INTRODUCTORY.
Having already in a former work attempted the arrangement and description of the Ancient Stone Implements and Ornaments of Great Britain, I am induced to undertake a similar task in connection with those Bronze Antiquities which belong to the period when Stone was gradually falling into disuse for cutting purposes, and Iron was either practically unknown in this country, or had been but partially adopted for tools and weapons.
The duration and chronological position of this bronze-using period will have to be discussed hereafter, but I must at the outset reiterate what I said some eight or ten years ago, that in this county, at all events, it is impossible to fix any hard and fast limits for the close of the Stone Period, or for the beginning or end of the Bronze Period, or for the commencement of that of Iron. Though the succession of these three stages of civilisation may here be regarded as certain, the transition from one to the other in a country of such an extent as Britain—occupied, moreover, as it probably was, by several tribes of different descent, manners, and customs—must have required a long course of years to become general; and even in any particular district the change cannot have been sudden.
There must of necessity have been a time when in each district the new phase of civilisation was being introduced, and the old conditions had not been entirely changed. So that, as I have elsewhere pointed out, the three stages of progress represented by the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Periods, like the three principal colours of the rainbow, overlap, intermingle, and shade off the one into the other, though their succession, so far as Britain and Western Europe are concerned, appears to be equally well defined with that of the prismatic colours.
In thus speaking of a bronze-using period I by no means wish to exclude the possible use of copper unalloyed with tin. There is indeed every ground for believing that in some parts of the world the use of native copper must have continued for a lengthened period before it was discovered that the addition of a small proportion of tin not only rendered it more readily fusible, but added to its elasticity and hardness, and thus made it more serviceable for tools and weapons. Even after the advantages of the alloy over the purer metal were known, the local scarcity of tin may at times have caused so small a quantity of that metal to be employed, that the resulting mixture can hardly be regarded as bronze; or at times this dearth may have necessitated the use of copper alone, either native or as smelted from the ore.
Of this Copper Age, however, there are in Europe but extremely feeble traces, if indeed any can be said to exist. It appears not unlikely that the views which are held by many archÆologists as to the Asiatic origin of bronze may prove to be well founded, and that when the use of copper was introduced into Europe, the discovery had already long been made that it was more serviceable when alloyed with tin than when pure. In connection with this it may be observed that the most important discovery of instruments of copper as yet recorded in the Old World is that which was made at Gungeria in Central India.[1] They consisted of flat celts of what has been regarded as the most primitive type; but with them were found some ornaments of silver, a circumstance which seems to militate against their extreme antiquity, as the production of silver involves a considerable amount of metallurgical skill, and probably an acquaintance with lead and other metals. However this may be, there are reasons for supposing that if a Copper Age existed in the Old World its home was in Asia or the most eastern part of Europe, and not in any western country.
The most instructive instance of a Copper Age, as distinct from one of Bronze, is that afforded by certain districts of North America, in which we find good evidence of a period when, in addition to stone as a material from which tools and weapons were made, copper also was employed, and used in its pure native condition without the addition of any alloy.
The State of Wisconsin[2] alone has furnished upwards of a hundred axes, spear-heads, and knives formed of copper; and, to judge from some extracts from the writings of the early travellers given by the Rev. E. F. Slafter,[3] that part of America would seem to have entered on its Copper Age long before it was first brought into contact with European civilisation, towards the middle of the sixteenth century. It has been thought by several American antiquaries that some at least of these tools and weapons were produced by the process of casting, though the preponderance of opinion seems to be in favour of all of them being shaped by the hammer and not cast. Among others I may mention my friend the Hon. Colonel C. C. Jones, who has examined this question for me, and has been unable to discover any instance of one of these copper tools or weapons having been indisputably cast.
That they were originally wrought, and not cast, is À priori in the highest degree probable. On some parts of the shores of Lake Superior native copper occurs in great abundance, and would no doubt attract the attention of the early occupants of the country. Accustomed to the use of stone, they would at first regard the metal as merely a stone of peculiarly heavy nature, and on attempting to chip it or work it into shape would at once discover that it yielded to a blow instead of breaking, and that in fact it was a malleable stone. Of this ductile property the North American savage availed himself largely, and was able to produce spear-heads with sockets adapted for the reception of their shafts by merely hammering out the base of the spear-head and turning it over to form the socket, in the same manner as is so often employed in the making of iron tools. But though the great majority of the instruments hitherto found, if not all, have been hammered and not cast, it would appear that the process of melting copper was not entirely unknown. Squier and Davis have observed,[4] “that the metal appears to have been worked in all cases in a cold state. This is somewhat remarkable, as the fires upon the altars were sufficiently strong in some instances to melt down the copper implements and ornaments deposited upon them, and the fact that the metal is fusible could hardly have escaped notice.” That it did not altogether escape observation is shown by the evidence of De Champlain,[5] the founder of the city of Quebec. In 1610 he was joining a party of Algonquins, one of whom met him on his barque, and after conversation “tira d’un sac une piÈce de cuivre de la longueur d’un pied qu’il me donna, le quel estoit fort beau et bien franc, me donnant À entendre qu’il en avoit en quantitÉ lÀ ou il l’avoit pris, qui estoit sur le bort d’une riviÈre proche d’un grand lac et qu’ils le prenoient par morceaux, et le faisant fondre le mettoient en lames, et avec des pierres le rendoient uny.”
We have here, then, evidence of a Copper Age,[6] in comparatively modern times, during most of which period the process of fusing the metal was unknown. In course of time, however, this art was discovered, and had not European influences been brought to bear upon the country this discovery might, as in other parts of the world, have led to the knowledge of other fusible metals, and eventually to the art of manufacturing bronze—an alloy already known in Mexico and Peru.[7]
So far as regards the Old World there are some who have supposed that, owing to iron being a simple and not a compound metal like bronze, and owing to the readiness with which it may be produced in the metallic condition from some of its ores, iron must have been in use before copper. Without denying the abstract possibility of this having been the case in some part of our globe, I think it will be found that among the nations occupying the shores of the eastern half of the Mediterranean—a part of the world which may be regarded as the cradle of European civilisation—not only are all archÆological discoveries in favour of the succession of iron to bronze, but even historical evidence supports their testimony.
In the Introductory Chapter of my book on Ancient Stone Implements I have already touched upon this question, on which, however, it will here be desirable farther to enlarge.
The light thrown upon the sub?ject by the Hebrew Scriptures is but small. There is, however, in them frequent mention of most of the metals now in ordinary use. But the word ???????, which in our version is translated brass—a compound of copper and zinc—would be more properly translated copper, as indeed it is in one instance, though there it would seem erroneously, when two vessels of fine copper, precious as gold, are mentioned.[8] In some passages, however, it would appear as if the word would be more correctly rendered bronze than copper, as, for instance, where Moses[9] is commanded to cast five sockets of brass for the pillars to carry the hangings at the door of the tabernacle, which could hardly have been done from a metal so difficult to cast as unalloyed copper. Indeed if tin were known, and there appears little doubt that the word ?????? represents that metal, its use as an alloy for copper can hardly have been unknown. It may, then, be regarded as an accepted fact that at the time when the earliest books of the Hebrew Scriptures were reduced to writing, gold,[10] silver, iron, tin, lead, and brass, or more probably bronze, were known. To what date this reduction to writing is to be assigned is a question into which it would be somewhat out of place here to enter. The results, however, of modern criticism tend to prove that it can hardly be so remote as the fourteenth century before our era.
In the Book of Job, as to the date of which also there is some diversity of opinion, we find evidence of a considerable acquaintance with the metals: “Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.”[11] Lead is also mentioned, but not tin.
Before quitting this part of the subject I ought perhaps to allude to the passage respecting Tubal-Cain,[12] the seventh in descent from Adam, who is mentioned as “an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron,” or a furbisher[13] of every cutting instrument in those metals. This must, however, be regarded as a tradition incorporated in the narrative at the time it was written, and probably with some accessory colouring in connection with the name which Gesenius has suggested may mean scoriarum faber, a maker of dross, and which others have connected with that of Vulcan. Sir Gardner Wilkinson[14] has remarked on this subject that whatever may have been the case in earlier times, “no direct mention is made of iron arms or tools till after the Exodus,” and that “some are even inclined to doubt the barzel (?????????), of the Hebrews being really that metal,” iron.
Movers[15] has observed that in the whole Pentateuch iron is mentioned only thirteen times, while bronze appears no less than forty-four, which he considers to be in favour of the later introduction of iron; as also the fact that bronze, and not iron, was associated with gold and silver in the fittings for the Tabernacle.
For other passages in Scripture relative to the employment of brass or bronze, and iron, among the Jews, the reader may consult an excellent article by the Rev. John Hodgson in the first volume of the ArchÆologia Æliana (1816), “An Inquiry into the Era when Brass was used in purposes to which Iron is now applied.” From this paper I have largely borrowed in subsequent pages.
As to the succession of the two metals, bronze and iron, among the ancient Egyptians, there is a considerable diversity of opinion among those who have studied the subject. Sir Gardner Wilkinson,[16] judging mainly from pictorial representations, thinks that the Egyptians of an early Pharaonic age were acquainted with the use of iron, and accounts for the extreme rarity of actual examples by the rapid decomposition of the metal in the nitrous soil of Egypt. M. Chabas,[17] the author of a valuable and interesting work upon primitive history, mainly as exhibited by Egyptian monuments, believes that the people of Egypt were acquainted with the use of iron from the dawn of their historic period, and upwards of 3000 years b.c. made use of it for all the purposes to which we now apply it, and even prescribed its oxide as a medicinal preparation. M. Mariette,[18] on the contrary, whose personal explorations entitle his opinion to great weight, is of opinion that the early Egyptians never really made use of iron, and seems to think that from some mythological cause that metal was regarded as the bones of Typhon, and was the object of a certain repugnance. M. Chabas himself is, indeed, of opinion that iron was used with extreme reserve, and, so to speak, only in exceptional cases. This he considers to have been partly due to religious motives, and partly to the greater abundance of bronze, which the Egyptians well knew how to mix so as to give it a fine temper. From whatever cause, the discovery of iron or steel instruments among Egyptian antiquities is of extremely rare occurrence; and there are hardly any to which a date can be assigned with any approach to certainty. The most ancient appears to be a curved scimitar-like blade discovered by Belzoni beneath one of the Sphinxes of Karnak, and now in the British Museum.[19] Its date is stated to be about 600 b.c.[20] A wedge of iron appears, however, to have been found in a joint between the stones of the Great Pyramid.[21]
Without in any way disputing the occasional use of iron among the ancient Egyptians, nor the interpretation of the colours red and blue on the tomb of Rameses III. as being intended to represent blades of bronze and iron or steel respectively, I may venture to suggest that the round blue bar,[22] against which butchers are represented as sharpening their knives in some of the pictures in the sepulchres of Thebes, may have been too hastily regarded as a steel instead of as a whetstone of a blue colour. The existence of a steel for the purpose of sharpening seems to imply not only the knowledge of the preparation of the metal and its subsequent hardening, but also of files or of other tools to produce the peculiar striated surface to which the sharpening property of a steel is due. Had such tools been known, it seems almost impossible that no trace of them should have come down to our times. Moreover, if used for sharpening bronze knives, a steel such as at present used would sooner become clogged and unfit for use than if employed for sharpening steel knives.
Lepsius[23] has observed that the pictures of the old Empire do not afford an example of arms painted in blue, the metal of weapons being always painted in red or bright brown. Iron was but little used under the old Empire; copper was employed in its stead where the hardness of iron was not indispensable.
However this may be, it seems admitted on all hands that the use of iron in Egypt in early times was much restricted, probably from some religious motive. May not this have arisen from the first iron there known having been, as it appears to have been in some other countries, of meteoric origin? The Coptic name for iron, ?????? which has been interpreted by Professor Lauth[24] as “the Stone of Heaven,” strongly favours such a view. The resemblance of this term to ???-?-??, the baa of heaven, or celestial iron, has also been pointed out by M. Chabas,[25] who, however, is inclined to consider that steel was so called on account of its reflecting the colour of the sky. If the iron in use among the early Egyptians were meteoric, and its celestial origin acknowledged, both its rarity and its restricted use would be accounted for. The term “bone of Typhon,” as applied to iron, is given by Plutarch on the authority of Manetho, who wrote in the days of the first Ptolemy. It appears to be used only in contrast to the name “bone of Horus,” which, according to the same author, was applied to the loadstone, and it seems difficult to admit any great antiquity for the appellation, or to connect it with a period when iron was at all rare, or its use restricted.
Although the use of iron in Egypt was at an early period comparatively unknown, that of bronze was most extensive. The weapons of war,[26] the tools for various trades, including those of the engraver and sculptor, were all made of that metal, which in its crude form served also as a kind of circulating medium. It appears to have been mainly imported from Asia, some of the principal sources of copper being in the peninsula of Sinai. One of the chief mines was situated at Sarbout-el-Khadem, where both turquoises and copper ore were extracted, and the latter smelted at Wady-Nash. The copper mines of Wady-Magarah are thought to have been worked as early as the second dynasty, upwards of 3000 years b.c.; and in connection with ancient Egyptian mining, it is worthwhile again to cite Agatharchides,[27] whose testimony I have already adduced in my “Ancient Stone Implements,” and who relates that in his time, circa b.c. 100, there were found buried in some ancient gold-mines in Upper Egypt the bronze chisels or wedges (?at??de? ?a????) of the old miners, and who accounts for their being of that metal by the fact that when those mines were wrought, men were in no way acquainted with the use of iron.
In the seventh century b.c., however, iron must have been in general use in Egypt, for on the landing of the Carians and Ionians,[28] who were armed with bronze, an Egyptian, who had never before seen men armed with that metal, ran to Psammetichus to inform him that brazen men had risen from the sea and were wasting the country. As Psammetichus himself is described as wearing a brazen helmet, the arms mentioned would seem to have been offensive rather than defensive.
The source whence the tin, which formed a constituent part of the bronze, was derived, is much more uncertain. Indeed, to judge from M. Chabas’ silence, its name and hieroglyphic are unknown, though from some of the uses to which the metal designated by was applied, it seems possible that it may have been tin.
On the whole, to judge from documentary evidence alone, the question as to the successive use of the different metals in Egypt seems to be excessively obscure, some of them being almost impossible to identify by name or representative sign. If, however, we turn to the actual relics of the past, we find bronze tools and weapons in abundance, while those of iron are extremely scarce, and are either of late date or at best of uncertain age. So strong, indeed, is the material evidence, that the late Mr. Crawfurd,[29] while disputing any general and universal sequence of iron to bronze, confesses that Ancient Egypt seems to offer a case in which a Bronze Age clearly preceded an Iron one, or at least in which cutting instruments of bronze preceded those of iron.
Among the Assyrians iron seems to have been in considerable use at an early date, and to have been exported from that country to Egypt, but knives and long chisels or hatchets of bronze were among the objects found at Tel Sifr, in Southern Babylonia. The earliest bronze image to which a date can be assigned appears to be that on which M. Oppert has read the name of Koudourmapouk, King of the Soumirs and Accads,[30] who, according to M. Lenormant, lived about 2100 b.c. Dr. S. Birch reads the name as Kudurmabug (about 2200 b.c.). Others in the British Museum are referred to Gudea, who reigned about 1700 b.c.
The mythology and literature of ancient Greece and Rome are so intimately connected, that in discussing the evidence afforded by classical writers it will be needless to separate them, but the testimony of both Greek and Latin authors may be taken indiscriminately, though, of course, the former afford the more ancient evidence. I have already cited much of this evidence in the Introductory Chapter of my book on Ancient Stone Implements, mainly with the view of showing the succession of bronze to stone; on the present occasion I have to re-adduce it, together with what corroborative testimony I am able to procure, in order to show that, along the northern shores of the Mediterranean, philology and history agree as to the priority of the use of bronze for cutting instruments to that of iron.
The Greek language itself bears witness to this fact, for the words significant of working in iron are not derived from the name of that metal, but from that of bronze, and the old forms of ?a??e?? and ?a??e?e?? remained in use in connection with the smith and his work long after the blacksmith had to a great extent superseded the bronze-founder and the copper-smith in the fabrication of arms and cutlery.[31] An analogous transition in the meaning of words has been pointed out by Professor Max MÜller. “The Mexicans called their own copper or bronze tepuztli, which is said to have meant originally hatchet. The same word is now used for iron, with which the Mexicans first became acquainted through their intercourse with the Spaniards. Tepuztli then became a general name for metal, and when copper had to be distinguished from iron, the former was called red, the latter black tepuztli.”[32] I am not certain whether Professor Max MÜller still retains the views which he expressed in 1864. He then pointed out[33] that “what makes it likely that iron was not known previous to the separation of the Aryan nations is the fact that its names vary in every one of their languages.” But there is a “name for copper, which is shared in common by Latin and the Teutonic languages, Æs, Æris, Gothic ais, Old High German Êr, Modern German Er-z, Anglo-Saxon Âr, English ore. Like chalkÓs, which originally meant copper, but came to mean metal in general, bronze or brass, the Latin Æs, too, changed from the former to the latter meaning; and we can watch the same transition in the corresponding words of the Teutonic languages.... It is all the more curious, therefore, that the Sanskrit ayas, which is the same word as aes and aiz, should in Sanskrit have assumed the almost exclusive meaning of iron. I suspect, however, that in Sanskrit, too, ayas meant originally the metal, i.e. copper, and that as iron took the place of copper, the meaning of ayas was changed and specified.... In German, too, the name for iron was derived from the older name of copper. The Gothic eisarn, iron, is considered by Grimm as a derivative form of aiz, and the same scholar concludes from this that ‘in Germany bronze must have been in use before iron.’”
But to return to Greece. It is, of course, somewhat doubtful how far the word ?a????, as used by the earliest Greek authors, was intended to apply to unalloyed copper, or to that mixture of copper and tin which we now know as bronze. Mr. Gladstone,[34] who on all questions relating to Homer ought to be one of the best living authorities, regards the word as meaning copper: firstly, because it is always spoken of by Homer as a pure metal along with other pure metals; secondly, on account of the epithets ???????, ????, and ?????, which mean red, bright, and gleaming, being applied to it, and which Mr. Gladstone considers to be inapplicable to bronze; and thirdly, because Homer does not appear to have known anything at all of the fusion or alloying of metals. The second reason he considers further strengthened by the probability that Homer would not represent the walls of the palace of Alcinous as plated with bronze, nor introduce a heaven of bronze among the imposing imagery of battle (Il., xvii. 424). On the whole he concludes that ?a???? was copper hardened by some method, as some think by the agency of water, or else and more probably according to a very simple process, by cooling slowly in the air.[35]
I regret to say that these conclusions appear to me to be founded to some extent on false premises and on more than one misconception. The process of heating copper and then dipping it in water or allowing it slowly to cool, so far from being adapted for hardening that metal, is that which is usually adopted for annealing or softening it. While the plunging into cold water of steel at a red heat has the effect of rendering that metal intensely hard, on copper the reverse is the result; and, as Dr. Percy has observed,[36] it is immaterial whether the cooling after annealing—or restoring its malleability by means of heat—takes place slowly or rapidly. Indeed, one alloy of copper and tin is rendered most malleable by rapid cooling.
It has been stated[37] that bronze of the ancient composition may by cooling it slowly be rendered as hard as steel, and at the same time less brittle, but this statement seems to require confirmation.
According to some[38] the impossibility of hardening bronze like steel by dipping it into water had passed into a proverb so early as the days of Æschylus, but “?a???? af??” has by others been regarded as referring to the impossibility of dyeing metal.[39] Some of the commentators on Hesiod and Homer speak, however, distinctly as to a process of hardening bronze by a dipping or af?, and Virgil[40] represents the Cyclopes as dipping the hissing bronze in water—
“Alii stridentia tingunt
Æra lacu”—
but the idea of bronze being hardened or tempered by this process appears to me to have been based on a false analogy between this metal and steel, or even iron. The French chemist, Geoffroy, thought he had succeeded in imitating the temper of an ancient bronze sword, but no details are given as to whether he added more than the usual proportion of tin to his copper, or whether he hardened the edge with a hammer.
With regard to the other reasons adduced by Mr. Gladstone, it is no doubt true that ?a???? is occasionally spoken of by Homer as a pure metal, mainly, however, it may be argued, in consequence of the same name being applied to both copper and bronze, if not, indeed, like the Latin “Æs,” to copper, bronze, and brass. We find, moreover, that tin, for thus we must translate ?ass?te???, is mentioned by Homer; and as this metal appears in ancient times to have been mainly, though not exclusively, employed for the purpose of alloying copper, we must from this fact infer that the use of bronze was not unknown. In the celebrated description of the fashioning of the shield of Achilles by Vulcan—which may for the moment be assumed to be of the same age as the rest of the Iliad—we find the copper and tin mentioned in juxtaposition with each other; and if it had been intended to represent Hephaistos as engaged in mixing and melting bronze, the description could not have been more complete.[41]
?a???? d? ?? p??? ???e? ?te???a, ?ass?te??? te.
Even the term indomitable may refer to the difficulty of melting copper in its unalloyed condition.
But tin was also used in the pure condition. In the breast-plate of Agamemnon[42] there were ten bands of black ??a???, twelve of gold, and twenty of tin. In his shield[43] were twenty bosses of tin. The cows[44] on the shield of Achilles were made of both gold and tin, and his greaves[45] of soft tin, and the border of the breast-plate of AsteropÆus[46] was formed of glittering tin.
This collocation of various metals, or inlaying them by way of ornament, calls to mind some of the pottery and bronze pins of the Swiss Lake dwellings, which are decorated with inlaid tin, and the remarkable bronze bracelet found at Moerigen,[47] which is inlaid with iron and a yellow brass by way of ornament.
With regard to the epithets red, bright, and gleaming, they are perfectly applicable to bronze in its polished condition, though they ill assort with the popular idea of bronze, which usually assigns to that metal the brown or greenish hues it acquires by oxidation and exposure to atmospheric influences. As a matter of fact, the red colour[48] of copper, though certainly rendered more yellow, is not greatly impaired by an admixture of tin within the proportions now used by engineers, viz. up to about two and a half ounces to the pound, or about 15 per cent. As to the bright and shining properties of the metal, Virgil, when no doubt speaking of bronze swords and shields, makes special mention of their glitter—[49]
“ÆratÆque micant peltÆ, micat Æreus ensis.”
Indeed, the mere fact of the swords of Homer being made of ?a???? is in favour of that metal being bronze, as pure copper would be singularly inapplicable to such a purpose, and certainly no copper sword would break into three or four pieces at a blow instead of being merely bent.[50]
The bending of the points of the spear-heads against the shields of the adversaries is, however, in favour of these weapons having been of copper rather than of bronze.[51]
As to Homer having been unacquainted with the fusion or alloying of metals, it may fairly be urged that without such knowledge it would have been impossible to work so freely as he has described, in gold, silver, and tin; and that the only reason for which Vulcan could have thrown the latter metal into the fire must have been in order to melt it.
Whether steel was designated by the term ??a??? is a matter of considerable doubt, and certainly in later times that word was applied to a substance occasionally used as a blue pigment, not improbably a dark blue carbonate of copper. Assuming the word to mean a metal, the difficulty in regarding it as significant of steel appears in a great measure due to the colour implied by the adjective form ??a?e??, being a dark blue.[52] If, however, it were the custom even in those days to colour steel blue by exposing it, after it had been polished, to a certain degree of heat—as is usually done with watch and clock springs at the present day—the deep blue colour of the sky or sea might well receive such an epithet. That steel of some kind was known in Homeric days is abundantly evident from the process of hardening an axe by dipping it in cold water while heated, which is so graphically described in the Odyssey.
If ??a??? be really steel, we can also understand the epithet black[53] being occasionally applied to it, even though the adjective derived from it had the signification of blue.
According to the Arundelian Marbles, iron was discovered b.c. 1432,[54] or 248 years before the taking of Troy, but though we have occasional mention of this metal and of steel in the Homeric poems, yet weapons and tools of bronze are far more commonly mentioned and described. Trees, for instance, are cut down and wood carved with tools of bronze; and the battle-axe of Menelaus[55] is of excellent bronze with an olive-wood handle, long and well polished.
Before noticing further the early use of iron in Greece, it will be well to see what other authors than Homer say as to the origin and ancient use of bronze in that country.
The name of the principal metal of which it is composed, copper, bears witness to one of the chief sources of its supply having been the island of Cyprus. It would appear that Tamassus in this island was in ancient times a noted mart for this metal, as it is according to Nitzsch and other critics the Temese[56] mentioned in Homer as being resorted to in order to exchange iron for ?a????, which in this as well as some other passages seems to stand for copper and not bronze.
The advantage arising from mixing a proportion of tin with the copper, and thus rendering it at the same time more fusible and harder, must have been known before the dawn of Grecian history.
The accounts given by early Greek writers as to the first discoverer of the art of making bronze by an admixture of copper and tin vary considerably, and thus prove that even in the days when these notices were written the art was of ancient date.
Theophrastus makes Delas, a Phrygian, whom Aristotle[57] regards as a Lydian, to have been the inventor of bronze. Pausanias[58] ascribes the honour of first casting statues in bronze to Rhoecus and Theodorus the Samians, who appear to have lived about 640 b.c. They are also said to have improved the accuracy of casting, but no doubt the process on a smaller scale was practised long before their time. Rhoecus and his colleague are also reported to have discovered the art of casting iron,[59] but no really ancient objects of cast iron have as yet been discovered.
The invention of the metals gold, silver, and copper is also ascribed to the IdÆan Dactyli,[60] or the Telchines, who made the sickle of Chronos[61] and the trident of Poseidon.[62]
Though, as has already been observed, iron and even steel were not unknown in the days of Homer, both seem to have been of considerable rarity, and it is by no means improbable that, as appears to have been the case with the Egyptians, the first iron used by the Greeks was of meteoric origin. I have elsewhere[63] called attention to the possible connection of the Greek name for iron (s?d????) with ?st??, often applied to a shooting-star or meteor, and with the Latin Sidera and the English Star, though it is unsafe to insist too much on mere verbal similarity. In an interesting article on the use of meteoric iron by Dr. L. Beck,[64] of Biebrich on the Rhine, the suggestion is made that the final ???? of s?d???? is a form of the Aryan ais (conf. Æs, Æris). Dr. Beck, however, inclines to the opinion that the recognition of certain meteorites as iron was first made at a time subsequent to the discovery of the means of smelting iron from its ore.
The self-fused mass or disc of iron,[65] s???? a?t???????, which formed one of the prizes at the funeral games of Patroclus, may possibly have been meteoric, but this is very doubtful, as the forging of iron, and the trouble and care it involved, were well known in those days, as is evident from the epithet p?????t?? so often bestowed upon that metal.
For a considerable time after the Homeric period bronze remained in use for offensive weapons, especially for those intended for piercing rather than cutting, such as spears, lances, and arrows, as well as for those which were merely defensive, such as shields, cuirasses, helmets, and greaves. Even swords were also sometimes of bronze, or at all events the tradition of their use was preserved by the poets. Thus we find Euripides[66] speaking of the bronze-speared Trojans, ?a??e????? ?????, and Virgil[67] describing the glitter of the bronze swords of some of the host of Turnus.
Probably, however, the use of the word ?a???? was not restricted to copper or bronze, but also came in time to mean metal in general, and thus extended to iron, a worker in which metal was, as we have already seen, termed a ?a??e??.
The succession of iron to bronze is fully recognised by both Greek and Latin authors. The passage in Hesiod,[68] where he speaks of the third generation of men who had arms of bronze and houses of bronze, who ploughed with bronze, for the black iron did not exist, is already hackneyed; nor is the record of Lucretius[69] less well known:—
“Arma antiqua, manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt,
Et lapides, et item sylvarum fragmina rami, ...
Posterius ferri vis est, Ærisque reperta,
Sed prior Æris erat quam ferri cognitus usus; ...
Inde minutatim processit ferreus ensis,
Versaque in opprobrium species est falcis ahenÆ,
Et ferro coepere solum proscindere terrÆ.”
The difference between the age of Homer and Hesiod in respect to the use of metals is well described by Mr. Gladstone. The former[70] “lived at a time when the use of iron (in Greece) was just commencing, when the commodity was rare, and when its value was very great;” but in the days of Hesiod “iron, as compared with copper, had come to be the inferior, that is to say the cheaper metal,” and the poet “looks back from his iron age with an admiring envy on the heroic period.”
Hesiod gives to Hercules[71] a helmet of steel and a sword of iron, and to Saturn[72] a steel reaping-hook. His remark that at the feast of the gods the withered[73] part of a five-fingered branch should never be cut from the green part by black iron, shows that this metal was in common use, and that for religious ceremonies the older metal bronze retained its place.
Bronze was, however, a favourite metal with the poet, if not indeed in actual use long after iron was known,[74] for Pindar, about b.c. 470, still frequently cites spears and axes made of bronze.
By the time of Herodotus, who wrote before 400 b.c., the use of iron and steel was universal among the Greeks. He instances, as a fact worth recording, that the MassagetÆ,[75] a powerful tribe which occupied the steppes on the east of the Caspian, made no use of iron or silver, but had an abundance of ?a???? and gold, pointing their spears and arrows and forming the heads of their battle-axes with the former metal. Among the Æthiopians,[76] on the contrary, he states that bronze was rarer and more precious than gold; nor was it in use among the Scythians.[77] The Sagartii[78] in the army of Xerxes are mentioned as not carrying arms either of bronze or iron except daggers, as if bronze were still of not unfrequent use.
Strabo,[79] at a much later date, thinks it worth while to record that among the Lusitanians the spears were tipped with bronze.
But certainly some centuries before the time of Herodotus, and probably as early as that of Homer, the Chalybes on the shores of the Euxine practised the manufacture of iron on a considerable scale, and from them came the Greek name for steel, ?a???.[80] DaÏmachus, in the fourth century b.c., records that different sorts of steel are produced among the Chalybes in Sinope, Lydia, and Laconia. That of Sinope was used for smiths’ and carpenters’ tools; that of Laconia for files, drills for iron, stamps, and masons’ tools; and the Lydian kind for files, swords, razors, and knives. In Laconia iron is said to have formed the only currency in the days of Lycurgus.
Taking all the evidence into consideration, there can be no doubt that iron must have been known in Greece some ten or twelve centuries before our era, though, as already observed, it was at that time an extremely rare metal. It also appears that as early as b.c. 500, or even 600, iron or steel was in common use, though bronze had not been altogether superseded for offensive arms such as spear-heads and battle-axes.
The tradition of the earlier use of bronze still, however, remained even in later times, and the preference shown for its employment in religious rites, which I have mentioned elsewhere,[81] is a strong witness of this earlier use. It seems needless again to do more than mention the bronze ploughshare used at the foundation of Tuscan cities, the bronze knives and shears of the Sabine and Roman priests, and the bronze sickles of Medea and Elissa. I must, however, again bring forward the speculations of an intelligent Greek traveller, who wrote in the latter half of the second century of our era, as to the existence of what we should now term a Bronze Age in Greece.
Pausanias[82] relates how Lichas the LacedÆmonian, in the fifth century b.c., discovered the bones of Orestes, which his countrymen had been commanded by an oracle to seek. The Pythia[83] had described the place as one where two strong winds met, where form was opposed to form, and one evil lay upon another. These Lichas recognised in the two bellows of the smith, the hammer opposed to the anvil, and the iron lying on it. Pausanias on this observes that at that time they had already begun to use iron in war, and that if it had been in the days of the heroes it would have been bronze and not iron designated by the oracle as the evil, for in their days all arms were of bronze. For this he cites Homer as his authority, who speaks of the bronze axe of Pisander, and the arrow of Meriones. A farther argument he derives from the spear of Achilles, laid up in the temple of Minerva at Phaselis, and the sword of Memnon in that of Æsculapius at Nicomedia, which is entirely of bronze, while the ferrule and point of his spear are also of that metal.
The spear-head which lay with the bones of Theseus[84] in the Isle of Scyros was also of bronze, and probably the sword likewise. There are no works of Latin authors of a date nearly so remote as that of the earlier Greek writers, and long before the days of Ennius, iron was in general use in Italy. If the Articles of Peace which “Porsena, King of the Tuscans, tendered unto the people of Rome” were as Pliny[85] represents them, the Romans must even in those early days have had iron weapons, for they were forbidden the use of that metal except for tilling the ground. In b.c. 224 the Isumbrian Gauls who fought with Flaminius were already in possession of iron swords, the softness and flexibility of which led to the discomfiture of their owners. The Romans themselves seem but to have been badly armed so far as swords were concerned until the time of the Second Punic War, about b.c. 200, when they adopted the Spanish sword, and learnt the method of preparing it. Whether the modern Toledo and Bilbao blades are legitimate descendants of these old weapons we need not stop to inquire. In whatever manner the metal was prepared, so thoroughly was iron identified with the sword in classical times that ferrum and gladius were almost synonyms.
Pliny mentions that the best steel used in Rome was imported from China, a country in which copper or bronze swords are said to have been in use in the days of Ki,[86] the son of Yu, b.c. 2197-48, and those of iron under Kung-Kia, b.c. 1897-48, so that there also history points to a Bronze Age. But this by the way.
Looking at the fact that iron and steel were in such general use at Rome during the period of her wars in Western Europe, we may well believe that had any of the tribes with which the Roman forces came in contact been armed with bronze, such an unusual circumstance could hardly have escaped record. In the Augustan age the iron swords of Noricum were in great repute, and farther north in Germany, though iron did not abound, it was, according to Tacitus, used for spears and swords. The Catti had the metal in abundance, but among the Aestii, on the right coast of the Baltic, it was scarce. The Cimbrians in the first century b.c. had, according to Plutarch,[87] iron breast-plates, javelins, and large swords.
The Gauls of the North of France had in the time of Julius CÆsar[88] large iron mines which they worked by tunnelling; the bolts of their ships were made of that metal, and they had even chain cables of iron. The Britons of the South of England who were in such close communication with the opposite coast of Gaul must have had an equal acquaintance with iron. CÆsar mentions ingots or rings of iron as being used for money, and observes that iron is obtained on the sea-coast, but in small quantities, and adds that bronze was imported.[89] Strabo includes iron, as well as gold, silver, and corn, among the products of Britain. In Spain, as already mentioned, iron had long been known, so that from the concurrent testimony of several historians we may safely infer that in the time of Julius CÆsar, when this country was first exposed to Roman influences, it had already, like the neighbouring countries to the south, passed from the Bronze into the Iron Age.
Notwithstanding all this historical testimony in favour of the prior use of bronze to that of iron, there have been not a few authors who have maintained that the idea of a succession of stone, bronze, and iron is delusive when applied to Western Europe. Among these was the late Mr. Thomas Wright, who has gone so far as to express[90] “a firm conviction that not a bit of bronze which has been found in the British Islands belongs to an older date than that at which CÆsar wrote that the Britons obtained their bronze from abroad, meaning of course from Gaul.” “In fact these objects in bronze were Roman in character and in their primary origin.” As in the same page he goes on to show that two hundred years before Christ the swords of the Gauls were made of iron, and as his contentions have already been met by Sir John Lubbock,[91] and will, I think, be effectually disposed of by the facts subsequently to be mentioned in this volume, it seems needless to dwell on Mr. Wright’s opinions. I may, however, mention that,[92] while denying the antiquity of British, German, and Scandinavian weapons and tools of bronze, he admits that in Greece and Italy that metal was for a long period the only one employed for cutting instruments, as iron was not known in Greece until a comparatively late date.
About one hundred and thirty years ago,[93] in 1751, a discussion as to the date of bronze weapons took place among the members of the AcadÉmie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris, on the occasion of some bronze swords, a spear-head, and other objects being found near Gannat, in the Bourbonnais. Some antiquaries regarded them as weapons made for use; others as merely made for show. The Count de Caylus considered that the swords were Roman, though maintaining that copper or bronze must have been in earlier use than iron. LÉvesque de la RavaliÈre maintained, on the contrary, that neither the Greeks, Romans, Gauls, nor Franks had ever made use of copper or bronze in their swords. The AbbÉ BarthÉlemy showed from ancient authors that the earliest arms of the Greeks were of bronze; that iron was only introduced about the time of the siege of Troy; and that in later times among the Romans there was no mention of bronze having been used for weapons of offence, and therefore that these swords were not Roman. Strangely enough, he went on to argue that they were Frankish, and of the time of Childeric. Had he been present at the opening of the tomb of that monarch in 1653 he would, however, have seen that he had an iron sword.[94]
A still warmer discussion than any which has taken place in England or France, one, in fact, almost amounting to an international war of words, has in more recent times arisen between some of the German antiquaries and those of the Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden.
So early as 1860[95] my friend Dr. Ludwig Lindenschmit, of Mainz, had commenced his attack on “the so-called Bronze Period,” and shown a disposition to regard all bronze antiquities of northern countries as of Italian origin, or, if made in the countries where found, as mere homely imitations of imported articles. Not content with this, he in 1875[96] again mustered his forces and renewed the campaign in even a more formal manner. He found a formidable ally in Dr. Hostmann, whose comments on Dr. Hans Hildebrand’s “Heathen Period in Sweden” are well worth the reading, and contain a vast amount of interesting information.
Dr. Hostmann’s method of dealing with Dr. Hans Hildebrand brought Dr. Sophus MÜller[97] to the rescue, with whom Dr. Lindenschmit[98] at once grappled. Shortly after Dr. Hostmann[99] again appears upon the scene, and before engaging with Dr. Sophus MÜller goes so far as to argue that while Greek swords of iron are known to belong to the eighth century B.C., no bronze sword of that country can with safety be assigned to an earlier date than the sixth century, and, indeed, these may have been only weapons of parade, or possibly funereal offerings in lieu of efficient swords. Rector Genthe[100] also engages in the fight upon the same side.
These three antagonists bring Sophus MÜller[101] again to the front, and as one great argument of his opponents was that bronze objects could not be produced with the finish and ornamentation which is found upon them without the use of iron and steel tools, he brings forward an official document signed by four authorities in the museum at Copenhagen, and stating that precisely similar ornamentation to the spirals, zigzags, and punched lines which occur on Scandinavian bronze antiquities had been produced in their presence by a workman using bronze tools only on a plate of bronze. Both plate and tools were of the same alloy, viz. 9 of copper to 1 of tin.
On this a final charge is made by Professor Hostmann[102] and Dr. Lindenschmit, the former of whom produces a kind of affidavit from the late director of the Polytechnic School at Hanover and the court medallist of the same town, to the effect that certain kinds of punched work cannot be produced with bronze punches, and the editors of the Archiv think it best to close the discussion after Dr. Lindenschmit’s final retort.
I have not thought it worth while to enter into all the details of this controversy, as even to summarise them would occupy more room than I could spare. It seems to me, however, that a considerable amount of misconception must have existed in the minds of some of the disputants, both as to the accepted meaning of the term Bronze Age, as applied not chronologically, but to a certain stage of civilisation, and as to the limitation of the objects which can with propriety be referred to that age. No antiquary of experience will deny that many bronze ornaments, and even some bronze weapons, remained in use long after iron and even steel were known, any more than he would deny that the use of stone for certain purposes continued not only after bronze was known, but even after iron and steel were in general use, and, in fact, up to the present time, not only in barbarian but in civilised countries. Our flint strike-a-lights and our burnishers are still of much the same character as they were some thousands of years ago, and afford convincing instances of this persistent use.
The real question at issue is not whether any bronze weapons co-existed with those of iron and steel in Western Europe, but whether any of them were there in use at a period when iron and steel were unknown. Moreover, it is not a question as to whence the knowledge of bronze was derived, nor whether at the time the Scandinavians or Britons were using bronze for their tools and weapons, the inhabitants of Greece and Italy were already acquainted with iron and steel; but it is a question whether in each individual country there arrived a time when bronze came into use and for certain purposes superseded stone, while iron and steel were practically unknown.
This is a question to be solved by evidence, though in the nature of things that evidence must to some extent be of a negative character. When barrow after barrow is opened, and weapons of bronze and stone only are found accompanying the interments, and not a trace of iron or steel; when hoards of rough metal and broken bronze, together with the moulds of the bronze-founder and some of his stock-in-trade, are disinterred, and there is no trace of an iron tool among them—the presumption is strong that at the time when these men and these hoards were buried iron was not in use. When, moreover, by a careful examination of the forms of bronze instruments we can trace a certain amount of development which is in keeping with the peculiar properties of bronze and not with those of iron, and we can thus to some extent fix a kind of chronological succession in these forms, the inference is that this evolution of form, which must have required a considerable amount of time, took place without its course being affected by any introduction of a fresh and qualifying influence in the shape of iron tools and weapons.
When, however, in various countries we find interments and even cemeteries in which bronze and iron weapons and instruments are intermingled, and the forms of those in bronze are what we have learnt from other sources to regard as the latest, while the forms in iron are not those for which that metal is best adapted, but are almost servile copies of the bronze instruments found with them, the proof of the one having succeeded the other is almost absolutely conclusive.
The lessons taught by such cemeteries as that at Hallstatt, in Austria, and by our own Late Celtic interments, such as those at Arras, in Yorkshire, are of the highest importance in this question.
It is not, however, to be supposed that even in countries by no means geographically remote from each other the introduction either of iron or bronze must of necessity have taken place at one and the same chronological period. Near the shores of the Mediterranean the use of each metal no doubt prevailed far earlier than in any of the northern countries of Europe; and though the knowledge of metals probably spread from certain centres, its progress can have been but slow, for in each part of Europe there appears to have been some special development, particularly in the forms of bronze instruments, and there is no absolute uniformity in their types extending over any large area. In each country the process of manufacture was carried on, and though some commerce in tools and arms of bronze no doubt took place between neighbouring tribes, yet as a rule there are local peculiarities characteristic of special districts.
So marked are these that a practised archÆologist can in almost all cases, on inspection of a group of bronze antiquities, fix with some degree of confidence the country in which they were found. To this rule Britain offers no exception, and though some forms of instruments were no doubt imported, yet, as will subsequently be seen, our types are for the most part indigenous.
As to the ornamentation of bronze by bronze tools, I have seen none in this country on objects which I should refer to the Bronze Age but what could have been effected by means of bronze punches, of which indeed examples have been discovered in bronze-founders’ hoards in France,[103] and what are probably such also in Britain. Such ornamentation is, however, simple compared with that on many of the Danish forms, and yet I have seen the complicated Scandinavian ornaments accurately and sharply reproduced by Dr. Otto Tischler, by means of bronze tools only, on bronze of the ordinary ancient alloy.
But even supposing that iron and steel were known during some part of the so-called Bronze Age, I do not see in what manner it would affect the main features of the case or the interest attaching to the bronze objects which I am about to describe. “De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio” is a maxim of some weight in archÆology as well as in law; and in the absence of iron and all trace of its influence, it matters but little whether it was known or not, except in so far as a neglect of its use would argue some want of intelligence on the part of those who did not avail themselves of so useful a metal. It will be seen hereafter that some of the objects described in these pages actually do belong to an Iron Period, and nothing could better illustrate the transition of one Period into another, or the overlapping of the Bronze Age upon that of Iron, than the fact that in these pages devoted to the Bronze Period I must of necessity describe many objects which were still in use when iron and steel were superseding bronze, in the same manner as in my “Ancient Stone Implements” I was forced to describe many forms, such as battle-axes, arrow-heads, and bracers, which avowedly belonged to the Bronze Period.
A point which is usually raised by those who maintain the priority of the use of iron to that of bronze is, that inasmuch as it is more readily oxidized and dissolved by acids naturally present in the soil, iron may have disappeared, and indeed has done so, while bronze has been left; so that the absence of iron as an accompaniment to all early interments counts for nothing. Professor Rolleston,[104] in a paper on the three periods known as the Iron, the Bronze, and the Stone Ages, has well dealt with this point; and observes that in some graves of the Bronze Period the objects contained are incrusted with carbonate of lime, which would have protected any iron instrument of the Bronze Period as well as it has done those of Saxon times. Not only are the iron weapons discovered in Saxon cemeteries often in almost perfect preservation, but on the sites of Roman occupation whole hoards of iron tools have been found but little injured by rust. The fact that at Hallstatt and other places in which graves have been examined belonging to the transitional period, when both iron and bronze were in use together, the weapons and tools of iron, though oxidized, still retain their form and character as completely as those in bronze, also affords strong ground for believing that had iron been present with bronze in other early interments it would also have been preserved. The importance attaching to the reputed occurrence of bronze swords with Roman coins as late as the time of Magnentius cannot be better illustrated than by a discovery of my own in the ancient cemetery of Hallstatt. In company with Sir John Lubbock I was engaged in opening a grave in which we had come to an interment of the Early Iron Age, accompanied by a socketed celt and spear-heads of iron, when amidst the bones I caught sight of a thin metallic disc of a yellowish colour which looked like a coin. Up to that time no coin had ever been found in any one of the many hundred graves which had been examined, and I eagerly picked up this disc. It proved to be a “sechser,” or six-kreutzer piece, with the date 1826, which by some means had worked its way down among the crevices in the stony ground, and which from its appearance had evidently been buried some years. Had this coin been of Roman date it might have afforded an argument for bringing down the date of the Hallstatt cemetery some centuries in the chronological scale. As it is, it affords a wholesome caution against drawing important inferences from the mere collocation of objects when there is any possibility of the apparent association being only due to accident.
In further illustration of the succession of the three Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron in Western Europe, I might go on to cite cases of the actual superposition of the objects of one age over those of another, such as has been observed in several barrows and in the well-known instance of the cone of La TiniÈre, in the Lake of Geneva, recorded by Morlot.
It will, however, be thought that enough, if not more than enough, has already been said on the general question of a Bronze Age in a book particularly devoted to the weapons and instruments of bronze found in the British Isles. It is now time to proceed with the examination and description of their various forms; and in doing this I propose to treat separately, so far as possible, the different classes of instruments intended each for some special purpose, and at the same time to point out their analogies with instruments of the same character found in other parts of Europe. Their chronological sequence so far as it can be ascertained, the position in time of the Bronze Period of Britain and Ireland, and the sources from which our bronze civilisation was derived, will be discussed in a concluding chapter.
I begin with the instrument of the most common occurrence, the so-called celt.
