DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12249#0261
IRON MINES IN AFRICA.
225
kind which we now provisionally possess on the subject
of iron, offers on the one hand indications of its infre-
quency, and on the other of diminutive quantity. To
this point also the other proofs converge; and in
discussing the general result of them all, any difficulty
that can arise is not as to whether the Egyptians in the
days, say of the great Diospolitan Dynasties (from 1500
to 1100 B.C.), were acquainted with iron, but as to
what extent they employed it. For, independently of
director evidence, or rather pending and supplementary
to such, we may point to allusions in the Pentateuch*
and the Book of Job referring to its correspondingly
early use in countries with which the Egyptians had
intercourse; and it is not likely that a people so skilled
in art-manufacture, and so capable of forming an esti-
mate of any metallurgic process, were ignorant of this.
Access to the ore would not, if desired, have been
wanting, for the north of Africa is in various places
richly productive of it. In Egypt itself, Sir Gardner
Wilkinson, after a lengthened acquaintance with the
as Kvavog is itself, in Homer at all events, a most doubtful term, and
probably meant several substances, if tbe weight of evidence is in
favour of its standing generically for some deep-coloured enamelling
pigment (Gladstone's Homer, vol. iii. p. 498) ; and I have only ad-
verted here to the difficulties connected with tin hieroglyphically to
illustrate those equally applicable to iron.
* It is needless to say, however, that these are few, in comparison
with the references to copper or its alloys. Movers has made the
estimate thus : — " AViihrend der Pentateuch gegen vierzigmal Kupfer
erwiihnt, gedcnkcn die iiltesten Bestandtheile desselben nur zweimal
des Eisens."— Das PActueiteke Jlterthum, t. iii. ab. 1, p. G7.
Q
225
kind which we now provisionally possess on the subject
of iron, offers on the one hand indications of its infre-
quency, and on the other of diminutive quantity. To
this point also the other proofs converge; and in
discussing the general result of them all, any difficulty
that can arise is not as to whether the Egyptians in the
days, say of the great Diospolitan Dynasties (from 1500
to 1100 B.C.), were acquainted with iron, but as to
what extent they employed it. For, independently of
director evidence, or rather pending and supplementary
to such, we may point to allusions in the Pentateuch*
and the Book of Job referring to its correspondingly
early use in countries with which the Egyptians had
intercourse; and it is not likely that a people so skilled
in art-manufacture, and so capable of forming an esti-
mate of any metallurgic process, were ignorant of this.
Access to the ore would not, if desired, have been
wanting, for the north of Africa is in various places
richly productive of it. In Egypt itself, Sir Gardner
Wilkinson, after a lengthened acquaintance with the
as Kvavog is itself, in Homer at all events, a most doubtful term, and
probably meant several substances, if tbe weight of evidence is in
favour of its standing generically for some deep-coloured enamelling
pigment (Gladstone's Homer, vol. iii. p. 498) ; and I have only ad-
verted here to the difficulties connected with tin hieroglyphically to
illustrate those equally applicable to iron.
* It is needless to say, however, that these are few, in comparison
with the references to copper or its alloys. Movers has made the
estimate thus : — " AViihrend der Pentateuch gegen vierzigmal Kupfer
erwiihnt, gedcnkcn die iiltesten Bestandtheile desselben nur zweimal
des Eisens."— Das PActueiteke Jlterthum, t. iii. ab. 1, p. G7.
Q