] Phosphor-bronze, for whose manufacture companies are now established in London and elsewhere, has the ordinary composition with the addition of red or amorphous phosphorus dropped upon the melted metal in the crucible. Berthier (TraitÉ des Essais, ii. 410) states that a very small quantity of phosphorus renders copper extremely hard and suitable for cutting instruments. Percy (Metallurgy) found that copper will take up 11 per cent. of phosphorus; the metal, which assumes a grey tint, is quite homogeneous, and so hard that it can scarcely be touched by the file. The addition of phosphorus promotes the reduction of the oxides, and enables an exceedingly sound and durable casting to be made; but if it exceed ½ per cent. the metal becomes very brittle. Dr. Percy has described phosphor-silver, phosphor-lead, and phosphor-iron. The phosphorus is, according to some authorities, apt to volatilise with time. At present a new form of bronze, the antimonial, in proportions of 1–2 per cent., is coming into fashion: it is said to be malleable and ductile, and to resist torsion in a high degree. Another new bronze is the aluminium, whose price has been reduced from 1,000l. to 100l. per ton by Mr. Webster, of Hollywood, near Birmingham. [272] So called from Cape Emeri in Naxos. [273] Appendix to Layard’s Nineveh and Babylon (London: Murray). The proportions are nearly those of our day. We may assume our common bronze at 11:100 for large, and 10:100 for small objects. Cymbals and sounding instruments, however, contain tin 22:copper 78. [274] Analysed by Mr. Robinson of Pimlico (Day, p. 110). [275] Schliemann’s Troy, p. 361 (London: Murray, 1875). [276] Sir W. Gell found the bronze nails in the ‘Treasury of Atreus’ composed of 12 tin to 88 copper. The Trojan battle-axes, according to Dr. Schliemann, yielded only 4, 8, and 9 per cent. of the former metal. [277] According to Helbig, the Palafittes and Terramare villagers had spears but not Swords. [278] For the tin-ore of Peru see Ethnolog. Journal, vol. lxx. pp. 258–261. Rivero, p. 230, and Garcilasso, vol. i. p. 202. [279] Amer. Journ. of Science, &c. v. 42; July 1866. [280] From descriptions and drawings by Mr. J. H. Godfrey, Mining Engineer-in-Chief to the Imperial Government of Japan. [281] M.D., F.R.S., ‘Observations on some Metallic Arms and Utensils, with Experiments to determine their Composition.’ Royal Soc. London, June 9, 1796. Philosophical Transactions. [282] Taken from Dr. Evans (Bronze Impl. &c. chap. xxi.). He compiled it from Martineau & Smith’s Hardware Trade Journal (April 30, 1879). [283] Wilkinson remarked that the Egyptian proportions of half tin and half copper were whitish.
ml@files@61751@61751-h@61751-h-13.htm.html#FNanchor_345" id="Footnote_345" class="pginternal">[345] It is to be noted that flint implements were found all about these works: Mr. Hartland brought home from them silex arrow-heads. The late lamented Professor Palmer observed them in other parts of the Pharan peninsula, and I made a small collection in Midian. In the Journ. of the Anthrop. Soc. 1879, I showed, following Mr. Ouvry, Sir John Lubbock, and others, that Cairo is surrounded by ancient flint-ateliers. M. Lartet explored them in Southern Palestine; I picked them up near Bethlehem (Unexplored Syria, ii. 289). The AbbÉ Richard and others traced them at Elbireh (in the Tiberiad); between Tabor and the Lake; and, lastly, at Galgal, where Joshua circumcised. Lastly, my late friend Charles F. Tyrwhitt-Drake, when travelling with me, came upon an atelier east of Damascus. I have noticed General Pitt-Rivers’ great Egyptian discovery in chap. ii.[346] Hek or hak (chief) has a suspicious resemblance to Shaykh and sos to sÚs, the mare, characteristically ridden by the Bedawin. In old Egyptian sos is a buffalo. [347] Movers (PhÖnicier, ii. 3), quoted by Dr. Evans (Bronze, &c. 5), finds bronze (copper?) 44 and iron 13 times in the Pentateuch, and he theorises upon the later introduction of the latter. But when was the Pentateuch written in its present form? [348] Rougemont, L’Age du Bronze, pp. 188 et seq. [349] Volney, Travels, ii. 438. [350] Much of it, however, was the amygdaloid greenstone, called in English ‘toad-stone,’ a corruption of the Germ. Todstein. [351] Speaker’s Commentary, i. 831. [352] This term seems first to have been used by Orosius (i. 2) in our fourth century. [353] In chap. ix. I shall attempt to show that Naharayn (the dual of Nahr, a river) is also applied to Palestine in such phrases as ‘Tunipe (Daphne-town) of Naharayn.’ [354] Dr. Percy found that certain Assyrian bronzes had been cast round a support of the more tenacious metal, thus combining strength with lightness. [355] M. F. Lenormant (‘Les Noms d’Airain et du Cuivre dans les deux Langues ... de la ChaldÉe et de l’Assyrie, Trans. Soc. Bibl. ArchÆology, vi. part 2) renders parzillu, iron; abar, lead; shiparru (Arab. ???, brass), bronze; anaku, tin; eru or erudu, copper or bronze (Arab. ????, copper or brass); kashpu, silver; and kurashu, gold. The learned author discovers in the cuneiforms repeated mention of the ‘ships of MÁkan’ and the Kur Makannata (mountain of MaknÁ), which he translates ‘Pays de MÁkan’: finding it a great centre of copper, he is inclined to confound it with the so-called Sinaitic Peninsula. I have only to refer readers to ‘MaknÁ’ in my three volumes on the Land of Midian. [356] Akkad is upper, Sumir lower Babylonia. [357] The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, vol. i. p. 62. London, 1871. [358] The first period extended from b.c. 1500 to 909. The second from b.c. 909 to 745: the most marking names being Assurnazirpal = ‘Ashur (arbiter of the gods) protects his son,’ who built the north-west palace of NimrÚd, b.c. 884; and his son Shalmanezer II. of the Black Obelisk (Brit. Museum), b.c. 850. The third period (b.c. 745–555) numbered Tiglath-Pileser II., b.c. 745–727 (a single generation before the first Olympic, b.c. 776, when the mythic age of Greece emerges into the historical); Sennacherib (705–681); Esarhaddon (680–668), Assur-bani-pal (668–640); Nebuchadnezzar in 604–561, a contemporary of Solon (b.c. 594); Nergalsharuzur (b.c. 557); and the last Nabonidus (b.c. 555). Herodotus (b.c. 450) wrote about a century after the end of the third period, Ctesias in b.c. 395, and Berosus in b.c. 280. We have, it is clear, absolutely no historic proof that ‘the patriarchal system of communities first locally developed itself at the mouth of the Euphrates Valley,’ or began in any part of the great Mesopotamian plain. [359] Rev. B. H. Cooper (loc. cit.) would derive ‘Ida’ from the Semitic ?? (yad, hand), and make the Daktyls, or fingers, its peaks. [360] I shall reserve for chap. xi. notices of iron by the classic and sacred poets of Greece. [361] Troy and its Remains, p. 362; the analysis by M. Damour of Lyons. [362] The theory of Stephani, Schulze, and others concerning the Byzantine date and Herulian origin of the MycenÆan graves, has been treated in England with some respect by Mr. A. S. Murray and Mr. Perry. [363] According to Pausanias, Alyattes, the Lydian king (ob. b.c. 570), dedicated to his god, amongst other offerings, an inlaid iron saucer. [381]
Phillips, Metallurgy, p. 317. Faraday found in Wootz 0·0128–0·0695 per cent. of aluminium, and attributed the ‘damask’ of the blades to its presence. Karsten, after three experiments, and Mr. T. H. Henry, failed to detect it, and suggested that it may have been derived from intermingled slag containing silicate of alumina (Percy, Iron, &c. pp. 183–84). [382] Archiv. Port. Oriental. fascic. iii. p. 318. [383] M. Keller (Pres. Soc. Ant. Switz.) notes that crudely formed lumps and quadrangular blocks of malleable iron, double pyramids weighing 10–16 lbs., have been found in prehistoric sites. They were probably produced in primitive Catalans. Pieces of iron slag worked by the Kelts were discovered in 1862 on the Cheviot Hills. [384] The cupel (of old copel) is the French coupelle, little coupe. The muffle is a metal cupel. [385] This is the process of working Wootz given by Mr. Heath; others pack the metal with finely-chopped stalks of asclepias as well as cassia. Mr. Mallet has described the Indian manufacture of large iron masses in The Engineer, vol. xxxiii. pp. 19, 20. Beckmann (loc. cit. sub v. ‘Steel’) notices the bloomeries or furnaces. The Penny CyclopÆdia and Ure’s Dict. of Chemistry (the latter the best), London, Longmans, 1839, may also be consulted. Dr. Percy gives a long account (pp. 254–66) of iron-smelting in India from Mr. Howard Blackwell. He notes three kinds of furnaces:—
The anvil is a square iron without beak. Three kinds of Indian bellows are noticed (pp. 255–56). The people, who love stare super antiquas vias, ignore the hot blast: this contrivance causes a more active combustion, an ‘ultimate fact’ as yet unexplained. [386] Report of 1852. [387] The dialect is much more ancient than we usually suppose: it existed long before Akbar the Great and his ‘UrdÚ zabÁn’ (camp language), for we find that the poet Chand wrote in it during the twelfth century. [388] As will appear in Part II. there are many processes for making the Damascus; the exact markings, however, are best produced by that noticed above. [389] Pp. 270–3, from the descriptions of Mr. W. T. Blanford, of the Geol. Survey of India. [390] Pp. 273–5; borrowed from Travels in Borneo, by Dr. C. A. L. M. Schauer during 1843–47, p. 109. [391] The Swords of the Borneo Dyaks and the islanders of Timor and Rotti are photographed by the Curator of the Christy Collection. [392] Mr. Day quotes, book i., the Tribute of Yu, Legge’s Chinese Classics, vol. iii. part i. p. 121 (TrÜbner, London, 1865). [393] The ‘Celestial Empire,’ according to her annals, began b.c. 100,000–80,000; the date being probably astronomical, or rather astrological, founded, like the four Hindu Æras, upon retrograde calculations. The first cycle of 60 years is attributed to the Emperor Hwang-tÍ, and its initiation to the 61st year of his reign, in b.c. 2637 (the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt?). The first historical dates are given in b.c. 651, a century after the foundation of Rome: these figures afford a curious contrast between pretensions and proof. But as Englishmen after long residence ‘grow black’ in Africa, and have become semi-Hinduised in India, so in China they have allowed themselves to be imposed upon by the ‘magna fabulositas,’ the marvellous self-sufficiency of astute semi-barbarians. ‘China is a sea that salts all the rivers which flow into it.’ Yet I am curious to ascertain by actual travel if China ever possessed a centre of civilisation independent of what she received from the West; in other words, non-Egyptian. [394] Of the 214 keys or radicals. The first three arithmetical figures are lines disposed horizontally, while the Egyptians wrote them vertically. In his Terminal Table (affixed to this chapter) Mr. Day assigns Chinese to the ‘Sporadic or Allophyllian family.’ I believe it to be the oldest and, as far as we know, the original form of Turanian speech, a kind of tertium quid deduced from the so-called ‘Aryan’ and ‘Semitic’ elements of Egyptian. [395] Trans. Bib. ArchÆol. 1879. Sayce’s Grammar gives 522 Assyrian characters. [396] The lump of iron worked into a mass more or less rectangular is called a bloom, from the Saxon bloma, metal in mass (Bosworth): Bloma ferri occurs in the Domesday Book. Hence ancient furnaces were called bloomeries; the Elizabethan spelling is a bloomary. The blooms were beaten out to bars. [397] In Persia I was told that this was one of the ‘secrets’ of making the finest KhorasÁni blades. [398] It followed the Mongols and preceded the Manchow Tartars, who still reign. [399] This process of converting iron to steel is first described in ‘AlchemiÆ Gebri (El-Gabr), Arabis philosophi solertissimi, Libri, &c., Joan. Petreius Nurembergen. denuo BernÆ excudi faciebat. anno 1545.’ The Arab, known to Albertus Magnus, flourished in the eighth to the ninth century. According to Beckmann, he noticed the ore cineritii (cupellation) et cementi (cementation) tolerans. The mixture is usually of sal ammoniac, borax, alum, and fine salt: the many varieties are described by Percy, Ure, and a host of others. Compare also Ure’s account of cast-steel and of shear-steel, the latter so called because cloth-shears were forged of it. [400] At least it would so appear from the following passage (p. 176): ‘When we examine the etymology of ‘pole,’ or ‘pillar,’ thus—Saxon, pol or pal; German, Pfahl; Danish, paal or pol; Swedish, pale; Welsh pawl—we arrive at the Latin palus, which, besides signifying a pole or stake, is also the fa???? of the Greeks, Mahadeva (?) or Linga (?) of the Hindoos, Bel or Baal (?) of the Chaldeans, Yakhveh (?) of the Canaanites, Ti-mohr of the ancient Irish, and Teih-mo of the Chinese,’ &c. [401] Notes from Mr. Henderson’s Diary during a Ramble through Shansi, in March 1874, published by Mr. Day (Appendix D, p. 251). Colonel Yule (Marco Polo, ii. 429), alluding to these enormous deposits of coal and metal, says: ‘Baron Richtofen, in the paper which we quote from, indicates the revolution in the deposit of the world’s wealth and power, to which such facts, combined with other characteristics of China, point as probable; a revolution so vast that its contemplation seems like that of a planetary catastrophe.’ [402] Les Mondes, tome xxvi., Dec. 1871. [403] Polynesian Researches (Rev. William Ellis). [404] Researches into the Early History of Mankind, p. 167. [405] Unless greatly mistaken, I have seen iron tools made of hÆmatite near the old Gongo Socco gold-mines of Minas Geraes, in the Brazil. Worked hÆmatite is also mentioned in Cyprus by General Palma (di Cesnola). See chap. ix. [406] From Nature (Sept. 30, 1875); quoted by Mr. Day (pp. 217–19). [407] Flint Chips, by Edmund T. Stevens, p. 553 (London: Bell & Daldy, 1870). [408] The ‘plummet’ is figured (No. cxxxii.) in the American Naturalist (vol. vi. p. 643). [409] The people of Camarones River, Bight of Biafra, work up old cask and bale hoops into very creditable edge-tools and weapons, hoes, knives, and Swords (Rev. G. Grenfell, Proc. Roy. Geolog. Soc. Oct. 1882). [410] The origin of the modern process is still debated. Agricola (nat. 1494, ob. 1555) notices both malleable and cast iron. Dr. Percy (p. 578) quotes from Mr. M. A. Lower (Contributions to Literature, &c. 1854) that Burwash Church, Sussex, contains a cast-iron slab of the fourteenth century with ornamental cross and inscription in relief. The same authority declares that iron cannon were first cast at Buxted (Buckstead in Sussex) by Philip Hoge or Hogge in 1543 (35 Henry VIII.); and that his successor, Thomas Johnson, made ordnance pieces for the Duke of Cumberland weighing 6,000 lbs. [411] Dr. Percy (pp. 764 et seq.) notices the three processes of making steel (iron containing carbon in certain proportions): 1. The addition of carbon to malleable iron; 2. The partial decarburisation of cast iron; and 3. The addition of malleable iron to cast iron. [412] I borrow from O Muata Cazembe (Kazembe, the King) a rude sketch (p. 38) of one of the better kinds of iron-smelting furnaces used by the extensive MarÁve race dwelling north of the Zambeze (River of Fish), which Europeans persist in miswriting Zambesi. The bellows, it will be remarked, are almost of European shape; but this peculiarity may be attributed to the artist. [413] Travels, pp. 275–77 (London, 1749). [414] Colonel A. Lane Fox (Prim. Warfare, i. 38) believes that the ‘Fans and Kafirs (Caffres) are totally different races.’ But both speak dialects of the same tongue, the great South African language. Modern African travellers have traced community of customs from north to south, and from east to west, suggesting extensive intercourse, in former days, throughout the length and breadth of the Dark Continent. [415] Across Africa, chap. xix., July 1874 (Daldy, Isbister & Co., London, 1877). [416] Missionary Travels, p. 402 (London, 1857). [417] Anthrop. Coll. pp. 128–134. ‘Specimens illustrating the geographical distribution of corrugated iron blades, or blades with an ogee section, double skin bellows, and iron work.’ As regards the ogee section, the author should have compared it with the arrow-heads whose plane sides are ‘bellied on a twist’ to cause rotation or rifling. [418] Diogenes Laertius tells us of Anacharsis only that he ‘wrote also about war.’ [419] As all savage races show, the original anchor was a stone first bound round like a celt, and then pierced for a rope: hence the ‘fugitive stone’ used by the Argonauts as an anchor (Pliny, xxxvii. 24). In the spring of 1880 eight stone anchors of modern shape were found in PirÆus harbour, and were sent to the Nautical School at Athens. [420] Wilkinson, i. 174. Mr. Day, pp. 86, 87. [421] Hence, too, we see our ‘bellows’ = ‘bellies.’ [422] This word is curiously corrupted in Europe. It is formed upon the model of DÁr-WadÁi, &c.; and means the abode, region, home (DÁr) of the For tribe. My lamented friend General Purdy (Pasha) formerly of the United Slates Army, admirably surveyed it, and died at Cairo in 1881. [423] Vulgo KattywÁr; described in 1842 by Captain (the late Sir G. Le Grand) Jacob in his Report on Guzerat (GujarÁt). [424] The sticks correspond with the strings on the bellows of the Egyptian monuments. [425] Iron, Jan. 8, 1876. [426] I observe that M. Terrien de la Couperie has lately derived the oldest civilisation of China from ChaldÆo-Babylonia of the Akkadian Ages, b.c. 2400–2300. [427] Major JÄhns (p. 416) would derive Schwert (= das Sausende, Schwirrende, i.e. whizzing) from the Sansk. svar, noise; and considers it originally a missile pure and simple. He quotes Isidore, who explains rhomphÆa by wafan; Schwert and framea = asta vel gladius; ensis = hevas, hevassa; mucro = swert, gladius = wafan; culter = wafansahs, sahse. In the hebraising days Sword was derived from Sharat, to scratch, and Sabre from Shabar, to shiver. [428] Of the Flamberge and the ‘flamboyant,’ or wavy blade, more hereafter. [429] Muratori (Antiq. ii. 487) notes, ‘Spatam sive spontonem, and sponto, spunto, i.e. pugio’ (Adelung). Of spatha more to come. [430] Or ‘die Schneide,’ the older forms being ekke, egge; while ‘valz’ was the middle section of the two-handed Sword. [431] ‘Chape,’ derived from capa, and a congener of ‘cap’ and ‘cape,’ is differently used by authors. Some apply it to the mouthpiece or ring at the top of the sheath; others to the metal crampet, bouterolle, or ferule at the scabbard-tip, and others to the guard-plate. In Durfey (The Marriage-Hater Matched) we find ‘the hilt, the knot, the scabbard, the chape, the belt, and the buckles’ (of a Sword). Skinner explains it as vaginÆ mucro ferreus. Mr. Fairholt defines chape to be the guard-plate or cross-bar at the junction of grip and hilt. Shakespeare, who knew the Sword, speaks of the ‘chape of his dagger’ (All’s Well &c. iv. 3) and ‘an old rusty Sword with a broken hilt and chapelesse’ (Taming of the Shrew, iii. 2). Commentators mostly explain this by ‘without a catch to hold it.’ Dr. Evans (Bronze, &c. chap. viii.) has exhaustively described the bronze chapes (bouterolles) in the British Islands. [432] A congener of our ‘quill,’ from the Lat. caulis, a stalk. LittrÉ is not satisfactory: ‘Quillon (ki-llon, ll mouillÉes), s.m. Partie de la monture du sabre ou de l’ÉpÉe, situÉe du cÔtÉ opposÉ aux branches, et dont l’extrÉmitÉ est arrondie. DÉrivÉ de quille’ (cone) ‘par assimilation de forme’ (in fact, incrementative of) ‘quille. Etym. GÉnev. quille; de l’anc. haut-allem. Kegil; allem. Kegel, objet allongÉ en forme conique, quille.’ Burn translates quillon ‘cross-bar of the hilt of an infantry or light-cavalry Sword.’ [433] This must not be written, as by some English authors, pas d’ane. ‘Pas d’Âne, instrument avec lequel on maintient ouverte la bouche du cheval pour l’examiner.’ LittrÉ has: ‘Pas d’Âne, nom donnÉ, dans les ÉpÉes du xviÈme siÈcle, À des piÈces de la garde qui sont en forme d’anneau, et qui vont des quillons À la lame. “Le Seigneur le prit et mit un pied sur la lame ... alors Collinet s’Écria: Venez voir, messieurs, le grand miracle que l’on fait À mon ÉpÉe; je l’ai apportÉe ici avec une simple poignÉe et sans garde dÉfensive, et voilÀ maintenant que l’on y met le plus beau pas d’Âne du monde.”’ Francion, vi. p. 237: ‘Pas d’Âne, nom vulgaire du tussilage, À cause de la feuille.’ [434] The Scottish basket-hilt, however, requires improvement, as it does not allow free play to hand or wrist. [435] The word is originally the Persian ShamshÍr (?????); but as the Greeks have no sh sound, it made its way into Europe curiously disguised. Jean Chartier (temp. Charles VII.) says, ‘Sauveterres ou cimeterres qui sont maniÈre d’espÉe À la Turque.’ Sauveterre became in Italian salvaterra; and in England scymitar was further degraded to semitarge. I have no objection to scimitar, but scymitar is the older form. [436] See note at the end of this chapter. [437] As usual, the diagram is an exaggeration. It directs the thrusting weapon too low, at the antagonist’s breast, not his eye; nor is it necessary to raise the hand so high in order to deliver the cut. [438] Quoted from Mr. John Latham by Colonel A. Lane Fox, Anthrop. Coll. p. 171. Concerning the drawing cut and its reverse, the thrusting cut, I shall have more to say when treating of the ‘Damascus’ blade in Part II. [439] The section of the modern weapon shows that the baÏonnette Gras is fit only for the thrust; and, as it stops its own cut, it is useless for the menial and servile offices in which the Yataghan-bayonet, like the old coupe-choux Sword, did yeoman’s service. I can see no improvement upon the old-fashioned triangular bayonet, which amongst us has been superseded by the short Enfield Sword-bayonet. To the latter I should prefer even the bowie-knife bayonet, of which the Washington Arsenal was once full, and which has been used even lately in the United States. None but practical soldiers realise the fact that the bayonet is meant to be a bayonet, not a Sword, nor a dagger, nor a chopper, nor a saw. [440] Mr. Wareing Faulder (Exhibition of Industrial Art, Manchester, June and July, 1881, Catalogue, p. 24) suggests that the Colichemarde ‘fell into disuse probably in consequence of its costliness, combined with its inelegant appearance when sheathed.’ [441] Captain George Chapman, in his Foil Practice, &c., a book which will appear in the ‘Bibliography’ (Part III.), rightly distinguishes between the triangular small-Sword, used only for thrusting, and the bi-convex cut-and-thrust ‘rapier,’ a term applied by the Germans to the SchlÄger, which has no point. In England most people use ‘small-Sword’ only in opposition to ‘broadsword’; but, as the Art of Fencing may be considered a general foundation for swordsmanship, all men-at-arms should understand and preserve the difference. The writer, however, observes (Notes, pp. 4, 5), that, among the various actions which may conveniently be executed with the triangular ‘Biscayan,’ there are many which cannot be so easily managed with a flat blade, or with the usual weapon of modern combat, however light and handy. Hence ‘fencers among military men should be cautioned against indiscriminately attempting with the Sword performances usually taught in lessons with the foil.’ [442] It was also a proper name applied to the Paladin Renaud’s Sword. The flamberge of the seventeenth century became a rapier-blade, and no longer ‘flamboyant,’ and the difference is in the hilt, and especially the guards. The latter were shallower and simpler than the rapier form, and were more easily changed from hand to hand, as was the practice of early fencers. [443] There is another DÁo in the Eastern regions, a large, square, double-edged blade, with a handle attached to the centre. The Dah of Burma is originally the same weapon as the NÁgÁ DÁo. [444] In the Bulletin de l’Institut Egyptien (deuxiÈme sÉrie, No. 1, annÉe 1880) there is an admirable paper on Eastern heraldry, ‘Le blason chez les Princes musulmans,’ by E. T. Rogers Bey. He proves that a heraldic scutcheon is known to the Arabs as rank, plur. runÚk, and that the word is the Persian rang, colour, from which he would derive our (man of) ‘rank,’ a word hitherto unsatisfactorily explained. As regards the tints, ‘azure’ is evidently the Persian lÁjawardi; and ‘gules’ is better derived from gul, a rose, than from Fr. gueules (jaw), which is L. Lat. gula, reddened skin. These three words suggest that for the origin of heraldry in its present form we must go back to Persia. Of the Sword in European heraldry I shall have more to say in Part II. [445] Strange to say, these Sword-names are carefully omitted from Liddell and Scott, 1869. [446] The information was kindly forwarded to me by Captain F. M. Hunter, Assistant Political Resident, Aden. Along the blade runs the inscription, which will be quoted in Part II., and the characters appear modern. My informant thinks that this Chelidonian does not represent the original ZÚ’l-FikÁr, which was two-edged. [447] This trophy hangs against the staircase wall of the fine armoury belonging to the Museo del Arsenale (Naval Arsenal), Venice. Here, however, it has become a complicated affair with Koranic inscription (ch. xl. vol. i.); open-jawed dragons’ heads at the hilt, and below the handle a rosette with various complications of ‘YÁ’ (Allah!). [448] It is figured in the illustrations following the Antiquities of Orissa, by Rajendra Lala Mitra. [449] Capt. Cameron and I exhibited a specimen, made for us by good King Blay of AttÁbo, at a special meeting of the Anthropological Institute of London. [450] The Austrian geographer, Dr. Josef Chavanne, estimates the mean altitude of Africa at 2,170 feet (round numbers), or more than double that of Europe (971 feet, M. G. Leipoldt). [451] He makes his Ethiopians emigrate from India to Egypt—but where? when? how? The ‘Asiatic Æthiopians’ of Herodotus lie between the Germanii (Persian
Kerman) and the Indus (iii. 93, &c.). The bas-reliefs of Susiana show negroid types, and Texier found the Lamlam tribe in the marshes round the head of the Persian Gulf to resemble the Bisharin of Upper Egypt. Was the Buddha one of these Cushite Ethiopians? [452] Monumental History, &c. [453] The late Mr. Lane, who was greatly attached to Cairo and its population, insisted upon the Arab origin and kinship of the Egyptian. To those who know both races they appear as different as Englishmen and Greeks. Place an Arab, especially a Bedawi, by the side of a Fellah, and the contrast will strike the least experienced eye. [454] The first instalment was sent in May 1881 to the Royal College of Surgeons for the benefit of Professor Flower and Dr. C. Carter Blake. I am aware of the difficulty in determining mummy-dates, but the fact of mummification shows a certain antiquity whose later limit is sharply defined. The mummy of King Mer en RÁ (Sixth Dynasty), found near the Sakkarah pyramids, had been stripped of its bandages; but the marks impressed upon the skin showed that the system was that of later years. He can hardly be dated later than b.c. 3000; and, reckoning from that period to a.d. 700, when mummifying ceased, we have a population of embalmed bodies of some 730,000,000 in round numbers. [455] The hair is of intermediate type between negro and Malay. The Nilotes are ?????????? and ?????????, with woolly locks, slightly flat like ribbons, evenly distributed (not in peppercorns) over the scalp. It is also a mistake to make the Nubians ???????????: none of the Nile Valley races are lank-haired like HindÚs, Chinese, and Australians. [456] The full number of Herodotus is 52,000 years. Mr. Day (p. 59) is scandalised by these dates, which argue for the ‘high antiquity theory’; and appears astonished to find ‘anything placed centuries previous to the Noahitic Deluge.’ Of this more presently. [457] Each generation contained a ‘Piromis, son of a Piromis.’ The word, made equivalent to Kalos k’ agathos (= galantuomo), Pe-Rome, the man, opposed to Pe-Neter, the god. [458] Mela has been blamed for repeating Herodotus without understanding him. When he states that the sun twice set at the point where it now rises (‘solem bis jam occidisse unde oritur’), he probably means that the greater light left to the west the zodiacal sign which presided at its rising. [459] The word at first applied probably to the commander-in-chief. Wilkinson’s day derived it from Phra (pa-Ra), the sun; now it is explained Per-Áo, the Great House, in the sense of ‘Sublime Porte.’ [460] AntiquitÉ des Races Humaines. Paris, 1862. [461] The ‘black land,’ opposed to Tesher, the ‘red land’ (Edom, IdumÆa, ErythrÆa), the wilds of North-Western Arabia. It is also called on the monuments A’in (Æan in Pliny) and Ta-mera (Mera, Tomera), the ‘inundation region.’ Another old name, Aeria, is from ???, Yior, the Nile. Kemi must not be confounded with Khem, Chemmis, universal nature, the generative and reproductive principle—Pan. When Q. Curtius writes that Chemmis ‘umbraculo maxime similis est habitus,’ I would change the first word to ‘umbilico.’ The stepped cone in the Elephanta Caves exactly explains the latter. [462] HecatÆus and Anaximander divided the globe into Europe (Ereb, Gharb, the West) and Asia (Asiyeh, the East). Their successors added Libya (Africa), a term derived from the Libu or Ribu tribes; and the Father of History a most insufficient fourth—the Nilotic Delta. The latter, however, is ethnologically correct: Egypt is neither Africa nor Asia, but a land per se. [463] In Homer, Ægyptus always applies to the Nile (Od. xiv. 268). Manetho makes it the name of a king, Sethos = Seti I. M. Maspero proposes as a derivation of the word, Ha Kahi Ptah (the land of the god Ptah). Hence the Biblical Pathros = Ptah-land (Ezek. xxix. 14). Pathyris, the western side of Thebes, and the western Provinces generally, may have named the ???????? (Herod. iii. 37), the obscene dwarfs who made Cambyses laugh. [464] Herodotus (vii. 66) specifies the Arians, a racial name then synonymous with the Medes. This is not the place to enter upon the subject of Aria’s enormous development. [465] As a specimen of the roots—which are most remarkable when they consist of single consonants, whose reduplication made the earliest words—take ‘papa’ and ‘mamma.’ The former is from the Egyptian pa-pa (root p), to produce, the original idea of the begetter; and the latter is ma-ma (root m), to carry, be pregnant, bear. Mut becomes mÁtÁ, ?????, mater, mother: Mer (a-mor), love; meran (morior), die, and more (mare), the sea. In ‘Semitic’ we have mÁ, Heb. and Arab. mÁ, water; and a long array of other words (as ia, yes, yea; and na, nay) too extensive for notice. [466] Characterised chiefly by post- instead of pre-positions, by additions to the verb which make it causal, reflective, and so forth, and by the peculiar form of sentences. Examples: the Finn-Ugrian-Magyar and the Turk-Mongol-Tartar, both probably deriving from the ancient Sakas = Scythians. [467] To Aryan I much prefer the older term ‘Iranian’; Iran (Persia), which once extended from the Indus to the Another describes him as ‘Maker of all things; whose beginning was the beginning of the world; whose forms are various and manifold; the first to exist; the one only Being, and the Parent of all who live.’ [476] Mr. Froude metaphysicises when he tells us that the religion of Egypt is the adoration of physical forces. Mankind do not worship abstractions; they begin (and mostly end) by adoring man. [477] Blind because she saw with insight, not physical vision. Her eyes are hidden by blinkers or ‘goggles.’ Her usual name is Ma, and her ideograph is the ell-measure. [478] Even ‘God save the King’ must be referred back to them. [479] It is an aorist from ‘Havah;’ so f?s?? from f??, and natura from nascor. Mystically, Ya is the past, Ha the present, and Vah the future. [480] My fellow-traveller, the Rev. W. Robertson Smith, has neglected the derivation of the ‘Prophet’ grade by Jewry from Egypt; his interesting volume (The Old Testament, &c.) wants more Egyptianism. The Prophets of Nile-land had their merits; they foretold that Pharaoh Necho’s Suez Canal would be more useful to strangers than to natives. [481] The High Priest’s robe in Jewry had 366 bells, symbolising the days of the Sothic-sidereal year. In the times of the early Pharaohs, the ‘Queen of the New Year’ appeared in coincidence with the beginning of the solar year. The Sothic Æra had been fixed from observations before Thut-mes III. (Eighteenth Dynasty, circ. b.c. 1580). [482] Yet the end of chap. xix. is distinctly teleological. Were there two Jobs? [483] Abraham, the legendary forefather of the Hebrews, was a ChaldÆan from Ur of the Chaldees. On the east bank of the Euphrates lies Uru-ki, Erech, or WarkÁ, fronted by Ur, Uru, or Mughayr: the Bedawin still call the latter ‘Urhha’ in memory of ‘Ur.’ Thus Abraham was a hill-man from the harsh and rugged regions fringing Southern Armenia. Hence the ‘Jewish face,’ with its strongly marked features and its wealth of hair and beard, appears everywhere in the sculptures of ancient Babylonia and Persia. Hence, too, the superficial observation that the Afghans and hill-tribes west of the Indus are Jews because they have the typical Jewish look. The reason is that all are derived from the same ethnic centre, a great watershed of race. [484] In this section of the nineteenth century three popular crazes are producing a literature of vigorous growth. The first is the Shakespearian; not Shakespeare, but Bacon, or some other Palmerstonian pet, wrote Shakespeare. The second, apparently a by-blow of the Book of Mormon, is the descent of John Bull from the ‘Lost Tribes,’ who were never lost. The third is the Pyramid craze; and the rough common sense of the public has embodied it in ‘the Inspired British Inch’: these Pyramidists mostly forget that the Pyramid is one of three greater and some seventy lesser items which form the cemetery of Memphis. [485] Yet it is remarkable, observes Brugsch (i. 212), that from the earliest ages the curse of the Typhonic gods clings to gold. So Plutarch (Isis and Osiris) tells us that the worshippers were directed not to wear the noble metal; and this still is a general rule in El-Islam. [486] Silver, the ‘next folly of mankind,’ says Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 31), showing his own, and rivalling Horace’s ‘aurum irrepertum et sic melius situm.’ Strange to say, neither old Egypt nor Assyria had a coinage, which Herodotus (i. 94) and a host of other writers attribute to the Lydians, the forefathers of the Etruscans. Its representative in the Nile Valley was the ring-money, which extended to ancient Britain, and which is still preserved in many parts of Africa. The golden ‘manillas’ discovered at Dali (Idalium) in Cyprus, where the breaks of the circle are adorned with the heads of animals, lions and asps, show what the now meaningless thickening of these parts originally meant. [487] ‘Lead is also united by the aid of white lead (tin); white lead with white lead by the agency of oil’ (Pliny, xxxiii. 30). [488] The Captivity of Hans Stade, p. 145. [489] Properly speaking, to ‘damascene’ is confined to ‘grit’ or inlaid iron or steel, the word evidently deriving from Damascus, once so famous for Swords. Johnson (Dict., Longmans, 1805) explains the word ‘damask,’ ‘linen or silk woven in a manner invented at Damascus, by which part, by a various direction of the threads, exhibits flowers or other forms.’ Percy (Metal. p. 185) inclines towards ‘Damascus’; but he suggests that the ‘word “damask” applied to steel may have been derived, not from the place of manufacture but from a fancied resemblance between the markings in question and the damask patterns on textile fabrics.’ [490] This process resembles our niello (nigellum) inlaying. The oldest composition contained most silver and no lead. Percy (Metallurgy, p. 23) gives us its history: the first treatise by Theophilus, alias Rugerus, a monk of the early eleventh century, was translated by Robert Hendrick (London, 1847). [491] Plutarch relates (De Isid. 2) of Ochus (Thirty-first Dynasty), who, amongst other acts of tyranny, caused the sacred bull Apis to be made roast beef, that he was represented in the Catalogue of Kings by a Sword. [492] ?rsha, Krasher, or Krershra. The determinative is a squatting archer with bow and arrows. Marvellous to say, Brugsch (i. 51) mentions ‘clubs, axes, bows and arrows,’ utterly neglecting the Sword. [493] Egyptian national names give derivation to, but do not derive from, Greek. According to Pollux (vii. 71), however, Hemitybion is Egyptian, evidently corrupted. [494] The horse, apparently unknown to the First Dynasty of Memphis, was familiar to the Second. Mr. Gladstone (Primer of Homer, p. 97: Macmillan, 1878) supposes that the animal came from Libya or Upper Egypt; but the African horse probably originates from Asia. The first illustrations of horses and chariots are found at Eileithyias, temp. Aah-mes, Amos, Amosis, b.c. 1500. [495] The pole-axe was three feet long, the handle being two; the blade varied from ten to fourteen inches, and below it was a heavy metal ball, some four inches in diameter, requiring a powerful arm. The club in the British Museum, armed with wooden teeth, is not represented on the monuments, and probably belonged to some barbarous tribe. [496] I have already discussed the Stone Age in Egypt and in Africa (chap. iii.). We must not, however, determine it to be pre-metallic without further study. Herodotus first notices it when he tells us that the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes used stone-tipped arrows. [497] I cannot but suspect the word of being a congener of our ‘chop.’ Mr. Gerald Massey, author of A Book of the Beginnings, favoured me with his opinion upon the ‘scymitar Khopsh.’ He identifies it with the hinder thigh (, Shepsh, or , Khepsh), of the ‘old Genitrix’ of the Typhonian type, Kfa or Kefa (force, power, might); the Goddess of the Great Bear and the place of birth. Hence the (Ru) or ‘mouth’ of the Sword came to be synonymous with the ‘edge’ of the Sword (Genesis xxxiv. 36). In the Denderah zodiac, the central figure, the ‘old Genitrix,’ holds the Khopsh-chopper or falchion with the right hand. The ‘thigh of Khepsh’ is also the Egyptian rudder-oar. The Great Bear Khepsh is one of the earliest measures of the Seasons: the Chinese still say that at nightfall the ‘handle of the northern bushel’ (tail of Ursa Major) points east in spring, south in summer, west in autumn, and north in winter. Mr. Gerald Massey’s two fine volumes have secured him, and will secure him, much bitter and hostile criticism from the many-headed who are lynx-eyed as to details while they overlook the general scheme. His object has been to show that religion and literature, science and art, originated in Egypt; and here he is undoubtedly right. Relying upon the self-evident fact that the language of the hieroglyphs contains ‘Semitic’ as well as ‘Aryan’ roots and derivative forms, he traces these throughout the languages of the world. Whether we judge his work conclusive or not, we cannot but admire and applaud the vast reading and research which he has brought to bear upon the most interesting subject. And in another way Mr. Massey has done good. He has uttered a lively and emphatic protest against the Sanskritists and their over-weening pretensions. In vol. ii. (p. 56) he shows how shallow is the conclusion that Ophir was in India because the produce brought back by Solomon’s fleets had, according to Professor Max MÜller, Sanskrit or Dravidian names. ‘Koph’ the ape is Kapi in Sansk.; but it is pure Egyptian, Kapi, whence the Gr. ??p-?? or ??-??. ‘Tukkiyim’ (peacocks) resembles the Toki of Tamil and the Togei of Malabar; but the root is evidently the Egyptian Tekh or Tekai, a symbolical bird. ‘Shen habim’ (teeth of elephant = tusks) may derive from the Sansk. Ibau, an elephant, but the latter is originally Ab in Egyptian. These erroneous views, coming from an authoritative source, are at once accepted, copied into popular books, and find their way round the world, to the confusion of true knowledge. They make it our hapless fate to learn, unlearn, and relearn. See ‘ape’ in Smith’s Dict. of the Bible, and, to quote one in dozens, the Trans. Anthrop. Soc. p. 435, May 1882,—‘the name for ape in “Kings” and in Greek authors, both adopted from Sanskrit.’ Mr. Massey unfortunately has not studied Arabic, hence many views which will hardly find acceptance. In interpreting the hieroglyphics he has wisely preferred the ideographic symbolism and the determinatives which, countless ages ago, preceded the phonetic and alphabetic forms. [498] For further notice of the Kopis, see chap. xi. [499] Also v. to decapitate: the Coptic form is Sebi or Sefi. [500] Bunsen, v. 758. [501] Bunsen’s Egypt, v. 429. According to Castor, the two Swords pointed at the throat of a kneeling man was the priest’s stamp denoting pure beasts, fit for sacrifice. He has noted that this survival points distinctly to human sacrifice in older days. [502] Yet the tombs at Beni Hasan date 900 years before the popular era of the Trojan war. [503] Monum. 262 fol., plates 11, 15. [504] Rosellini shows a long tapering blade with a mid-rib, apparently sunken, and a raised surface on each side. The length is divided into five parts, smooth and hatched (?). [505] The Somal have retained three other notable peculiarities of ancient Egypt; the wig (worn by the old Nilotes); the Uts () or wooden head-stool acting pillow, which further north was a half-cylinder of alabaster finely carved; and the ostrich-feather head-gear The latter was a symbol of Truth among the old Egyptians, because, says Hor Apollo, the wing-feathers are of equal length. The Romans adopted it as a military decoration. ‘Your courage has not yet given your helmet wherewithal to shade your face from the burning sun,’ say the Kurds, who add to the crest a new feather for every foe slain in fight. The Somal, after victory or murder, stick the white variety in the mop-head. We still use the phrase ‘a feather in his cap.’ The ‘Prince of Wales’ feather’ is an Egyptian ideograph of Truth. Mr. Gerald Massey seems to think that Wilkinson’s ‘Thmei’ (II. chap. viii.) is ‘only a backward rendering of the Greek “Themis”‘; that the feathers are ‘Shu’ (), and that the goddess is ‘Ma’ (), or ‘Mati.’ But surely the root of Themis would be in ‘Ta-Ma,’ the Goddess (of Truth)? [506] Compare Raa, Heb. and Ar., ‘he saw’; Gr. ????, and Lat. Ra-dius. [507] Colonel A. Lane Fox remarks that the groove which is constant in these Caucasian blades is a little out of the central line, and does not correspond on each side, an alternation showing that it is derived from the ogee form. I have suggested that the idea arose from the arrow-head ‘bellied on a twist,’ and have figured the weapon in the next page (fig. 170). [508] Bronze, &c. p. 298. [509] Chap. v. [510] Returning from the exploration of Harar (1853), I sent a small collection of Somali weapons to the United Service Institution. [511] The form is accurately preserved in the formidable Afghan ‘Charay’ or one-edged knife. [512] A Critical Inquiry, &c. [513] I have shown that the heraldic Sword in the East preserves this double sword-knot (chap. vii.). [514] The Baghirmi, according to Denham, adore a long lance of peculiar construction: this spear-worship is also practised by the Marghi and the Musghu. It extended from ancient Rome to certain of the Pacific Isles; while the Fijians worship the war-club. At Baroda in GujarÁt superstitious honours are paid to the Gaekhwar’s golden cannons with silver wheels. [515] English and Styrian razors are also largely imported. [516] Chap. viii. [517] AthenÆus (i. 27) speaks of the Thracian dance in arms, ‘men jumping up very high with light springs, and using Swords.’ At last one of them strikes another, so that it seemed to everyone that the man was wounded. [518] Marocco, page 66 (Milano, Treves, 1876). [519] Hence the ardent desire of the Abyssinians, when first visited by Europeans, to obtain civilised Swords. Father F. Alvarez (Hakluyt Soc. 1881), who lived in Abyssinia between 1520 and 1527, shows the Barnagais (Bahr-Negush, or sea-ruler) begging the Portuguese ambassador for his rich Sword and ornaments, ‘as the great lords have few Swords’ (chap. xxx.). Prester John (the Negush or Emperor) displays ‘five bundles of short Swords with silver hilts,’ taken from the Moslems (chap. cxiii.). The King of Portugal sends as a present to Prester John ‘first a gold Sword with a rich hilt,’ and a good fencer, Estevam Pallarte. [520] Anthrop. Coll. p. 184. [521] Gorilla-land, p. 227. [522] Quenching in oil or grease instead of water is a common practice. The workman still ‘adds to the water a thin cake of grease, or pours over it hot oil, through which the steel must pass before it enters the water, for by these means it is prevented from acquiring cracks and flaws.’ (Beckmann, loc. cit. ii. 330.) [523] Specimens of all these weapons are in the Lane-Fox Collection, Nos. 1088 to 1100. [524] The Cataracts of the Congo, p. 234. [525] I have noticed that arrant humbug, the celebrated ‘golden axe’ which, in 1880–81, caused the last ‘Ashantee scare’ (To the Gold Coast for Gold, ii.). The thing sent to England was certainly not the great fetish which is held to be the national Palladium. Another memento of the last Ashantee war, ‘King Koffee’s umbrella, an article of prodigious proportions, and of gaudy material,’ only returned to where it was made. The type of the latter may be seen in most Italian market-places, shading the old women’s fruits and vegetables; and Manchester, I believe, had the honour of building it. [526] Through the Dark Continent, i. 21. [527] Described in my Mission to Dahome, passim. [528] Across Africa, vol. i. pp. 121, 139; vol. ii. 104. [529] The famous copper mines of the Congo region, whose yield, says Barbot, was mistaken for gold, are noticed in The Cataracts of the Congo, pp. 45, 46. [530] Captain Cameron has brought home specimens. [531] From O Muata Cazembe, which also contains a long and valuable description of the copper mines in South-Eastern Africa, worked by the people since olden time. [532] According to Marco Polo (lib. iii. cap. 34), the men of Zanghibar (Zanzibar) are ‘both tall and stout, but not tall in proportion to their stoutness, for if they were, being so stout and brawny, they would be absolutely like giants; and they are so strong that they will carry for four men and eat for five.’ [533] Anthrop. Coll. p. 135. [534] The Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (August 1883) has printed an excellent paper ‘On the Mechanical Methods of the Ancient Egyptians.’ Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie believes that they cut diorite with lathes and jewel graving-points (diamond? or corundum abundant in Midian?); and that the diamond was the ‘piercing-stone’ of early Babylonian Inscriptions. [535] Gen. xxiii. 18. In 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, ‘Aretz tahtim-hodshi’ should be read, ‘Aretz ha-Hittim Kadesh,’ ‘the land of the Hittites of (city) Kadesh.’ [536] Trans. Soc. Bib. ArchÆology, vol. v. part 2, p. 354. They were then the paramount nation in Syria, from the Euphrates to the Libanus; and the Assyrians knew the region as Mat-Khatte. [537] Wild work has been made with this word. Some render it ‘large’ (i.e. whale-like); the scholiast calls the Cetians a people of Mysia; others confound them with the Kittaians (Chittim = Cypriots) of Menander in Josephus (A. J. ix. 14; Cory’s Frag., p. 30; London, Reeves & Turner, 1876); others with the people of Kiti (the circle), the Heb. Galil or Galilee. [538] ‘Two-river’ (land) is mostly applied to the great Interamnian plain, Mesopotamia. Here it must mean Syria proper; and Aram Naharayn (Highlands of the Two Streams) admirably describes Palestine, which is composed of a double anticlinal river-valley formed by the Iarunata (Jordan) and the Arunata (Orontes). The whole length and breadth of the country is distributed between the two, with the exception of the small Litani watershed. [539] The ‘Aram wine from Halybon’ was produced at HelbÚn (HalbÁÚn, the inhabitants call it), a gorge-village near Damascus. Being Moslems, they no longer ferment their grape-juice; but the fruit is still famous. The HelbÚn people speak the broadest dialect, and are a perpetual laughing-stock to the Damascus citizens. The Aleppites derive their ‘Halab’ (Aleppo) because Abraham there milked (halaba) a cow; but the place is older than the Genesitic flood, the Flood. [540] This word is corruptly written Jerablus, Jorablus, Jirabis, &c. [541] In Rawlinson’s Herodotus (i. 463) we find that the Southern Hittites numbered twelve kings. [542] The decisive action is shown on an Egyptian tomb (Brugsch, i. 291). [543] Ramses left as memorials of his invasion three hieroglyphic tablets cut upon the rocks on the south side of the embouchure of the Nahr el-Kalb (Dog or Wolf River, the Lycus), a few miles north of the Venerable Bayrut (Berytus, &c.). They mark the ancient road which ascended the rough torrent-gorge to its origin in CÆlesyria (El-BukÁ’a). Even since these pages have been written the coffins and mummies of Ramses II. and his daughter have been found at Dayr el-Bahri in Upper Egypt, and conveyed from Thebes to Bulak by Dr. Emil Brugsch. The same collector has been equally lucky with the remains of Seti I., although Belzoni, who discovered the tomb, sent the sarcophagus to the Sloane Museum. [544] Sesostris derives from Ses, Setesu, Sestesu, or Sestura, i.e. ‘Sethosis, also called Ramses’ (Seti-son?). The Greek Sesostris combines, I have said, the lives of Seti and his son Ramses. According to Brugsch, he is the ‘Pharaoh of the Oppression,’ and the son of the unnamed Princess (Merris? Thermutis?) who ‘found Moses in the bull-rushes.’ The Princess Thermutis, says Josephus, named Moshe (Moses) from mo (mÁ = water) and uses, those who are saved out of it (ses = to reach land). Possibly it is Mu-su = water-son. Josephus was sorely offended by the ‘calumnies’ of Manetho; this Egyptian priest, who wrote under Ptolemy Philadelphus about the time of the LXX, declared that the Hebrews were a familia of leprous slaves who, when expelled from Egypt, were led by a renegade priest called Osarsiph (Osiris-Sapi, god of underworld); and that the number was swollen by Palestinian strangers driven out by Amenophis. He gives the number of lepers and unclean at 250,000 (= 50,000 × 5), and the Hyksos, another impure race, number also 250,000. The learned classics accepted this view, duly abusing the ‘gens sceleratissima’ (Seneca), and the ‘odium generis humani’ (Tacitus). [545] The site of Kadesh and the Buhayrat Hums (Tarn of Emessa) or B. Kutaynah, a ‘broad’ or widening of the Orontes, was first visited by Dr. Thomson of Bayrut in 1846. I rode about the ‘lake of the land of the Amorites’ in 1870; but found no ruins, or rather ruins of no importance everywhere. It was not then known to me that in a.d. 1200 the geographer Yakut (Geogr. Dict. edit. WÜstenfeld) had noticed the water in his day as the ‘Bahriyat Kuds’ (Tarn of Kadesh). Since that time the Palestine Exploration Fund (July 1881) identified the seat of Atesh or Kadesh with the Tell Nabi Mendeh, a Santon’s tomb on the highest part of the hill where the ruins lie. The site is on the left bank of the Orontes, four English miles south of the ‘broad.’ The city disappears from history after the thirteenth century b.c., but local legend has preserved its memory. [546] Prof. Ebers, who is familiar with the many portraits of Ramses-Sesostris, declares that he was a handsome man with fine aquiline features, like Napoleon Buonaparte. [547] This original and instinctive way to revive the drowned endures to the present day, despite the wrath of the Faculty. [548] Brugsch (ii. 68) gives the terms of the treaty as translated by Mr. Goodwin (Records of the Past, iv. 25); and adds instances to prove that it was acted upon. Thus he explains the hitherto mysterious countermarch, the turning back of the Hebrew exodus, at the time when the emigrants were advancing straight upon their objective. His strong point is the identification of ‘Baal-Zephon,’ about which all the commentators have made such hopeless guesses. He explains it by ‘Baal of the North’ (Typhon, Sutekh or Khepsh), the ‘Mount Kasion’ of Jupiter Kasios, a name derived from the Egyptian Hazian or Hazina. [549] So called from an old Coptic town, long ruined. [550] Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. i., Essay VII., and reference to Black Obelisk in British Museum. Synchronous History of Assyria and JudÆa, pp. 1–82, vol. iii. pt. i.; Soc. Bibl. ArchÆology, 1874. [551] A Keltic word, bot = foot. [552] In popular Hebrew use, ‘Canaanite’ meant a trader. [553] Possibly the ‘pure’ (Hebr. Tohar), in which case the word is ‘Semitic.’ [554] Brugsch, ii. chap. xiv. As a rule, slingers were the least esteemed of fighting men. [555] The Rev. William Wright, missionary at Damascus, first suggested that the Hamath inscriptions were Hittite. The study was begun in 1872 by the late Dr. A. D. Mordtmann at Constantinople, where is the original of the silver Hittite dish represented in the British Museum. [556] Trans. Soc. Biblical ArchÆol. vol. iv. pt. 2, 1876. [557] Described by M. Clermont-Ganneau in the Revue ArchÉologique, Dec. 1879; and figured in the Palestine Exploration Fund, July 1881. [558] In Egypt the king rests his feet upon war-captives; and making a foot-stool of the enemy is a Biblical phrase (Psalm cx. 1) which had a literal signification. [559] For the two-headed eagle in Moslem heraldry (a.d. 1190 and 1217), see p. 108 of Rogers Bey’s valuable paper before quoted (chap. vii.). [560] His chief argument for their Northern origin seems to be founded upon their boots; he forgets, however, that the Arabs of Mahommed’s day wore ‘Khuff;’ and that legal ablutions were modified to suit them. It is the cothurnus calceatus of Pliny (vii. 19) which, as we see on statues and vases, covered the foot and ankle to the calf. The Assyriologist Prof. P. Schrader, followed by Prof. G. Ebers, considers the Khita to be AramÆans. [561] And Carchemish. ‘On the Hamathite Inscriptions,’ Trans. Soc. Bibl. ArchÆol. vol. i. pt. 1, 1876, and vii. 298–443, on Tarrik-timmun. [562] Mr. Heath kindly explained to me the key of his system published in the Journ. Anthrop. Instit. May 1880. The figures at IbrÍz having suggested ‘Semitism,’ he separated root-letters from formatives and found three AramÆan suffixes, t-na, t-kun, and t-hun. These gave an immense probability that he had hit upon the t, n, k, and h. Meanwhile Mr. Boscawen (Pal. Expl. Fund, July 1881) contends that our ‘knowledge of Hittite is confined to four syllabic characters and the ideographs.’ The Rev. Mr. Sayce was good enough to explain to me how he had determined eleven values. A comparison of inscriptions, with the silver boss of Tarkodemos as a point de dÉpart, suggested to him that the stirrup-shape () marks the nom. sing. of proper names, and this in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments ends in s. He assumes that adjectives agree with their substantives, which they follow by taking the same suffixes. He was at first disposed to make the broken k ( or ), which curiously resembles an old Egyptian sign, signify ‘and’ (cop. conjunct.); but the incised inscription found by Mr. Ramsey at BÓr (old Tyana) proved it the determinative of an individual. The goat’s head seems from the bilingual boss to have the phonetic value ‘tarku,’ and is interchanged with (ku), (s), , and . The two spear-heads with the stirrup () appear to represent a patronymic—Kus. The second sign (= ku), which seems to be the first pers. sing. of the Aor., can be followed in the same group of characters by ; whence Mr. Sayce inferred the latter to be an adjectival participial affix = u. Similarly = e, the acc. plur.; thus = ue. The bilingual boss also shows or = mi, the third pers. sing. present tense, and we find indifferently and . The gen. plur. is , but the pronunciation is not determined. The same is the case with the sock or low boot (), suggested to be the third pers. plur. of the Aorist. Lastly, the ideograph of plurality attached to nouns and verbs is . [563] Dr. Guyther, visiting the Merash citadel, has found several new characters in a long inscription on a lion, and fragments of stone with other hieroglyphs have been forwarded from Carchemish to the British Museum. [564] Under Shishonk (Shishak), the contemporary of Solomon, the conquered tribes of Edom and Judah are termed the ‘Fenekh and the Aamu (Syro-AramÆans) of a far land.’ Brugsch (ii. 210) ‘has a presentiment’ that these Fenekh are intimately related to the Jews; and he notes the similarity of Aamu with ‘Am,’ the well-known Hebrew term.
which was adopted by the Coptic Christians. The sacred Tau (Tau of Ezekiel ix. 6) gave rise to the Maltese Cross in Phoenicia, and in Assyria became the emblem of Shamas the sun.[622] I need hardly remind ‘Grecians’ that Tychius is supposed to have been a personal friend of the arch-Homerid. [623] Upon this point Dr. Schliemann’s MycenÆ is more explicit. [624] It is, I need hardly say, still a disputed point whether the Homeric Greeks could or could not write. See chapter xi. [625] M. F. Lenormant, the Academy, March 21 and 28, 1874. [626] I must again protest against the use, while compelled by want of another to use the term ‘Indo-European,’ which, applied to language, contains an unproved theory. India did not supply Europe either with speech or with population. The popular belief appears erroneous as is its appreciation of Darwinism, which did not derive man from monkey. The original Egyptian roots developed themselves into a host of dialects which flourished and perished before Pali and Sanskrit, a professor’s tongue, like mediÆval Latin, never understanded of the people, assumed their present shapes. [627] North American Review. [628] Professor Jebb quotes M. Dumont, CÉramique de la GrÈce Propre. [629] The Academy, Dec. 9, 1882. [630] I have treated the question popularly in Etruscan Bologna (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1876). The study owed its existence to the Rev. Isaac Taylor, who, using the Family Pen once too often, supported the Turanian origin of the Etruscans in a marvellously uncritical and unscholar-like book, Etruscan Researches (London: Macmillan & Co., 1874). [631] The stater of Croesus was the first gold coin known to the Greeks. Most of the classical authors declare that silver was first coined at Ægina by order of Pheidon (circa b.c. 869). [632] Hamilton (Asia Minor, vol. i. pp. 145–6) has carefully described this most interesting monument. [633] See the ‘colossal male head’ in General Palma di Cesnola, Cyprus, p. 123. [634] Preface to History of Egypt, p. xvi; and vol. ii. 124, where a list of racial names is given. Brugsch, it should be noted, is here entirely opposed to his predecessors, De RougÉ, Chabas, &c. [635] As opposed to the Aqaiuasha or AchÆans of the Caucasus (ii. 124). [636] ‘I have seen it affirmed that in those times (early Roman) the youth was instructed in the Etruscan learning, as they are now in the Greek’ (Livy ix. 35). [637] Described in Etruscan Bologna, p. 144. The blade is in Count Aria’s collection. The Sword of Misanello, une longue epÉe de fer, also in that museum, is noticed in p. 359, Transactions of the Congress of Bologna in 1871. [638] One vol. folio large quarto, with 17 Tables. It was preceded by ‘Di una necropoli a Marzabotto nel Bolognese,’ 1865, large quarto, with 20 Tables. Count Gozzadini is one of the earliest students who followed in the steps of M. Boucher de Perthes. [639] A fine specimen of a dagger from Thebes with the rapier-blade, and a broad flat hilt of ivory, is in the Berlin Museum. [640] Di un antico Sepolcro a Ceretolo nel Bolognese (Modena: Vincenzi, 1879), p. 9. [641] This weapon resembled the bronze forms found at Broilo in Tuscany and in the great collection discovered in 1875 and called the ‘Fonderia di Bologna.’ An account of the latter is found in Note Archeologiche, &c. (Bologna: Fava e Garagnani, 1881). [642] The learned French anthropologist compared these weapons with those found in the Marne graves. (Les Gaulois de Marzabotto, Revue ArchÉol. 1870–71, &c.) [643] Count Gozzadini replied in M. G. de Mortillet’s MatÉriaux pour l’Histoire primitive de l’Homme; and the paper was entitled by the Editor (not by the author), ‘L’ÉlÉment Étrusque de Marzabotto est sans mÉlange avec l’ÉlÉment gaulois’ (Jan. 1873). [644] L’Étrurie et les Etrusques, vol. i. p. 93. Atlas, p. 2, Pl. II. [645] Genthe, Program, &c. p. 15. [731] Od. ix. 391. [732] This is a fair instance of ‘elegant translation.’ What Homer says is: E’en as a blacksmith-wight some weighty hatchet or war-axe Dippeth in water cold with a mighty hissing and sputt’ring, Quenching to temper, for such is the strength and steeling of iron. The reply will be that Homer does not say it in this way; and to this reply I have no rejoinder. [733] Hes. Opera, 174, sq. [734] Ibid. ix. 366. [735] xi. 34, 35, &c. [736] Dr. Schliemann is assuredly singular when translating the Homeric Cyanus by ‘bronze’ (Preface to MycenÆ, p. x.). Millin (MinÉralogie HomÉrique) holds it to be tin. The ‘Cyanus’ of Pliny (xxxvii. 38) is lapis lazuli. [737] Opera, 149; Theog. 161, and Scut. 231. [738] Erga, 742–43. [739] Il. xv. 677. [740] xi. 629. [741] Scut. Ll. 125–132. [742] Scut. 216–224. [743] Ibid. So early was that detestable invention, the metal scabbard, introduced. Thus we must understand the f?s?a?a ?a??, e???deta (Il. xv. 713). Compare Eurip. Phoen. 1091. There is much more to be said concerning ‘Phasganon.’ [744] Il. vii. 220. [745] Il. iii. 292. [746] Il. v. 330. [747] Il. xviii. 474 sq. [748] Il. vi. 236. [749] x. 1. [750] Il. iv. 242, xiv. 479. [751] Il. xi. 385. [752] The Romaic gh is, as far as I know, the only modern European representative of the ‘Semitic’ ghayn, which French writers must transliterate by R: e.g. Razzia for Ghazweh. [753] Even in the army of Perseus we are told by Livy (xliv. 40), the Thracians marched first brandishing, from time to time, Swords of enormous weight. [754] xiii. 576. [755] xxiii. 307. [756] i. 210, 220. [757] Il. i. 190, it is called a PhÁsganon. [758] ii. 45. [759] Il. xi. 30. [760] Studs, flat-headed, like rivets, are still let into the iron blade by modern Africans. [761] iii. 334. [762] Il. xvi. 130. [763] xx. 475. [764] Il. xvi. 335. [765] xviii. end. [766] So Aristophanes (Clouds, 1065) alludes to the Sword forged by Hephaistos and presented to Peleus by the gods, as a prize for resisting the temptations of Atalanta. [767] Il. x. 256. [768] xv. 712–12. [769] Iliad. xxiii. 824. [770] Sanskritists hold it to have been originally ?s??, and to derive from ??? (asi), a Sword; whence ???? (Ásik), a swordsman (Fick, WÖrterbuch der indogermanischen Grundsprache). It is probably connected with ?e???, because ‘carried’ on the shoulder by the bauldric. [771] Od. xi. 24. [772] Il. xvi. 115. [773] xvi. 473. [774] Il. xiv. 385. [775] In his illustrations of the Iliad, Flaxman rarely arms his warriors with the Sword, even at the Fight for the Body of Patroclus. It is to be hoped that artists in future will kindly take warning. [776] Il. xv. 256; also Hymn to Apollo, 396. [777] El. 837. [778] Odys. viii. 401–5. [779] Odys. iv. 695. [780] Line 125. [781] Odys. i. 180. [782] iv. 83–4. [783] xi. 520. In Buckley’s translation (Bell, 1878), ?a???? is mostly translated ‘steel’ (pp. 62, 72, 198). Translators are almost as misleading as dictionaries. [784] xxi. 3. [785] xxi. 10. [786] v. 230. Even the learned Major JÄhns derives ‘Spatha’ from ‘Spatel.’ [823] Quoted by Colonel A. Lane-Fox, Anthrop. Coll. p. 174. [824] I have described it in Scoperte Antropologiche in Ossero (Trieste, 1877). The point is evidently broken off. [825] See chap. viii. [826] See chap. iii. The DanÍsko is the hatchet-yataghan of Demmin, p. 397. [827] Gen. iii. 24; Zech. xiii. 7; Apocalyp. i. [828] Here we find St. Michael a heavenly archetype of St. George. In the vault of the Superga, Turin, Monseigneur carries a rapier instead of a flamberge. [829] Xenophon, De Re Eq. xii. 11. [830] A world-wide juggling trick, which seems to have originated in Egypt. In Apuleius (Golden Ass, lib. i.) a circulator or itinerant juggler swallows a very sharp two-edged cavalry broadsword and buries in his entrails a horseman’s spear. This ‘Thracian Magic’ is still practised by the well-known Raf’ai Dervishes. [831] He figures the blade in his Tour (i. p. 443). [832] Galatians, Keltic Gauls, who established themselves in Western Asia Minor after the destruction of their leader Brennus at Delphi (b.c. 279). Florus (ii. 10) calls the Gallo-GrÆcians ‘adulterated relics of Gauls’: Strabo also alludes to the Phrygians and the three Galatian peoples (iv. 1). As Ammian. Marcell. tells us (xv. cap. ix.), ‘GalatÆ is the Greek translation of the Roman term Galli.’ They consisted of three tribes, each with its capital: the Tolistobogii (= Tolosa + Boii) at Pessinus; the Tectosages (of Aquitaine) at Ancyra, now Angora, famous for wool and cats; and the Trocmi, with Tavium for principal city, lay to the east bordering on Pontus. This people, like the Gauls, their kinsmen, was ‘admodum dedita religionibus’ (CÆs. B. G. vi. 16). [833] x. 32. [834] Livy, xxxviii. c. 17. [835] Il. i. 190. [836] Il. xvi. 437. [837] Il. xxii. 310–60. [838] Il. xiv. 405. [839] In the Iliad (iv. 185) we find the ??st?? and the ??a different. Menelaus wears the former outside, the Sword below it, and a ?t?a or metal plate on the breast. The ??st?? was probably a broad girdle strengthened with metal, and considered part of the ?p?a: thus ?????s?a?, to ‘gird one’s loins,’ is to prepare for battle. [840] Doubtless Pythagoras and Socrates were monotheists after the fashion of the Egyptian priests; but the Olympus of the many-headed was peopled by a charming bevy of coquins and coquines. [841] From the treatise of M. Rodios, ??? ????????S ?????S (Athens, 1868); the soldier wears an Etruscan helmet, and the pelta shield resembles an ivy leaf. [842] Philip. i. [843] To name merely the sommitÉs: Alexander the Great, Eumenes, and Ptolemy; Hannibal; Sulla, Fabius, Marius, Sertorius, Cato, Brutus, Julius CÆsar, Mark Antony, Pompey, Metellus, Marcellus, Trajan, and Hadrian. All these commanders were famous swordsmen, concerning whose personal feats with the weapon we have ample notices. [844] The Albanians still preserve the four castes which do not intermarry. These are: Soldiers (or Landowners), Tradesmen, Shepherds, and Artisans. [845] Some of the Greek statues were larger than any Egyptian. Olympian Jove stood 60 feet, Apollo 45 (Pausanias), and the Image of the Sun (commonly called the Colossus of Rhodes) 105 feet, exceeding everything in the Nile Valley. I need not refer to Mount Athos and the Charonion of Antioch. The oldest known Greek statue is a portrait produced at Miletus in b.c. 550, and inscribed: ‘I am Chares, son of Kleisis, rider of Teichiousa, an offering to Apollo.’ The style of this and other archaic works (vases, &c.), which are rare, connects it with Assyrianism, about the age of Assurnazirpal (b.c. 880). [846] Iliad, ii. 362 and iv. 297 sq. [847] De Ages. [848] But who is to do this under a Republic? And here we foresee troubles for our neighbours in the next Prusso-Gallic War. [849] For instance, the ‘Holy City’ of Miletus, with its 300 dependent towns. When we speak of ancient Greece we must remember that it extended from Asia Minor to Sicily, Italy, and even Southern France; and from Egypt to Albania. Modern Greece is a mere mutilated trunk. [850] Demmin (p. 106, &c.) tells us that ‘the Greeks had not even a term to denote the action of riding on horseback’; and that ‘even in French a proper verb does not exist, as the expression chevaucher means rather to stroll (flÂner) on horseback.’ As his English translator remarks, the assertion is hardly admissible in the face of such words as ?ppe?e?? (equitare), cavalcare, to ride the horse; ?ppe?a (riding), ?ppe?? and ?pp?t?? (a rider, a knight), and ?p?e????, mounted (scil. on horseback). His interpretation of chevaucher is equally erroneous. Chevaucher, a fine old word, now only too rare, exactly expresses our ‘to ride’: Il chevaucha aux parties d’occident, is quoted from a French MS. (early fourteenth century) by Colonel Yule in his preface to Marco Polo; and the word occurs twice in the same sentence with the same sense. [851] Lord Denman’s translation. [852] D. K. Sandford. [853] ‘Armour’ is from the Lat. armatura, through O. French armeure and armure; armoire is armarium, originally a place for keeping Arms, and armamentarium is our arsenal. It is not a little curious that ‘finds’ of Roman weapons are so rare, bearing no proportion to the wide extension of the rule. We must also beware of the monuments which are apt to idealise and archaicise: this is notable in the shape of the helmet, the pilium, and the Sword. JÄhns specifies as the best place for study the Romano-German Central Museum at ‘Mainz,’ under Professor Dr. Lindenschmit (p. 192). [854] In our day the only ‘Fecialists’ are the Moslem States. [855] Polybii Historiarum quÆ supersunt. The voluminous and luminous writer, a contemporary of Scipio Africanus, and a captain who witnessed the destruction of Carthage, was born a.u.c. 552 (b.c. 204), nearly three centuries after the Latin conquest of Etruria. He was called ‘Auctor bonus in primis,’ and Scipio said of him, ‘Nemo fuit in requirendis temporibus diligentior’ (Cicero, De Off. iii. 12, and De Rep. ii. 14). [856] De Lingu Lat. iv. 6. [857] Livy, viii. 8. [858] Also called Adscriptii, Supernumerarii, and Velati, because wearing only the sagum or soldier’s cloak, opposed to the officer’s paludamentum. Properly speaking, they were rear-troops, ranged in battle order behind the Triarii. During certain epochs the Rorarii stood next to the Triarii, and the Accensi, less trustworthy than either, formed the extreme rear. [859] The weapon is well shown in a monumental tablet on the Court wall of the Aquileja Museum. [860] The Clypeus, or Clipeus, of favourite Greek use, was also round, but larger than the Parma. Our ‘buckler’ (buccularius clypeus) takes its name from having on it an open mouth (bucca, buccula), in Chinese fashion, instead of the umbo. [861] In Livy’s Phalanx (a.u.c. 415) the Velites were light-armed men, carrying only a spear and short iron pila (viii. 7). [862] A congener of the Keltic Ast = branch; whence the Fr. arme d’hast. It was the Greek ???t??, contus, or lance, an unbarbed spear, a royal sceptre: under the Republic it collected the hundreds (hastam centumviralem agere); it noted auctions (jus hastÆ), it was the weapon of the light infantry-man (hasta velitaris), and it served to part the bride’s hair (Ovid, Fast. ii. 560). Hastarius and hastatus, hasta and quiris are synonyms; the gÆsum was a heavier weapon and barbed, and the jaculum, with its diminutives, spiculum, vericulum, or verutum, was a lighter javelin. Virgil uses hastile poetically. [863] Loc. cit. [864] The number of men greatly varied; the extremes of the Legion are 6,800 including cavalry under Scipio, and 1,500 under Constantine. In Livy’s Legion there were 5,000 infantry and 300 horse (viii. 8). Perhaps we may assume an average of 4,000 foot—a full Austrian regiment. Each line of the three numbered 10 cohorts, and each cohort three maniples. The latter were named from manipulus, a handful (of grass, &c., Georg. i. 400), because this rustic article at the end of a pole was the standard of Romulus. [865] The Signa, ensigns, or standards, were different in the legions. The Vexillum, or colours of cavalry, was a square of cloth, also called Pannus (p????). The word is a congener of the Gothic Fana and Fan; the Ang. Sax. Pan; the Germ. Fahne; the French banniÈre and our banner. Hence, too, Gonfanon = Gundfano. When the Eagle became imperial, and the Vexillum a Labarum with a cross, this standard was splendidly decorated, and led to the French oriflamme. The latter was made of the fine red (silk?) stuff called cendalum, cendal, or sendel. [866] These ‘light bobs’ were re-organised and regularly established in a.u.c. 541, after the battle of CannÆ. [867] In fact, it formed phalanx, a word originally meaning a block or a cylinder. [868] The officer’s was adorned by way of honourable decoration with three (ostrich?) feathers black and scarlet. [869] The original kilt was the waistcloth, man’s primitive dress in the Tropics and the lower Temperates. It became an article of defence under the Greeks and Romans; and thence it spread over most of Europe. The Maltese long preserved it, and the Fustanella is still worn in Greece and Albania. In Ireland it was ancient, as it is modern in Scotland. [870] Livy, ix. 35. [871] Livy, viii. 8. [872] Pilum, like our ‘pile,’ a congener of the Teutonic Pfeil, is not a Roman invention, and was probably borrowed from the Samnites (Sallust. Cat. 51, 38). The pilum murale, used for piercing walls (CÆsar, B. G. v. 40), was a round or quadrangular shaft of three cubits, with an iron of the same length (Polybius, vi. 23, 9). The pilum was perpetually changing size and proportions; moreover, there were two kinds, the heavy and the light. The figures in the text are those of the Mayence pilum (JÄhns, p. 201). [873] Livy, xxi. 8. [874] Under Trajan and Septimius Severus the cavalry adopted the iron or bronze Hamata, hooked metal chains, forming a kind of mail-coat, and the Squamata, scales sewn on to linen or leather, Demmin (p. 121) erroneously makes the latter ‘chain-armour,’ and yet his illustration shows the scales. [875] De Re Mil. i. 16. [876] Essais de Montaigne, l. ii., chap. 24 (Paris: Garnier FrÈres, 1874). [877] Or maÎtre d’armes, a word borrowed by Rome from Etruria. The legionary teachers were termed armidoctores and campidoctores. [878] AthenÆus (iv. 41) relates from Hermippus and Ephorus that the Mantineans were the inventors of Gladiatorism proper (???a????te?), suggested by one of their citizens, Demus or Demonax, and that the Cyreneans followed suit. [879] Livy, xxviii. 21. [880] In early Roman days the Gladiator was infamous; even Petronius Arbiter (Satyr. cap. i) uses ‘you obscene gladiator’ as an insult. [881] Philip. ii. 25. [882] Marius and Pompey the Great both ‘kept up’ their swordsmanship in these schools and in the Champ de Mars, the latter till the age of fifty-eight. [883] Hence his simple medication when hors de combat, ‘refreshing himself with a drink of lye of ashes.’ Can they mean the antiseptic charcoal, whose use has been revived of late years? [884] Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 24. [885] Sub v. Epicurus. [886] Deipn. vi. 105. Eunus was the slave-leader in the Servile War, which began b.c. 130. [887] The first Roman artist who painted gladiators was Terentius Lucanus (Pliny, N. H. xxxv. 34). [888] The Mirmillo, alias Gallus, is supposed to be derived from a Keltic word, meaning a fish. [889] If Nero was the monster represented by the commentaries and the contemporary Christians, we must wonder how this anti-Christ was loved in life by Acte, the ‘sweet and pure-minded Christian’; and why the citizens of Rome sorrowed for his death. And there is much suggestion in the fact that the greatest persecutors of the earliest Christians were the best of the CÆsars, for instance, Vespasian, Titus, Diocletian and Julian. [890] See the character given to him by Eutropius, viii. 4. [891] De Morib. Germ. xxxiii. [892] Mariette, Recueil, No. 92. [893] The learned Mr. Tylor is notably in error when he informs Mr. Herbert Spencer (Ceremonial Institutions, pp. 174–75) that the Japanese two-sworded man (Samurai) wore sword and dagger. The blades used to be of equal length. Of the Japanese sword I shall treat in Part II. [894] Copied by Smith (Dict. of Ant. p. 456) from Winckelmann (Monumenta Inedita, Pl. 197): the latter, by the by, was murdered at Trieste. [895] The word seems to be a congener of Sahs, Sax, or Seax, the weapon supposed to have named the Saxons. It was either straight or curved, the main object being to fit it closely to the body or under the armpits. Hence it was a favourite with the Sicarius (Ital. sicario), the Assassin. Gregory of Tours has (ix. 19) ‘Caput sicharii sicc dividit.’ A fanciful derivation of Sicily is from sica, because Cronos threw one away at Drepanum. From the diminutive form Sicula and Silicicula comes the English ‘sickle.’ [896] This hide-shield, which supplanted the clypeus or clipeus, the large round article of osier-work, was also Sabine. [897] Petronius Arbiter, chap. i. 7. [898] Falx is properly a large pruning knife, plain or toothed, with a coulter or bill projecting from the back of the curved head. Besides this, there are many forms; one is a simple curve; another is a leaf-shaped blade with an inner hook, while a third bears, besides the spike, a crescent on the back. ‘Falx’ is the origin of our ‘falchion,’ an Italian augmentative form, or perhaps the Spanish facon. CÆsar (Comm. iii. 14) speaks of falces prÆacutÆ. [899] Loc. cit., copied by Smith. [900] Mentor is mentioned by Pliny (viii. 21). The tale of Androclus is well known; he was pardoned, and presented with his friend the lion, whom he used to lead about Rome, doubtless collecting many coppers. [901] He is called by Captain Godfrey ‘the Atlas of the sword,’ and Hogarth immortalised this valiant ‘rough’ in the Rake’s Progress and Southwark Fair. [902] It is regretable to see this unmanly and ignoble ‘sport’ spreading abroad: there was pigeon-shooting at Venice during the Geographical Carnival, alias Congress, of September 1881. All honour to the English Princes who are discountenancing the butchery at home. Fox-hunting is another thing; the chief good done by it seems to be the circulation of about a million of money per annum. [903] I have described cock-fighting in the Canary Islands (To the Gold Coast for Gold, i., chap. 9). The celebrated story of Themistocles and the game-cocks made the pastime classical. Alexander the Great is said to have crucified a tax-gatherer at Alexandria who killed and ate a famous fighting-cock. Verdict, S. H. R. [904] So ????? and the O. Germ. Ask (an ash-tree) signify a bow: there are many instances of such nomenclature. [905] Quinctilian, Inst. Orat. xii. 11. Marchionni (p. 123) makes the Gladius short and broad for infantry, and the Ensis long and broad for cavalry, in fact, synonymous with Spatha. This view is not unusual. [906] In Claud. cap. 15. Its form is onomatopoetic, the earliest form of expression, as the Egyptian miao, for a cat; and it admirably conveys the idea of muttering or stuttering. Again, it is a reduplication of sounds; another absolutely primitive construction, and the effect is emphasis. ‘Berber-ta’ (Berber-land) was applied by the ancient Egyptians (Catalogue of Thut-mes III.), whence our modern term Barbary. The word in Hebr. ‘wild beast feeding in waste’ migrated to India, and was there corrupted to ????? (Varvara), a barbarous land, one who speaks unintelligibly. ‘Berber’ passed over to Greece from Egypt, and became ??a???, meaning a foreigner whose language was not Hellenic, and who, therefore, was little better than a beast. (N.B. Shakespeare would have been a barbarian in Persia and Hafiz in England.) ‘Barbaros’ broadened its meaning in Rome, where it was applied to all peoples who could not speak or who mispronounced Greek and Latin. See Strabo, xiv. 2, on ‘Barbaros’ and to ‘barbarise’; thus unhappy Ovid could wail: ‘Barbarus hic ego sum quia non intelligor illis.’ Lastly, the ‘proto-Aryan’ term ‘Barbarian’ has now grown to full size, and is applied generally to the rude, the fierce, the uncivilised, and those who contumaciously ignore the ‘higher culture.’ [935] This is materialism pure and simple; but all the teaching of modern science points to the material. The mysterious ‘life’ is no longer ‘vital power’; it simply represents the sum total of the energies and protoplasm. ‘Life is a property of protoplasm or bioplasm, and is the latest product of thought and research.’ And I may add that Consciousness, like Will, is a property of life in certain of its forms; a state and condition of cerebral and other atoms; the mere consequence of hitherto unappreciated antecedents. [936] Florus, ii. 3. [937] Bronze, &c. p. 297. From AarbÖg. f. Nord. Oldk. 1879, pl. i. [938] Bronze, &c., p. 298. From Bastian and A. Voss, Die Bronze-Schwerter des K. Mus. zu Berlin, 1878, p. 56. [939] Bronze, &c., p. 299, from Von Sacken and Lindeschmit’s AlterthÜmer. The first finds by Herr Namsauer in 1846–64 were 6,000 articles from 993 graves. [940] I have already noticed the copper Ensis and coppered shield attributed by Virgil (Æn. viii. 74) to the people of Abella, an Italian district under Turnus. [941] Bronze, &c., p. 277. The author also notices the small handles of bronze Swords, ‘a fact which seems to prove that the men who used these swords were but of moderate stature’ (Prehistoric Times, p. 22). He denies their being very small, and he justly believes that the expanding part of the hilt was intended to be within the grasp of the hand. I have already explained that the hand was purposely confined in order to give more momentum to the cut. [942] Bronze, &c., p. 297; taken from Gastaldi, Pellegrini and Gozzadini. The author remarks (p. 287) that some of the bronze daggers from Italy seem also to have had their hilts cast upon the blades in which the rivets were already fixed. This is not unfrequent with the Sword, and the object seems mere imitation; like the Hauranic stone-doors, panelled as if to pass for wood. [943] Bronze, &c., p. 283, we find that the British Museum contains a specimen. Catalog. Italy, p. 28. [944] Bronze, &c., ibid., quoting from Numm. Vet. Ital. Descript., pl. xii. [945] See chap. vi. [946] De Garrul. [947] De Ferro, i. 195. [948] Lib. xliv. 3. Martial also alludes (i. 49; iii. 12, &c.) to the metallic wealth of his native province. [949] Pliny (xxxi. 4, 41) also notices the Salo or River Bilbilis (Xalon); and the Celtiberian town of the same name, now Bombola, the birthplace of the poet Martial, is near Calatayud (Kala’at el-YahÚd = Jew’s Fort), or Job’s Castle. Of the Chalybes I have already spoken. [950] Roman ArchÆology, by Angelo Maio. [951] The words ???ta?, Ga??ta?, G???? (meaning Armati, pugnaces, KÄmpfer, fighters), evidently derive not from Coille, a word, but from the old word Gal (battle), Gala (arms). The name suited their natures; they were never at peace, and their bravery was proverbial: the Greeks called it ?e?t???? ???s?? = Keltic daring. [952] Cladibas or Cladias = gladius. I have noticed the shape when speaking of the Hallstadt finds. [953] PolyÆnus, Strategemata; Dion. Halicar. xiv. chap. 13. [954] Plutarch (De Cam. cap. xxvii.) also arms the Gauls, when attacking the Capitol, with the Kopis. ‘The first to oppose them was Manlius.... Meeting two enemies together, he parried the cut of one who raised a Kopis (??p?da) by hacking off his right hand with a Gladius’ (??f??). I presume that ‘Kopis’ is here used for the pugio, dirk, or shorter sword. Borghesi Œuvres ComplÈtes, vol. ii. pp. 337–387, says: ‘In use and form, in grip and in breadth of blade, the Kopis much resembles our Sciabla, (Sabre).’ But its comparison with the falx and pruning hook and a medal of Pub. Carisius suggest a substantial difference: while the broadsword is edged on the convex side, the Kopis had a sharpened concave. Count Gozzadini, like General A. Pitt-Rivers, compares the Kopis with the Khanjar or Yataghan, and quotes Xenophon (Cyrop. ii. 1, 9; vi. 2, 10) to prove that it was peculiar to Orientals. I have traced the word to the Egyptian Khopsh or Khepsh, and repeat my belief that it is the old Nilotic sickle-blade with a flattened curve. But, as might be expected in the case of so old a word, the weapon to which it was applied may have greatly varied in size and shape. [955] Brennus is evidently a congener of the Welsh brenhin (the king). The Senones have left their name in Illyrian Segna, once a nest of pirates and corsairs, south of Fiume the Beautiful. I shall notice them in a future page. [956] Livy, xxii. 46. [957] Bell. Gall. iii. 13; vii. 22. [958] Lib. x. cap. 32. [959] Lib. v. cap. 30. [960] See chapters viii. and xii. Here the word is evidently applied generically to a straight two-edged broadsword, about 1 mÈtre long. In the Middle Ages the weapon gave rise to many curious varieties, as the Spatha pennata and the Spatha in fuste. [961] According to Vegetius (ii. 15) the Saunion was the light javelin of the Samnites, with a shaft 3½ feet long, and an iron head measuring 5 inches. Thus it would resemble the Roman pilum. But Diodorus evidently means another and a heavier weapon which could hardly be thrown. Meyrick and JÄhns (p. 390) do not solve the difficulty. [962] Lib. iv. 4, § 3. [963] De Bell. Pers. [964] The Northumberland Stone in Montfaucon (vol. iv. part 1, p. 37) shows a Gaul wearing sword and dagger on either side. [965] In AthenÆus, lib. xiv., the celebrated philosopher called the ApamÆan or the Rhodian, a contemporary of Pompey and Cicero, left, amongst other works, one called lang="grc"????? ta?t??? (de Acie instruenda). [966] Lib. vii. cap. 10. It is evident that the Duello did not, as many authors suppose, arise with the Kelts. All we can say is that they may have originated in Europe the sentiment called pundonor and the practice of defending it with the armed hand. The idea was unknown to the classics; and, with the exception, perhaps, of the Arabs, it is still ignored by the civilised Orientals of our day, especially by the Moslems. [967] Lib. ii. caps. 28, 30, and 33. [968] Simply meaning Spearmen. Gaisate = hastatus from Gaisa (gÆsum), the Irish gai, any spear. Isidore (Gloss.) translates ‘Gessum’ by ‘hasta vel jaculum GallicÈ, ????.’ The word survives in the French guisarme, gisarme, &c. The GÆsum probably had a kind of handle and a defence for the hand. [969] Lib. xxii. cap. 46. [970] Lib. xxxviii. 21. [971] The naked bodies and narrow shields are well shown in the battle-scene on the Triumphal Arch of Orange (JÄhns, Plate 29). [972] Borghesi (Tonini’s Rimini, &c., p. 28 and Tables A 3 and B 6) makes one of these gladii a ‘Kopis.’ [973] Lib. v. cap. 30. [974] The cavalry was organised in the Trimarkisia (three marka, or horses) composed of the ‘honestior’ (afterwards the knight), and the clients (squires). The host that attacked Hellas, under Brennus, had 20,400 horsemen to 752,000 foot. [975] The pattern is almost universal. Moorcroft found it in the Himalayas, and I bought ‘shepherd’s plaid’ in Unyamwezi, Central Africa. [976] The first use of tattooing was to harden the skin, a defence against weather. The second (and this we still find throughout Africa) was to distinguish nations, tribes, and families. [977] ‘Galli bracchas deposuerunt et latum clavum sumpserunt.’ Diodorus Sic. (v. 30) has ???a?; in Romaic ????; in Italian braghe, Germ. BrÜche. Our word ‘breech-es’ or ‘Breek-s’ is a double plural; ‘breek’ being the plur. of the A. S. broc, a brogue. Aldus and other old writers mistranslate the bracchÆ by plaid, or upper garment. JÄhns more justly renders sagum by plaid (p. 431). [978] Livy, xxxviii. 24. [979] Italy has declared herself Una. But without considering a multitude of origins, one for almost every province, she is peopled in our modern day by two races, contrasting greatly with each other. The Po is the frontier, dividing the GrÆco-Latin Italians to the south from the Gallic and Frankish Italians (Milanese, Piedmontese, &c.) to the north. The latter, originally Barbari, are the backbone of the modern kingdom: the Southerners are the weak point. [980] Bell. Gall. vi. 24. [981] JÄhns (in his Plates 27–30) unites ‘Kelten und Germanien, Germanien und Kelten.’ [982] De Mor. Germ., cap. 6. [983] So we find the god Tyr or Tuisco (regent of Tuesday), the Monthu or Mars of the North, figured in the Runes as a barbed spear ? (resembling the planetary emblem of Mars). He afterwards became the Sword-god. From the Tyr-rune is derived ? Er (= hÊru, the sword), or Aer, which resembles the Greek ???, and which Jacob Grimm connects with ????, Æs and Eisen (JÄhns, p. 14). [984] The older derivation is from ferrea. JÄhns (p. 407) gives a host of others—Bram (thorn, bramble); Pfriem (punch, awl); Brame (a border, edging); ramen (to aim, strike), &c., &c. [985] Arms, &c., p. 419. [986] Annals, ii. cap. 14. [987] De Mor. G. cap. 6. [988] The steendysser of Denmark, dolmens of France, and cromlechs of England. [989] P. 416, Pl. xxviii. 4. In p. 417 he gives a list of many bronze-finds. [990] Tacit. Annals, ii. 14. [991] Cap. 42 and 6. [992] So the Longobards may be Long-halberts, and the Franks Francisca-men. [993] Vegetius (ii. 15) makes them use ‘gladii majores quas Spathas vocant,’ and Isidore (68, 6) says that the gladii were ‘utraque parte acuti.’ [994] In Scandinavian, the noblest of the Germanic tongues, hjalt; in O. Germ, helza; Ang. S. helt, hielt, and in Mid. Germ. helze, gehilze (JÄhns, p. 419). [995] JÄhns (p. 419) has three kinds of hilts. The oldest is the crescent, noticed above (fig. 293); it is adorned with spirals and various figures. The second, which seems to be more general in the Sahs, or short weapon, has in the place of pommel a crutch or crescent, with the horns more or less curved, and either disunited or joined by a cross-bar. Here again spirals were disposed upon the planes: we shall see them highly developed in the Scandinavian weapons of a later date. The third hilt was a kind of tang, continuing the blade, and fitted with rounded edges for making fast wood, horn, or bone: it had generally a bulge in mid-handle. The pommel proper is little developed in these Swords. [996] ‘Sahs’ seems to have an alliance with the Latin ‘saxum’ (JÄhns, p. 8, quoting Grimm). ‘Hamar’ (hammer) had the same meaning. From ‘sax’ we may probably derive the Zacco-sword of the Emperor Leo (Chronicle): ‘Item fratrem nostrum Ligonem cum zaccone vulneravit.’ The Laws of the Visigoths mention both weapons, long and short: ‘plerosque verÒ scutis, spatis, scramis’ (battle-axes?) ‘.... instructos habuerit.’ ‘Nimith euere saxes’ (take to your knife-swords), said Hengist, and the oaths ‘Meiner Six!’ (by my dirk), and ‘Dunner-Saxen’ (thunder sword) in Lower Saxony, are not forgotten. [997] I have spoken of the Scramasax in chap. v. Demmin (p. 152) and others deduce ‘scrama’ (broadsword) from ‘scamata,’ the line traced on the ground between two Greek combatants(!). Hence, too, he would derive ‘scherma’ and ‘escrime’—fencing. Others prefer ‘scaran’ (to shear), which gave rise to the German ‘schere’ (scissors), and our ‘shears’ and ‘shear-steel.’ The word, however, is evidently a congener of the Germ. ‘schirmen,’ to protect, defend. JÄhns (p. 418) observes that the Sahs varied greatly in size. Some authorities make it a Mihhili Mezzir (muchel knife), a large cultellus. But the Frisian Asega-buch shows it to be a murderous weapon, forbidden to be worn in peace. The finds yield at times a dirk, and at times a broadsword; such, for instance, are the Copenhagen Scramsahs, 90 centimÈtres long, and that of Fronstetten, which, though imperfect, weighed 4·5 lbs. The British Museum contains a fine specimen of the Scramasax with engraved Runes. [998] P. 421. Pl. xxviii. 15. [999] The word is the Ang. Sax. dolc, a wound, which thus gave a name to the weapon that wounded. [1000] Bronze, pp. 261–63. Figs. 329 and 330. [1001] Germ. 6. [1002] JÄhns (p. 439) quotes Asclepiodotus (vii. 3) and Ælian (xviii. 4), who describe the cuneus as Scythian and Thracian, i.e. barbarous. Unfortunately JÄhns also cites the ‘Boar’s head’ of the Laws of Menu (Houghton’s Manava-Dharma Shastra, vii. 187), in the eighth century b.c.; Menu being centuries after Tacitus. I have noticed that the disposal of our chessmen shows the HindÚ form of attack, the infantry in front, the horse and elephants (castles) on either wing, and the Rajah or Commander-in-chief in the centre and not in front. [1003] In its purest form the Standard-bearer stood alone at the apex, as Ingo in King Odo’s battle at Mons Panchei (Montpenssier), a.d. 892. [1004] ‘Quodque prÆcipuum fortitudinis incitamentum est, non casus, nec fortuita conglobatio turmam aut cuneum facit, sed familiÆ et propinquitates’ (Tacit. Germ. 7). [1005] Nat. Hist., iv. 14. [1006] In Mario, 23. [1007] In later times they were carefully cleaned for another object, to show their Runic inscriptions. [1008] Malet’s Introduction to the History of Denmark. [1009] Pliny, iv. 14. Procop. Bell. Vand. i. 1. [1010] In O. Germ. Sper = hasta, lancea; SperilÎn = lanceola, sagitta; Ang. Sax. Sper, Engl. spear; Germ. Speer. The word seems to be a congener of Sparre, spar. Less commonly used is Spiess = hasta, cuspis; Scand. Spjot; O. Germ. Speoz, Spioz; Ang. Sax. spietu; Fr. espiÉ, espiel, espiet, espieu; Ital. spiedo; Engl. spit. It seems to ally with the Lat. spina, and the Germ. Spitze (JÄhns, p. 413). [1011] The peculiar celts, chisels, spear-points, &c., extended over all the peninsula of Jutland, and as far south as Mark Brandenburg (JÄhns, p. 6). [1012] Neither CÆsar nor Tacitus mentions the use of the bow amongst the ancient Gauls and Germans, although the graves yield arrow-heads of stone, bone, and iron. [1013] Dr. Evans, Bronze &c., p. 299. [1014] I reserve Scandinavian weapons for Part II. [1015] Origins of English History (London: Quaritch, 1852). [1016] The Sword amongst the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks will be described at full length in Part II. [1017] These are: No. 1. That Bronze-casting spread from a common centre by conquest or migration. No. 2. That each region discovered the art independently, and made its own implements. No. 3. That the art was discovered and implements were made in one spot, whence commerce disseminated them. No. 4. That the art was diffused from a common centre, but that the implements were constructed in the countries where they were found. [1018] Bronze, &c., p. 475. [1019] Bronze, p. 473. I would notice that upon the subject of ‘Celts’ the learned author joins issue with the peculiar views of M. de Mortillet, before noticed. Bronze, &c., p. 456. [1020] The three divisions are: No. 1. Characterised by flat or slight flanged celts and knife-daggers, found in barrows with stone implements. No. 2. Age of heavy dagger-blades, flanged celts and tanged spear-heads, such as those from Arreton Down. In these two the Sword is unknown. No. 3. Palstaves, socketed celts (introduced from abroad); true socketed spear-heads, Swords, and the variety of tools and weapons found in the hoards of the old bronze-founders. And a great peculiarity in Britain is the absence of nearly all traces of the Later Bronze Period in graves and barrows. [1021] Dr. Evans, Bronze, &c., p. 300, quoting M. Alexandre Bertrand. For the condition of the Ancient Britons during the Bronze Period, see ibid. p. 487.
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