Part II.

THE

BOOK OF THE SWORD

LONDON: PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE

AND PARLIAMENT STREET

THE

BOOK OF THE SWORD

BY

RICHARD F. BURTON

MAÎTRE D’ARMES (BREVETÉ)

[Illustration]

_WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_

London

CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1884

[_All rights reserved_]

‘He that hath no Sword (-knife = μάχαιρα), let him sell his

garment and buy one.’ _St. Luke_ xxii. 36.

‘_Solo la spada vuol magnificarsi._’

(Nothing is high and awful save the Sword.)

_Lod. della Vernaccia_, A.D. 1200.

‘But, above all, it is most conducive to the greatness of

empire for a nation to profess the skill of arms as its

principal glory and most honourable employ.’

BACON’S _Advancement of Learning_, viii. 3.

‘The voice of every people is the Sword

That guards them, or the Sword that beats them down.’

TENNYSON’S _Harold_.

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| MY OLD AND DEAR COLLEGE FRIEND |

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| ALFRED BATE RICHARDS |

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| WHO |

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| IN YEARS GONE BY |

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FOREWORD.

‘I wanted a book on the Sword, not a treatise on Carte and Tierce,’

said the Publisher, when, some years ago, my earliest manuscript was

sent to him.

It struck me then and there that the Publisher was right. Consequently

the volume was re-written after a more general and less professional

fashion.

I have only one wish that reader and reviewer can grant: namely, a fair

field and no favour for certain ‘advanced views’ of Egyptology. It

is my conviction that this study, still in its infancy, will greatly

modify almost all our preconceived views of archæological history.

RICHARD F. BURTON.

TRIESTE: _November 20, 1883_.

INTRODUCTION.

The history of the Sword is the history of humanity. The ‘White Arm’

means something more than the ‘oldest, the most universal, the most

varied of weapons, the only one which has lived through all time.’

He, she, or it—for the gender of the Sword varies—has been worshipped

with priestly sacrifices as a present god. Hebrew revelation represents

the sharp and two-edged Sword going out of the mouth of the King of

Kings, and Lord of Lords. We read of a ‘Sword of God, a holy Sword,’

the ‘Sword of the Lord and of Gideon’; and ‘I came not to send peace

but a Sword,’ meaning the warfare and martyrdom of man.

On a lower plane the Sword became the invention and the favourite arm

of the gods and the demi-gods: a gift of magic, one of the treasures

sent down from Heaven, which made Mulciber (‘Malik Kabír,’ the great

king) divine, and Voelunder, Quida, Galant, or Wayland Smith a hero.

It was consecrated to the deities, and was stored in the Temple and in

the Church. It was the ‘key of heaven and hell’: the saying is, ‘If

there were no Sword, there would be no law of Mohammed’; and the Moslem

brave’s highest title was ‘Sayf Ullah’—Sword of Allah.

Uniformly and persistently personal, the Sword became no longer an

abstraction but a Personage, endowed with human as well as superhuman

qualities. He was a sentient being who spoke, and sang, and joyed, and

grieved. Identified with his wearer he was an object of affection, and

was pompously named as a well-beloved son and heir. To surrender the

Sword was submission; to break the Sword was degradation. To kiss the

Sword was, and in places still is, the highest form of oath and homage.

Lay on our royal Sword your banished hands

says King Richard II. So Walther of Aquitaine:—

Contra Orientalem prostratus corpore partem

Ac nudum retinens ensem hac cum voce precatur.

The Sword killed and cured; the hero when hopeless fell upon his Sword;

and the heroine, like Lucretia and Calphurnia, used the blade standing.

The Sword cut the Gordian knot of every difficulty. The Sword was the

symbol of justice and of martyrdom, and accompanied the wearer to the

tomb as well as to the feast and the fight. ‘Lay on my coffin a Sword,’

said dying Heinrich Heine, ‘for I have warred doughtily to win freedom

for mankind.’

From days immemorial the Queen of Weapons, a creator as well as a

destroyer, ‘carved out history, formed the nations, and shaped the

world.’ She decided the Alexandrine and the Cæsarian victories which

opened new prospects to human ken. She diffused everywhere the bright

lights and splendid benefits of war and conquest, whose functions are

all important in the formative and progressive processes. It is no

paradox to assert _La guerre a enfanté le droit_: without War there

would be no Right. The cost of life, says Emerson, the dreary havoc of

comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas it opens of Eternal Law

reconstructing and uplifting society; it breaks up the old horizon, and

we see through the rifts a wider view.

War, again, benefits society by raising its tone above the ineffable

littleness and meanness which characterise the every-day life of the

many. In the presence of the Great Destroyer, petty feuds and miserable

envy, hatred, and malice stand hushed and awe-struck. Very hollow in

these days sounds Voltaire’s banter on War when he says that a king

picks up a parcel of men who have nothing to do, dresses them in blue

cloth at two shillings a yard, binds their hats with coarse white

worsted, turns them to the right and left, and marches them away to

glory.

The Sword and only the Sword raised the worthier race to power upon

the ruins of impotent savagery; and she carried in her train, from

time immemorial, throughout the civilised world, Asiatic Africa,

Asia, and Europe, the arts and the sciences which humanise mankind.

In fact, whatever apparent evil the Sword may have done, she worked

for the highest ultimate good. With the Arabs the Sword was a type of

individuality. Thus Shanfara, the fleet-foot, sings in his _Lamiyyah_,

(L-poem):—

Three friends: the Heart no fear shall know,

The sharp white Sword, the yellow Bow.

Zayd bin Ali boasts, like El-Mutanabbi:—

The wielded Sword-blade knows my hand,

The Spear obeys my lusty arm.

And Ziyád El-Ajam thus writes the epitaph of El-Mughayrah: ‘So died he,

after having sought death between the spear-point and the Sword-edge.’

This ‘Pundonor’ presently extended westward. During the knightly ages

the ‘good Sword’ of the Paladin and the Chevalier embodied a new

faith—the Religion of Honour, the first step towards the religion of

humanity. These men once more taught the sublime truth, the splendid

doctrine known to the Stoics and the Pharisees, but unaccountably

neglected in later creeds:—

Do good, for Good is good to do.

Their recklessness of all consequences soared worlds-high above the

various egotistic systems which bribe man to do good for a personal and

private consideration, to win the world, or to save his soul. Hence

Aristotle blamed his contemporaries, the Spartans: ‘They are indeed

good men, but they have not the supreme consummate excellence of loving

all things worthy, decent and laudable, purely as such and for their

own sakes; nor of practising virtue for no other motive but the sole

love of her own innate beauty.’ The ‘everlasting Law of Honour binding

on all and peculiar to each,’ would have thoroughly satisfied the

Stagirite’s highest aspirations.

In knightly hands the Sword acknowledged no Fate but that of freedom

and free-will; and it bred the very spirit of chivalry, a keen personal

sentiment of self-respect, of dignity, and of loyalty, with the noble

desire to protect weakness against the abuse of strength. The knightly

Sword was ever the representative idea, the present and eternal symbol

of all that man most prized—courage and freedom. The names describe

her quality: she is Joyeuse, and La Tisona; he is Zú ’l-Fikár (sire of

splitting) and Quersteinbeis, biter of the mill-stone. The weapon was

everywhere held to be the best friend of bravery, and the worst foe

of perfidy; the companion of authority, and the token of commandment;

the outward and visible sign of force and fidelity, of conquest and

dominion, of all that Humanity wants to have and wants to be.

The Sword was carried by and before kings; and the brand, not the

sceptre, noted their seals of state. As the firm friend of the

crown and of the ermine robe, it became the second fountain of

honour. Amongst the ancient Germans even the judges sat armed on the

judgment-seat; and at marriages it represented the bridegroom in his

absence. Noble and ennobling, its touch upon the shoulder conferred the

prize of knighthood. As ‘bakhshish’ it was, and still is, the highest

testimony to the soldier’s character; a proof that he is ‘brave as

his sword-blade.’ Its presence was a moral lesson; unlike the Greeks,

the Romans, and the Hebrews, Western and Southern Europe, during its

chivalrous ages, appeared nowhere and on no occasion without the Sword.

It was ever ready to leap from its sheath in the cause of weakness and

at the call of Honour. Hence, with its arrogant individuality, the

Sword still remained the ‘all-sufficient type and token of the higher

sentiments and the higher tendencies of human nature.’

In society the position of the Sword was remarkable. ‘Its aspect was

brilliant; its manners were courtly; its habits were punctilious, and

its connections were patrician.’ Its very vices were glittering; for

most of them were the abuses which could not but accompany its uses.

It bore itself haughtily as a victor, an arbitrator; and necessarily

there were times when its superlative qualities showed corresponding

defects. Handled by the vile it too often became, in the ‘syllogism of

violence,’ an incubus, a blusterer, a bully, a tyrant, a murderer, an

assassin, in fact ‘death’s stamp’; and under such conditions it was a

‘corruption of the best.’ But its lapses were individual and transient;

its benefits to Humanity were general and ever-enduring.

The highest period of the Sword was the early sixteenth century, that

mighty landmark separating the dark Past from the brilliant Present

of Europe. The sudden awaking and excitement of man’s mind, produced

by the revival of learning and the marriage-union of the West with

the East; by the discovering of a new hemisphere, the doubling of the

world; by the so-called Reformation, a northern protest against the

slavery of the soul; by the wide spread of the printing-press, which

meant knowledge; and, simultaneously, by the illumination of that

electric spark generated from the contact of human thought, suddenly

changed the status of the Sword. It was no longer an assailant, a

slaughterer: it became a defender, a preserver. It learned to be shield

as well as Sword. And now arose swordsmanship proper, when the ‘Art of

Arms’ meant, amongst the old masters, the Art of Fence. The sixteenth

century was its Golden Age.

At this time the Sword was not only the Queen of Weapons, but the

weapon paramount between man and man. Then, advancing by slow,

stealthy, and stumbling steps, the age of gunpowder, of ‘villanous

saltpetre,’ appeared upon the scene of life. Gradually the bayonet, a

modern modification of the pike, which again derives from the savage

spear, one of the earliest forms of the _arme blanche_, ousted the

Sword amongst infantry because the former could be combined with

the fire-piece. A century afterwards cavalrymen learned, in the

Federal-Confederate war, to prefer the revolver and repeater, the

breech-loader and the reservoir-gun, to the sabre of past generations.

It became an axiom that in a cavalry charge the spur, not the Sword,

gains the day. By no means a unique, nor even a singular process of

progress, is this return towards the past, this falling back upon

the instincts of primitive invention, this recurrence to childhood:

when the science of war reverted to ballistics it practically revived

the practice of the first ages, and the characteristic attack of

the savage and the barbarian who, as a rule, throw their weapons.

The cannon is the ballista, and the arblast, the mangonel, and

the trebuchet, worked not by muscular but by chemical forces. The

torpedo is still the old, old petard; the spur of the ironclad is the

long-disused embolon, rostrum, or beak; and steam-power is a rough,

cheap substitute for man-power, for the banks of oarsmen, whose work

had a delicacy of manipulation unknown to machinery, however ingenious.

The armed nations, which in Europe are again becoming the substitutes

for standing armies, represent the savage and barbarous stages of

society, the proto-historic races, amongst which every man between

the ages of fifteen and fifty is a man-at-arms. It is the same in

moral matters; the general spread of the revolutionary spirit, of

republicanism, of democratic ideas, of communistic, socialistic, and

nihilistic rights and claims now acting so powerfully upon society

and upon the brotherhood of nations, is a re-dawning of that early

day when the peoples ruled themselves, and were not yet governed by

priestly and soldier kings. It is the same even in the ‘immaterials.’

The Swedenborgian school, popularly known by the trivial name

_Spiritualism_, has revived magic, and this ‘new motor force,’ for such

I call it, has resurrected the Ghost, which many a wise head supposed

to have been laid for ever.

The death-song of the Sword has been sung, and we are told that ‘Steel

has ceased to be a gentleman.’[1] Not so! and by no means so. These

are mere insular and insulated views, and England, though a grand

figure, the mother of nations, the modern Rome, is yet but a fraction

of the world. The Englishman and, for that matter, the German and

the Scandinavian, adopted with a protest, and right unwillingly,

swordsmanship proper—that is, rapier and point, the peculiar and

especial weapon, offensive and defensive, of Southern Europe, Spain,

Italy, and France. During the most flourishing age of the Sword it is

rare to find a blade bearing the name of an English maker, and English

inscriptions seldom date earlier than the eighteenth century. The

reason is evident. The Northerners hacked with hangers, they hewed with

hatchets, and they cut with cutlasses because the arm suited their bulk

and stature, weight and strength. But such weapons are the brutality

of the Sword. In England swordsmanship is, and ever was, an exotic;

like the sentiment, as opposed to the knowledge, of Art, it is the

property of the few, not of the many; and, being rare, it is somewhat

‘un-English.’

But the case is different on the continent of Europe. Probably at no

period during the last four centuries has the Sword been so ardently

studied as it is now by the Latin race in France and Italy. At no time

have the schools been so distinguished for intellectual as well as for

moral proficiency. The use of the foil ‘bated’ and ‘unbated’ has once

more become quasi-universal. A duello, in the most approved fashion of

our ancestors, was lately proposed (September 1882) by ten journalists

of a Parisian paper, to as many on the staff of a rival publication.

Even the softer sex in France and Italy has become cunning of fence;

and women are among the most prosperous pupils of the _salles d’armes_.

Witness, for instance, the ill-fated Mdlle. Feyghine of the Théâtre

Français, so celebrated for her skill in ‘the carte and the tierce and

the reason demonstrative.’

Nor is the cause of this wider diffusion far to seek. In the presence

of arms of precision, the Sword, as a means of offence and defence,

may practically fall for a time into disuse. It may no longer be the

arm paramount or represent an idea. It may have come down from its

high estate as tutor to the noble and the great. Yet not the less it

has, and will ever have, its work to do. The Ex-Queen now appears as

instructress-general in the art of arms. As the mathematic is the basis

of all exact science, so Sword-play teaches the soldier to handle every

other weapon. This is well known to Continental armies, in which each

regiment has its own fencing establishment and its _salle d’armes_.

Again, men of thought cannot ignore the intrinsic value of the Sword

for stimulating physical qualities. _Ce n’est pas assez de roidir

l’âme, il faut aussi roidir les muscles_, says Montaigne, who also

remarks of fencing that it is the only exercise wherein _l’esprit s’en

exerce_. The best of callisthenics, this energetic educator teaches the

man to carry himself like a soldier. A compendium of gymnastics, it

increases strength and activity, dexterity and rapidity of movement.

Professors calculate that one hour of hard fencing wastes forty ounces

by perspiration and respiration. The foil is still the best training

tool for the consensus of eye and hand; for the judgment of distance

and opportunity; and, in fact, for the practice of combat. And thus

swordsmanship engenders moral confidence and self-reliance while it

stimulates a habit of resource; and it is not without suggesting, even

in the schools, that ‘curious, fantastic, very noble generosity proper

to itself alone.’

And now when the vain glory of violence has passed away from the Sword

with the customs of a past age, we can hardly ignore the fact that

the manners of nations have changed, not for the best. As soon as the

Sword ceased to be worn in France, a Frenchman said of his compatriots

that the ‘politest people in Europe had suddenly become the rudest.’

That gallant and courteous bearing, which in England during the early

nineteenth century so charmed the ‘fiery and fastidious Alfieri’

lingers only amongst a few. True the swash-buckler, the professional

duellist, has disappeared. But courtesy and punctiliousness, the

politeness of man to man, and respect and deference of man to

woman—that _Frauencultus_, the very conception of the knightly

character—have to a great extent been ‘improved off.’ The latter

condition of society, indeed, seems to survive only in the most

cultivated classes of Europe; and, popularly, amongst the citizens

of the United States, a curious oasis of chivalry in a waste of bald

utilitarianism—preserved not by the Sword but by the revolver. Our

England has abolished the duello without substituting aught better for

it: she has stopped the effect and left the cause.

So far I have written concerning the Sword simply to show that my work

does not come out ‘a day after the fair’; and that there is still a

powerful vitality in the heroic Weapon. The details of such general

statements will be established and developed in the following pages.

It is now advisable to introduce this volume to the reader.

During the ‘seventies’ I began, with a light heart, my Book of the

Sword, expecting to finish it within a few months. It has occupied me

as many years. Not only study and thought, but travel and inspection,

were found indispensable; a monograph on the Sword and its literature

involved visiting almost all the great armouries of continental

Europe, and a journey to India in 1875–6. The short period of months

served only to show that a memoir of the Sword embraces the annals of

the world. The long term of years has convinced me that to treat the

subject in its totality is impossible within reasonable limits.

It will hardly be said that a monograph of the Sword is not wanted.

Students who would learn her origin, genealogy, and history, find

no single publication ready to hand. They must ransack catalogues

and books on ‘arms and armour’ that are numbered by the score. They

must hunt up fugitive pamphlets; papers consigned to the literary

store-rooms called magazines; and stray notices deep buried in the

ponderous tomes of _Recueils_ and general works on Hoplology. They must

wade through volume after volume of histories and travels, to pick up

a few stray sentences. And they will too often find that the index

of an English book which gives copious references to glass or sugar

utterly ignores the Sword. At times they must labour in the dark, for

men who write seem wholly unconscious of the subject’s importance. For

instance, much has been said about art in Japan; but our knowledge of

her metallurgy especially of her iron and steel works, is elementary,

while that of her peculiar and admirable cutlery is strangely

superficial. And travellers and collectors treat the Sword much as they

do objects of natural history. They regard only the rare, the forms

which they ignore, or which strike the eye, and the unique specimens

which may have no comparative value. Thus they neglect articles of far

more interest and of higher importance to the student, and they bring

home, often at great expense, mere lumber for curiosity shops.

The difficulty of treating the Sword is enhanced by the peculiar

individuality which characterises it, evidenced by an immense variety

of physique, and resulting as much from unconscious selection as

from deep design. One of the characteristics of indigenous art is

that no two articles, especially no two weapons, are exactly alike;

and yet they vary only within narrow and measurable limits. The

minute differentiæ of the Sword are endless. Even in the present day,

swordsmen will order some shape, size, or weight which they hold—often

unwisely enough—to be improvements on the general. One man, wishing

to strengthen his arm, devises a weapon fit for a Titan and finds it

worse than useless. A tale is told of a Sheffield cutler who, having

received from Maroccan Mogador a wooden model to be copied in steel,

made several hundred blades on the same pattern and failed to find a

single purchaser. Their general resemblance to the prevailing type

was marred by peculiarities which unsuited them for general use; they

were adapted only to individual requirement, each man priding himself

upon his own pattern having some almost imperceptible difference.

Such variations are intelligible enough in the Sword, which must be

modified for every personality, because it becomes to the swordsman a

prolongation of his own person, a lengthening of the arm. The natural

results are the protean shapes of the weapon and the difficulty of

reducing these shapes to orderly description. I cannot, therefore,

agree with a President of the Anthropological Institute (‘Journal,’

October 1876) when he states: ‘Certainly the same forms of Sword might

be found in different countries, but not of so peculiar a nature (as

the Gaboon weapon) unless the form had been communicated.’ Shapes

apparently identical start up spontaneously, because types are limited

and man’s preferences easily traverse the whole range of his invention.

Thus the stumbling-block which met me on the threshold was to

introduce sequence, system, and lucid order into a chaos of details.

It was necessary to discover some unity, some starting-place for

evolution and development, without which all treatment would be vague

and inconsequent. But where find the clue which makes straight the

labyrinthine paths; the _point de mire_ which enables us to command the

whole prospect; the coign of vantage which displays the disposition of

details, together with the _nexus_, the intercommunication, and the

progress of the parts and the whole?

Two different systems of that ‘classification, which defines the

margin of our ignorance,’ are adopted by museums; and, consequently,

by the catalogues describing them. I shall here quote only English

collections, leaving to the Continental reader the task of applying

the two main principles locally and generally. These are, first, the

Topical or Geographical (_e.g._ Christy collection), which, as the

words denote, examines the article itself mainly with reference to its

media, nature and culture, place and date; and which considers man and

his works as the expression of the soil that bears him. The second is

the Material and purely Formal (General A. Pitt-Rivers’ collection),

which regards only the objects or specimens themselves, without respect

to their makers or their media; and which, by investigating the rival

laws of continuity and of incessant variation, aims at extending our

knowledge of mankind. Both plans have their merits and their demerits.

The Topical is the more strictly anthropologico-ethnological, because

it makes the general racial culture its prominent feature; but it

fails to illustrate, by juxtaposition, the origin, the life, and the

death of a special article. The Formal proposes to itself the study of

specific ideas; it describes their transmissions and their migrations;

and it displays their connection and sequence, their development

and degradation. It exemplifies the law of unconscious selection,

as opposed to premeditation and design. Thus it claims superior

sociological interest, while it somewhat separates and isolates the

article from its surroundings—mankind.

Again, it would be unadvisable to neglect the chronological and

synchronological order (Demmin’s). This assists us in tracing with

a surer hand the origin and derivation; the annals, the adventures,

and the accidents of an almost universal weapon, whose marvellously

chequered career excels in dignity, in poetry, and in romance, anything

and everything the world has yet seen. And here I have not been

unmindful of Dr. Arthur Mitchell’s sensible warning that ‘the rude

form of an implement may follow as well as precede the more finished

forms.’[2] Due regard to dates enables us to avoid the scandalous

confusion of the vulgar museum. Demmin found a large number of swords

catalogued as dating with the time of Charles the Bold, when the shapes

proved that they belonged to the late sixteenth and even to the early

seventeenth centuries. I was shown, in the museum of Aquileja, a ‘Roman

sword’ which was a basket-hilted Venetian, hardly two hundred years

old. It is only an exact chronology, made to frame the Geographical

and the Formal pictures of the weapon, that can secure scientific

distribution.

In dealing with a subject which, like the Sword, ranges through the

world-history, and which concerns the human race in general, it would,

I venture to opine, be unwise to adopt a single system. As clearness

can be obtained only by methodical distribution of matter, all the

several processes must be combined with what art the artificer may.

The Formal, which includes the Material, as well as the shape of the

weapon, affords one fair basis for classification. The substance, for

instance, ranges from wood to steel, and the profile from the straight

line to the segment of a circle. The Topical, beginning (as far as we

know) in the Nile Valley, and thence in ancient days overspreading

Africa, Asia, Europe, and America, determines the distribution and

shows the general continuity of the noble arm. It also readily

associates itself with the chronologico-historical order, which begins

_ab initio_, furnishes a proof of general progress, interrupted only by

fitful stages of retrogression, and, finally, dwells upon the epochs of

the highest interest.

After not a little study I resolved to distribute the ‘Book of the

Sword’ into three parts.

Part I. treats of the birth, parentage, and early career of the Sword.

It begins with the very beginning, in prehistoric times and amongst

proto-historic peoples; and it ends with the full growth of the Sword

at the epoch of the early Roman Empire.

Part II. treats of the Sword fully grown. It opens with the rising

civilisation of the Northern Barbarians and with the decline of Rome

under Constantine (A.D. 313–324), who combined Christianity with

Mithraism; when the world-capital was transferred to Byzantium, and

when an imitation of Orientalism, specially of ‘Persic apparatus,’

led to the art decay which we denote by the term ‘Lower Empire.’ It

proceeds to the rise of El-Islam; the origin of ordered chivalry and

knighthood; the succession of the Crusades and the wars of arms and

armour before the gunpowder age, when the general use of ballistics by

means of explosives became the marking feature of battle. This was the

palmy period of the Sword. It became a beautiful work of art; and the

highest genius did not disdain to chase and gem the handle and sheath.

And its career culminates with the early sixteenth century, when the

weapon of offence assumed its defensive phase and rose to a height of

splendour that prognosticated downfall, as surely as the bursting of a

rocket precedes its extinction.

Part III. continues the memoirs of the Sword, which, after long

declining, revives once more in our day. This portion embraces

descriptions of the modern blade, notices of collections, public and

private, notes on manufactures; and, lastly, the bibliography and the

literature connected with the Heroic Weapon.

Part I., contained in this volume, numbers thirteen chapters, of which

a bird’s-eye view is given by the List of Contents. The first seven

are formally and chronologically arranged. Thus we have the Origin of

Weapons (Chapter I.) showing that while the arm is common to man and

beast, the weapon, as a rule, belongs to our kind. Chapter II. treats

of the first weapon proper, the Stone, which gave rise to ballistics

as well as to implements of percussion. Follows (Chapter III.) the

blade of base materials, wood, stone and bone, materials still used

by races which can procure nothing better. From this point a step

leads to the metal blade, in its origin evidently a copy of preceding

types. The first, (Chapter IV.) is of pure copper, in our translations

generally rendered by ‘brass’ or ‘bronze.’ The intermediate substances

(Chapter V.) are represented by alloys, a variety of mixed metals;

and they naturally end with the so-called ‘age’ of early iron, which

prevailed throughout Europe at a time when the valleys of the Nile and

the Tigris-Euphrates wrought blades of the finest steel. This division

concludes with a formal and technical Chapter (VII.) on the shape of

the Sword and a description of its several parts. Here the subject does

not readily lend itself to lively description; but, if I have been

compelled to be dull, I have done my best to avoid being tedious.

The arrangement then becomes geographical and chronological. My next

five chapters are devoted to the Sword in its topical distribution and

connection. The first (No. VIII.) begins with the various blade-forms

in ancient Egypt, which extended throughout the then civilised world;

it ends with showing that the Nile valley gave their present shapes

to the ‘white arm’ of the Dark Continent even in its modern day, and

applied to the Sword the name which it still bears in Europe. The

second (No. IX.) passes to Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, lands

which manifestly borrowed the weapon from the Egyptians, and handed it

on to Assyria, Persia, and India. The arms and armour of the ‘great

Interamnian Plain’ afford material for a third (Chapter X.). Thence,

retracing our steps and passing further westwards, we find manifest

derivation and immense improvement of the Egyptian weapon in Greece

(Chapter XI.), from which Mycenæ has lately supplied bronze rapiers

perfectly formed as the steels of Bilboa and Toledo. The fifth Chapter

(No. XII.) continues the ancient history of the Sword by describing

the various blades of progressive Rome, whose wise choice and change

of arms enabled her to gain the greatest battles with the least amount

of loss. To this I have appended, for geographical and chronological

symmetry, in a sixth and last chapter (No. XIII.), a sketch of the

Sword among the contemporary Barbarians of the Roman Empire, Dacians,

Italians, Iberians, Gauls, Germans, and the British Islands. This

portion of the Sword history, however, especially the Scandinavian and

the Irish, will be treated at full length in Part II.

Here, then, ends the First Part, which Messrs. Chatto and Windus have

kindly consented to publish, whilst my large collection of notes, the

labour of years, is being ordered and digested for the other two. I may

fairly hope, if all go well, to see both in print before the end of

1884.

In the following pages I have confined myself, as much as was possible,

to the Sword; a theme which, indeed, offers an _embarras de richesses_.

But weapons cannot be wholly isolated, especially when discussing

origins: one naturally derives from and connects with the other; and

these relations may hardly be passed over without notice. I have,

therefore, indulged in an occasional divagation, especially concerning

the axe and the spear; but the main line has never been deserted.

Nor need I offer an excuse for the amount of philological discussion

which the nomenclature of the Sword has rendered necessary. If I have

opposed the Past Masters of the art, my opposition has been honest,

and I am ever open to refutation. Travellers refuse to believe that

‘Aryanism’ was born on the bald, bleak highlands of Central Asia, or

that ‘Semitism’ derives from the dreary, fiery deserts of Arabia. We

do not believe India to be ‘the country which even more than Greece or

Rome was the cradle of grammar and philology.’ I cannot but hold that

England has, of late years, been greatly misled by the ‘Aryan heresy’;

and I look forward to the study being set upon a sounder base.

The illustrations, numbering 293, have been entrusted to the artistic

hands of Mr. Joseph Grego, who has taken a friendly interest in the

work. But too much must not be expected from them in a book which

intends to be popular, and which is, therefore, limited in the matter

of expense. Hence they are fewer than I should have desired. The

libraries of Europe contain many catalogues of weapons printed in folio

with highly finished and coloured plates which here would be out of

place. That such a work upon the subject of the Sword will presently

appear I have no doubt; and my only hope is that this volume will prove

an efficient introduction.

To conclude. I return grateful thanks to the many _mitwerkers_ who have

assisted me in preparing this monograph; no more need be said, as all

names will be mentioned in the course of the work. A journey to the

Gold Coast and its results, in two volumes, which describe its wealth,

must plead my excuse for the delay in bringing out the book. The

manuscript was sent home from Lisbon in December 1881, but the ‘tyranny

of circumstance’ has withheld it for nearly two years.

RICHARD F. BURTON.

_Postscript._ An afterthought suggests that it is only fair, both

for readers and for myself, to own that sundry quotations have been

borrowed at second-hand and that the work of verification, so rightly

enjoined upon writers, has not always been possible. These blemishes

are hardly to be avoided in a first edition. At Trieste, and other

places distant from the great seats of civilisation, libraries of

reference are unknown; and it is vain to seek for the original source.

Indeed, Mr. James Fergusson once wrote to me that it was an overbold

thing to undertake a History of the Sword under such circumstances.

However, I made the best use of sundry visits to London and Paris,

Berlin, Vienna, and other capitals, and did what I could to remedy

defects. Lastly, the illustrations have not always, as they ought, been

drawn to scale, they were borrowed from a number of volumes which paid

scant attention to this requisite.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

_Academy (The)_, a Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art.

Agricola, _De Re Metallicâ_, First published in 1551.

Akermann (J. Y.), _Remains of Pagan Saxondom_. London: Smith,

MDCCCLV.

Amicis (Edoardo de), _Marocco_. Milan: Treves, 1876.

Ammianus Marcellinus, Historian of the Lower Empire. Fourth century.

Anderson (J. R.), _Saint Mark’s Rest: the Place of Dragons_, edited

by John Ruskin, LL.D. Allen: Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1879.

Anderson (Joseph), _Scotland in Early Christian Times_. Rhind

Lectures in Archæology for 1879. Edinburgh: Douglas, 1882.

_Anthropologia_ (London Anthropological Society. Established Jan.

22, 1873; first number, Oct. 1873; died after fifth number,

July 1875.)

_Anthropological Institute (The Journal of)_. London: Trübner.

_Anthropological Review_, Vol. I.-III. London: Trübner, 1863–65.

Antiquaries of London (Society of), from the beginning in 1770 to

1883.

_Antiquities of Orissa_, by Rajendralala Mitra, 2 vols. fol.;

published by Government of India.

Apuleius (A.D. 130).

_Archæologia, or Tracts relating to Antiquity_, published by the

Society of Antiquaries of London, from the commencement in 1749

to 1863.

Archæological Association, vol. iv., _Weapons, &c., of Horn_.

_Archæology (Transactions of the Society of Biblical)_, London:

Longmans; beginning in 1872.

Aristophanes.

Aristotle, _Meteorologica, &c._

Arrian (Flavius), A.D. 90, _Anabasis, &c._

_Athenæum (The)_, Journal of English and Foreign Literature, &c.

Athenæus (A.D. 230), _Deipnosophists_.

Baker (Sir Samuel White), _The Nile Tributaries_. London:

Macmillan, 1866. _The Albert Nyanza._ London, 1868.

_Balthazar Ribello de Aragão; Viagens dos Portuguezes, Collecção de

Documentas_, por Luciano Cordeiro, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional,

1881. The learned Editor is Secretary to the Royal Geographical

Society of Lisbon.

Barbosa (Duarte), _A Description of the Coasts of East Africa

and Malabar_, translated for the Hakluyt Society, London, by

Honourable Henry E. (now Lord) Stanley, 1866. Written about

A.D. 1512–14, and attributed by some to Magellan.

Barth (Henry), _Travels, &c., in Central Africa_ 1849–1855; 5

vols., 8vo. London: Longmans, 1875.

Barthélemy (Abbé J. J.), _Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis en Grèce,

&c._, 5 vols. 4to. Paris, 1788.

Bataillard (Paul) _On Gypsies and other Matters_, Société

Anthropologique de Paris, 1874.

Beckmann (John), _A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and

Origins_, translated by W. Johnston. London: Bell and Daldy,

1872 (fourth edition, revised). It is a useful book of

reference and wants only a few additions.

Berosus (B.C. 261), _Fragments_, edit. Müller.

Bollaert (William), _Antiquarian, Ethnological, and other

Researches_. London: Trübner, 1860.

Bologna, _Congrès d’Archéologie et d’Anthropologie Préhistoriques,

Session de Bologna_, 1 vol. 8vo. Fava and Garagnani: Bologna,

1871.

Bonnycastle (Captain R. H., of the Royal Engineers), _Spanish

America, &c._ Philadelphia: A. Small, 1817.

Borlase (William), _Observations on the Antiquities, &c., of the

County of Cornwall_. Oxford, 1754.

Boscawen (W. St. Chad), Papers in Society of Biblical Archæology.

Boutell (Charles), _Arms and Armour_. London, 1867.

Brewster (Sir David), _Letters on Natural Magic_, 12mo. London,

1833.

Brugsch (Heinrich), _A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs, &c._,

by Henry Brugsch-Bey (now Pasha). Translated from the German by

the late Henry Danby Seymour; completed and edited by Philip

Smith, 2 vols. 8vo. London: Murray, 1879. The first part has

been published in French, Leipzig, 1859. The archaistic German

style of _Geschichte Aegypten’s_ is very difficult.

_Bulletin de l’Institut Égyptien._ Cairo: Mourès, 1882.

Bunsen (Baron C. C. J.), _Egypt’s Place in Universal History, &c._,

with additions by Samuel Birch, LL. D., 5 vols. 8vo. London:

Longmans, 1867.

Burnouf (Émile), _Essai sur le Veda, ou Études sur les Religions,

&c., de l’Inde_, 1 vol. 8vo., 1863. ‘L’Age de Bronze,’ _Revue

des deux Mondes_, July 15, 1877.

Burton (R. F.), _A Complete System of Bayonet Exercise_. London:

Clowes, 1853. The _Athenæum_, Nov, 24, 1880. _Camoens, his Life

and his Lusiads_, 2 vols. 12mo., Quaritch, 1881. _To the Gold

Coast for Gold_. London: Chatto and Windus, 1883.

Cæsar (Julius), _Opera Omnia_, Delphin edit., variorum notes, 4

vols. 8vo. Londini, 1819.

Calder (J. E.), _Some Account of the Wars of Extirpation and Habits

of the Native Tribes of Tasmania_, Journ. Anthrop. Instit.,

vol. iii. 1873.

Cameron (Commander Verney Lovett, C.B., D.C.L., &c.), _Across

Africa_. London: Daldy and Isbister, 1877.

Camoens, _Os Lusiadas_.

_Catalogue du Bulak Muséum_, by the late Mariette-Bey (afterwards

Pasha). Cairo: A. Mourès, imprimeur-éditeur.

_Catalog. Die Ethnographisch-Anthropologische Abtheilung des

Museums Godefroy in Hamburg_, vol. i. 8vo. L. Frederichsen u.

Co. 1881.

Caylus (Comte de), _Recueil d’Antiquités Égyptiennes, &c._, 8 vols.

4to. Paris, 1752–70.

Celsus (A. Cornelius), _De Medicinâ_, edit. princeps. Florentiæ, a

Nicolao impressus, A.D. 1478.

Chabas, _Études sur l’Antiquité Historique d’après les sources

Égyptiennes_, 1872.

Chaillu (Paul B. du), _Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial

Africa, &c._ London: Murray, 1861. The _Gorilla-book_.

Chapman (Captain George), _Foil Practice, with a Review of the Art

of Fencing_. London: Clowes, 1861.

Clapperton (Captain H.), _Journal of a Second Expedition into

Africa_, 1 vol. 4to. London, 1829.

Clermont-Ganneau (Charles), _Horus et Saint George, &c._ Extrait de

la _Revue Archéologique_, Dec. 1877. Paris: Didier et C^{ie}.

The author is a prolific writer and a highly distinguished

Orientalist.

Cochet (Jean Benoît Désiré, Abbé), _Le Tombeau de Childéric I.,

Roi des Francs_. Restitué à l’aide de l’archéologie et des

découvertes récentes, 8vo. Paris: 1859.

Cole (Lieutenant H. H., of the Royal Engineers), _Catalogue of

Indian Art in the South Kensington Museum_.

—— _Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir_, prepared

under the authority of the Secretary of State for India

from photographs, plans, and drawings taken by order of the

Government of India. London, 1869. 4to.

—— _The Architecture of Ancient Delhi, especially the buildings

around the Kutb Minar_, fol. London, 1872.

Cooper (Rev. Basil H.), _The Antiquity and the Use of Metals and

especially Iron, among the Egyptians_, Transac. Devonshire

Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, 1868.

Cory (Isaac Preston), _Ancient Fragments of the Phœnician,

Chaldæan, Egyptian, Tyrian, Carthaginian, and other writers_,

8vo. London, 1832. Very rare. New edit. Reeves and Turner:

London, 1876.

Crawfurd (John), _On the Sources of the Supply of Tin for the

Bronze Tools and Weapons of Antiquity_, Trans. Ethnol. Soc.,

N.S., vol. iii. 1865.

Cunningham (General A.), _The Bhilsa Topes, &c._, 8vo. London,

1854. _Ládak, &c._, royal 8vo. London, 1854. _Archæological

Survey of India_, 6 vols. 8vo. Simla, 1871–78.

Czoernig (Baron Carl von), jun. _Ueber die vorhistorischen Funde im

Laibacher Torfmoor_. Alpine Soc. of Trieste, Dec. 8, 1875.

Daniel (Père Gabriel), _Histoire de la Milice Françoise, et des

Changemens qui s’y sont faits, depuis l’établissement de la

Monarchie Françoise dans les Gaules, jusqu’à la fin du Régne

de Louis le Grand_, 7 vols. 8vo. À Amsterdam; au dépens de la

Compagnie (de Jésus), MDCCXXIV. It is a standard work as far as

it goes.

Davis (Sir John F.), _The Chinese: a general Description of the

Empire of China and its Inhabitants_, 2 vols. 8vo. London:

Knight, MDCCCVI.

Day (St. John Vincent), _The Prehistoric Use of Iron and Steel_.

London: Trübner, 1877. When sending me a copy of his learned

and original study, Mr. Day wrote to me that he is bringing out

a second edition, in which his ‘collection of additional matter

will modify and correct certain of his former views.’

Demmin (Auguste), _Illustrated History of Arms and Armour_,

translated by C. C. Black, M.A. London: Bell, 1877. The

illustrations leave much to be desired; the Oriental notices

are deficient, and the translator has made them worse.

Otherwise the book gives a fair general and superficial view.

Denham (Major Dixon), Clapperton and Oudney’s _Travels in Northern

and Central Africa_, in 1822–24, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1826.

Deschmann und Hochstetter, _Prähistorische Ansiedlungen, &c., in

Krain_. Laybach, 1879.

Desor (Edouard), _Les Palafittes, ou Constructions lacustres du lac

de Neuchâtel_. Paris, 1865. _Die Pfahlbauten des Neuenberger

Sees._ Frankfurt a. M., 1866. Desor et Favre, _Le Bel Age du

Bronze lacustre en Suisse_, 1 vol. fol. Neufchâtel, 1874.

Diodorus Siculus (B.C. 44), _Bibliotheca Historica_, P.

Wesselingius, 2 vols. fol. Amstelod., 1746.

Dion Cassius (nat. A.D. 155).

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (B.C. 29), _Opera Omnia_, J. J. Reiske,

6 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1774.

Dodwell (Edward), _A Classical and Topographical Tour through

Greece_, 1801–6, 2 vols. 4to. London, 1819.

Douglas (Rev. James, F.A.S.), _Nænia Britannica_, 1793, folio.

Dümichen, _Geschichte des alten Aegyptens_. Berlin, 1879.

Ebers (Prof. George), _Aegypten und die Bücher Moses_. Leipzig,

1868. Followed by sundry Germano-Egyptian romances, _An

Egyptian Princess_, _Uarda_, _&c._

Edkins (Rev. Dr.), _China’s Place in Philology: an Attempt to show

that the Languages of Europe and Asia have a Common Origin_.

London, 1 vol. 8vo., 1871.

Ellis (Rev. William), _Polynesian Researches_. London: Murray, 1858.

Elphinstone, _History of India_, 2 vols. 8vo. 1841.

_Encyclopædia Britannica._

—— _Metropolitana._

—— _Penny_ (one of the best).

—— _Knight’s._

Engel (W. H.), _Kypros: eine Monographie_. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin:

Reimer, 1841.

_Ethnological Society of London (Journal of)_ 7 vols. 8vo.

1848–65.

Eusebius (Bishop of Cæsarea, A.D. 264–340), _Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ

Libri Decem_; denuo edidit F. A. Heinichen, 3 vols. 8vo.

Lipsiæ, 1868.

Evans (Dr. John), _The Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain_,

1 vol. 8vo. London: Longmans, 1872. _The Ancient Implements

of Great Britain and Ireland_, ibid. 1881. Both works are

admirably well studied and exhaust the subjects as far as they

are now known.

Ewbank (Thomas), _Life in Brazil_, 1 vol. 8vo. New York,

1856; London: Sampson Low and Co., 1856. The Appendix is

anthropologically valuable.

Fairholt (F. W.), _A Dictionary of Terms of Art_, 1 vol. 12mo.

Virtue and Hall, London, 1849.

Farrar (Canon), _Life, &c., of Saint Paul_. Cassell and Co.:

London, Paris, and New York (undated).

Ferguson (Sir James), _Transactions of the Irish Association_.

Fergusson (James), _A History of Architecture_, 4 vols. 8vo.

London, 1874–76.

Festus (Sextus Pompeius), _De Verborum Significatione_, K. O.

Müller. Lipsiæ, 1839. The Grammarian lived between A.D. 100

(Martial’s day) and A.D. 422 (under Theodosius II.).

Ficke, _Wörterbuch der Indo-germanischen Grundsprache, &c._

Göttingen, 1868.

Florus (Annæus: _temp._ Trajan), _Rerum Romanarum libri IV._,

Delphin edit., 2 vols. 8vo. Londini, 1822.

Fox (A. Lane-, now Major-General A. Pitt-Rivers). This

distinguished student of Anthropology, who ranks foremost

in the knowledge of early weapons, happily applied the idea

of evolution, development, and progress to his extensive

collection, the work of some thirty years. To show the

successive steps he grouped his objects according to their

forms and uses, beginning with the simplest; and to each class

he appended an ideal type, towards which the primitive races

were ever advancing, making innumerable mistakes, in some cases

even retrograding, but on the whole attaining a higher plane.

The papers from which I have quoted, often word for word, in

my first chapters, are (1) ‘Primitive Warfare,’ sect. i.,

read on June 28, 1867 (pp. 1–35, with five plates), and Sect.

ii., ‘On the Resemblance of the Weapons of Early Races, their

Variations, Continuity, and Development of Form,’ read on June

5, 1868 (pp. 1–42, with eight diagrams); and (2) ‘Catalogue

of the Anthropological Collection lent for Exhibition in the

Bethnal Green Branch of the South Kensington Museum, with (131)

Illustrations;’ pt. I. and II. (III. and IV. to be published

hereafter), 1874, &c., 8vo., pp. 1–184. The collection, then

containing some 14,000 objects, left Bethnal Green for the

Western Galleries of the Museum in South Kensington. After a

long sojourn there it was offered to the public; but England,

unlike France, Germany, and Italy, has scant appreciation

of anthropological study. At length it was presented to the

University of Oxford, where a special building will be devoted

to its worthy reception. I have taken the liberty of suggesting

to General Pitt-Rivers that he owes the public not only the

last two parts of his work, but also a folio edition with

coloured illustrations of the humble ‘Catalogue.’

Genthe (Dr. Hermann), a paper on ‘Etruscan Commerce with the

North,’ _Archiv für Anthrop._, vol. vi. (from his work _Ueber

den estruskischen Tauschhandel nach Norden_). Frankfurt, 1874.

Gladstone (Right Hon. W. E.), _Juventus Mundi_, 1 vol. 8vo. London,

1869. ‘Metals in Homer,’ _Contemporary Review_, 1874.

Glas (George), ‘The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the

Canary Islands,’ _Pinkerton, Voyages_, vol. xvi.

Goguet (Antoine Yves), _De l’Origine des Lois, des Arts, et des

Sciences, et de leur progrès chez les anciens peuples_ (par

A. Y. G., aidé par Alex. Conr. Fugère), 3 vols., plates, 4to.

Paris, 1758. Numerous editions and translations.

Goguet (M. de), _The Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences, and their

progress among the most Ancient Nations_. English translation

by Thompson, 3 vols., plates, 8vo. Edinburgh, 1761.

Gozzadini (Senator Count Giovanni), _Di un antico sepolcro a

Ceretolo nel Bolognese_. Modena: Vincenzi, 1872. The author

has taken a distinguished place in antiquarian anthropology

by his various and valuable studies of Etruscan remains found

in and around Felsina, now Bologna. I have ventured upon

suggesting to him that these detached papers, mostly printed by

Fava, Garagnani, and Co., of Bologna, should be collected and

published in a handy form for the benefit of students.

Graah (Captain W. A.), _Narrative of an Expedition to the

Eastern Coast of Greenland, &c._ Translated from the Danish

(Copenhagen, 1832) by C. Gordon Macdougall, 8vo. London, 1837.

Grant (Captain, now Colonel, James A.), _A Walk across Africa, or

Domestic Scenes from my Nile Journal_. Blackwoods: Edinburgh,

MDCCCLXIV.

Grose (Captain Francis), _Military Antiquities respecting the

History of the British Army. From the Conquest to the Present

Time._ A new edition with material additions and improvements,

2 vols. 8vo. London, printed for T. Egerton, Whitehall; and

G. Kearsley, Fleet Street, 1801. The first edition appeared

in 1786, and the learned author died (æt. 52) of apoplexy at

Dublin, May 12, 1791.

Grote (George), _History of Greece_, 12 vols. 8vo. 1846–56.

Guthrie (Mrs.), _My Year in an An Indian Fort_. Hurst and Blackett:

London, 1877.

Hamilton (Will. J.), _Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and

Armenia, &c._, 2 vols. 8vo. London: Murray, 1842.

Hanbury (Daniel), _Science Papers, &c._, edited with Memoir by

Joseph Ince, 1 vol. 8vo. London, 1876.

Heath (Rev. Dunbar Isidore), _Exodus Papyri_, 8vo. London, 1855.

_Phœnician Inscriptions._ London, Quaritch, 1873. ‘Hittite

Inscriptions,’ _Journ. Anthrop. Institute_, May, 1880.

_Herodotus_, Rawlinson’s, 4 vols. Murray, 1858. This valuable work

wants a second edition revised.

Herrera (Antonio, chief chronicler of the Indies), _Historia Geral,

&c._, VIII. Decads, 4 vols. folio. Madrid, 1601.

Hesiod, _Opera et Dies; Scutum, &c._ Poetæ Minores Græci, vol. i.

Holub (Dr. Emil), _Seven Years in South Africa_, 2 vols. 8vo.

Sampson Low and Co. 1881.

Homer, _Opera Omnia_, by J. A. Ernesti. 5 vols. 8vo. Glasgow, 1814.

Horatius, _Opera Om._, ex edit. Zeunii. Delphin edit., 4 vols. 8vo.

Londini, 1825.

Howorth (H. H.), ‘Archæology of Bronze.’ _Trans. Ethno. Soc._, vol.

vi.

Humboldt (Baron Alexander von), _Personal Narrative of Travels

to the Equinoctial Regions of America_, 3 vols. 8vo. Bohn’s

Scientific Library, London, 1852.

_Iron, an Illustrated Weekly Journal of Science, Metals, and

Manufactures in iron and Steel_, edited by Perry E. Nursey,

C.E., to whom I have to express my thanks.

Isidorus Hispalensis (Bishop of Seville, A.D. 600–636), _Opera

Omnia_ (including the ‘Origines’ and ‘Etymologies’), published

by J. du Breul, fol. Parisiis, 1601.

Jacquemin (Raphael), _Histoire Générale du Costume, &c._ Du IV^{me}

au XIX^{me} Siècle (A.D. 315–1815). Paris.

Jähns (Major Max), _Handbuch einer Geschichte des Kriegswesens von

der Urzeit an zur Renaissance_. Technischer Theil: Bewaffnung,

Kampfweise, Befestigung, Belagerung, Seewesen. Leipzig: Grunow,

1880. Major Jähns, an officer upon the General Staff of the

German army, has produced in 1 vol. imp. 8vo. (pp. 640) a most

laborious and useful work, accompanied by an atlas of one

hundred carefully drawn plates. He quotes authorities literally

by the hundred. The work amply deserves to be translated into

English, but its public would, I fear, be very limited.

Josephus (Flavius).

Justinus (Frontinus). _History, Fourth and Fifth Century_, abridged

from Trogus Pompeius.

_Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana_, part i., with a preface and

introduction. Printed for the Hindu Kama Shastra Society of

London, 1883; for private circulation only. The poet whose name

was Mallinaga or Mrillana (of the Vatsyayana family) lived

between the first and sixth century of the Christian Æra. This,

too, is only known by his poetry. Hindu-land is rich in Kama

literature.

Keller (Dr. Ferdinand), _Die Kältischen Pfahlbauten in den

Schweizer Seen_. Zürich, 1854–66. There is an English

translation _The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland_.

King (late Dr. Richard), _Trans. Ethnol. Soc._, vols. i. and ii.

Klemm (Dr. Gustav Friedrich), _Werkzeuge und Waffen_. Leipzig,

1854. An edition of Klemm’s (G. F.), _Die Werkzeuge und

Waffen, ihre Entstehung und Ausbildung_, with 342 woodcuts in

the text, 8vo. Published at Sondershausen, 1858. _Allgemeine

Culturwissenschaft_, 2 vols. with woodcuts, 8vo. Leipzig,

1854–5.

Kolben (Peter), _Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, &c._, 2

vols. 8vo., 1738.

Kremer (Ritter Adolf von), _Ibn Chaldun und seine

Culturgeschichte_. Wien, 1879.

Lacombe, _Les Armes et les Armures_. Paris, 1868.

_Land and Water_, weekly paper published by William Bates; it

contains many articles by the late lamented Mr. Frank Buckland,

F.Z.S.

Latham (John): this ‘Assistant-Commissioner for Exhibitions’ (1862,

1867, and 1873), who succeeded in business Messrs. Wilkinson

and Son of Pall Mall, and who lately died, gave me copies of

his two excellent papers, (1) ‘The Shape of Sword-blades,’ and

(2) ‘A Few Notes on Swords in the International Exhibition

of 1862’ (_Journal of the R.U.S. Institution_, vols. vi. and

vii.). With the author’s permission I have freely used these

two valuable professional studies, especially in Chapter

VII. The late Mr. Latham was a practical Swordsman, and his

long experience as a maker of the ‘white arm’ renders his

information thoroughly trustworthy. I wish every success to his

son, who now fills his place in an establishment famous for

turning out good work.

Latham (Robert Gordon), _Ethnology of the British Islands_, 1 vol.

12mo. London, 1852. _Descriptive Ethnology_, 2 vols. 8vo. 1859.

Layard (Sir Henry Austen), _Nineveh and its Remains_, 2 vols. 8vo.,

1849. _Monuments of Nineveh_, 1st and 2nd Series, 1849–53. _A

Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh._ London: Murray,

1851. _Fresh Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_,

1 vol. 8vo. London: Murray, 1853.

Legge (Dr. James), _The Chinese Classics_, 3 vols. 8vo. London,

1861–76; vol. i., ‘Confucius’; ii., ‘Mencius’; iii., ‘She-King

or Book of Poetry.’

Lenormant (François), _Manuel d’Histoire Ancienne de l’Orient_,

2 vols., 12mo. Paris, 1868. _Les Premières Civilisations_, 3

vols. 12mo. Paris, 1874. Germ. Trans., Jena, 1875.

Lepsius (Dr. Richard), _Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien

nach den Zeichnungen der Preussischen Expedition. Denkmäler

aus Aegypten und Aethiopien_ (1842–45). Berlin, 1849–59.

_Discoveries in Egypt, &c._, translated by Kenneth R. H.

Mackenzie, 8vo. London, 1852. _Die Metalle in den Aegyptischen

Inschriften_ (Akad. der Wiss., A.D. 1871), the latter

translated into French 1877.

Lindsey (Dr. W. Lauder), _Proceedings of Society of Arts of

Scotland_, vol. v. 327.

Livy.

Lopez (Vicente Fidel), _Les Races Aryennes du Pérou, &c._ Paris:

A. Franck, 1871. A copy was sent to me by my old friend John

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Lubbock (Sir John W.), _Pre-historic Times_, 1 vol. 8vo., 1865.

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Lucan.

Lucretius.

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Manetho (B.C. 285).

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Massart (Alfred), _Gisements Métallifères du district de

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got down far below Tylor, and to be making good your ground

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make them cry out in some way or other. But you require a

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Mela (Pomponius), _De Situ Orbis_ (A.D. 41–54). This little work

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Meyrick (Sir Samuel Rush), _Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour

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the assistance of friends, Mr. Albert Way and others. It

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Petronius Arbiter.

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Porter (Rev. J. L.), author of _A Handbook for Travellers in Syria

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1874.

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Roteiro (Ruttier) _da Viagem de Vasco da Gama_, corrected by the

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Rougemont, _L’Age de Bronze_, 1866.

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Sallust.

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papers containing notices of more modern ‘Hittite’ finds; but I

have failed to procure copies.

Schliemann (Dr. Henry), _Troy and its Remains_, translated and

edited by Philip Smith. London: Murray, 1875. _Mycenæ and

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Silius Italicus (nat. A.D. 25).

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He made his first voyage in 1606, and his second in 1614,

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1. _Greek and Roman Geography_, 2 vols. 8vo. 1856–57.

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Speke (Captain James Hanning), _Journal of the Discovery of the

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1874.

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Sampson Low, & Co., 1874.

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trans., Leipzig, 1843.

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Archæology, as illustrated in the Blackmore Museum, Salisbury_,

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Strabo (B.C. 54?).

Suetonius (C. Tranquillus).

Tacitus (Cornelius).

Taylor (Rev. Isaac), _Etruscan Researches_. London: Macmillan, 1874.

Texier, _Description de l’Asie Mineure_. Paris, 1849–52.

Theophrastus (B.C. 305), _Opera Græca et Latina_, J. G. Schneider,

5 vols. 8vo. Lipsiæ, 1818–21.

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London: Murray, 1871 (Germ. trans., 1873). _Researches into the

Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilisation_,

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London, 1863.

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Dublin, 1770–1804.

Varnhagen (the late F. Adolpho de): _Historia Geral do Brazil_, 2

vols. 8vo. Laemmert: Rio de Janeiro, 1854, Useful as ‘documents

pour servir.’

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Vegetius (Fl. Renatus, A.D. 375–92), _De Re Militari_.

Virgil.

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1829.

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Waitz (Professor, Dr. Theodor), _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_.

Leipzig, 1859–72. The first volume, _Introduction to

Anthropology_, was translated by J. F. Collingwood and

published by the Anthropological Society of London, 8vo.,

Longmans, 1863. The manuscript of the second volume of this

valuable work, also by Mr. Collingwood, was long in my charge;

but the low state of anthropological study in England (and

other pursuits unprofessional, and consequently non-paying)

prevents its being printed.

Wilde (Sir William R.), _Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities

in the Royal Irish Academy_. Dublin: Academy House, 1863. _A

Descriptive Catalogue of Materials in the Royal Irish Academy_,

8vo., 1857–61. It is regretable that part 1, vol. ii., of this

admirable work, which has become a standard upon the subject,

has not been printed; nor has the public been informed of

any arrangements for publishing. For permission to make use

of the cuts, which were obligingly furnished to Mr. Grego, I

am indebted to the courtesy of the Council, Royal Society of

Antiquaries of Ireland.

Wilkinson (Sir J. Gardner), _The Manners and Customs of the

Ancient Egyptians, their Private Life, Government, Laws,

Arts, Religion, and History_ (originally written in 1836), 6

vols. 8vo. London: Murray, 1837–41. The author abridged his

life-labour with the usual unsuccess, and called it _A Popular

Account of the Ancient Egyptians_, 2 vols. post 8vo. London:

Murray, 1874.

Wilkinson (the late Henry, the eminent Sword-cutler in Pall Mall),

_Observations on Swords; to which is added Information for

Officers going to join their Regiments in India_. Pall Mall,

London. No date.

Willemin, _Choix des Costumes Civiles et Militaires_. Paris, 1798.

Wilson (Daniel), _Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_.

Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, 8vo., MDCCCLI. _Prehistoric

Man_, 2 vols. 8vo. London: Macmillan, 1862.

Wright (the late Thomas), ‘On the True Assignation of the Bronze

Weapons,’ &c., _Trans. Ethno. Soc._, new series, vol. iv.

Woldrich (Prof. A.), _Mittheilungen der Wien. Anthrop. Gesell._

Wien, 1874.

Wood (John George), _Natural History of Man, being an Account of

the Manners and Customs of the Uncivilised Ways of Men_, 2

vols., 1868–70, 8vo.

Worsäae (J. J. A.), _Afbildninger fra det Kon. Mus. for Nordiske

Oldsager i Kjöbnhavn_, Ordnede og forklarede af J. J. A. W.

(aided by Magnus Petersen and Aagaard). Kjöbnhavn: Kittendorf,

and Aagaard, 1859. The order is in careful accordance with

the _Three Ages_. Worsäae’s _Prehistoric Annals of Denmark_

were translated by W. J. Knox, 8vo., London, 1849, and there

is a _Leitfaden der Nordischen Alterthumerskunde_ by Worsäae,

Kopenhagen, 1837.

Wurmbrand (Count Gutaker), _Ergebnisse der Pfahlbauuntersuchungen_.

Wien, 1875.

Yule (Colonel Henry), _The Book of Marco Polo the Venetian_, 2nd

edit. London: Murray, 1875. The learned and exact writer

favoured me with a copy of his admirable work, without which it

is vain to read of ‘The Kingdoms and the Marvels of the East.’

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD ix

INTRODUCTION xi

LIST OF AUTHORITIES xxiii

I. PREAMBLE: ON THE ORIGIN OF WEAPONS 1

II. MAN’S FIRST WEAPONS—THE STONE AND THE STICK. THE EARLIEST

AGES OF WEAPONS. THE AGES OF WOOD, OF BONE, AND OF HORN 16

III. THE WEAPONS OF THE AGE OF WOOD: THE BOOMERANG AND THE SWORD

OF WOOD; OF STONE, AND OF WOOD AND STONE COMBINED 31

IV. THE PROTO-CHALCITIC OR COPPER AGE OF WEAPONS 53

V. THE SECOND CHALCITIC AGE OF ALLOYS—BRONZE, BRASS, ETC.: THE

AXE AND THE SWORD 74

VI. THE PROTO-SIDERIC OR EARLY IRON AGE OF WEAPONS 97

VII. THE SWORD: WHAT IS IT? 123

VIII. THE SWORD IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND IN MODERN AFRICA 143

IX. THE SWORD IN KHITA-LAND, PALESTINE AND CANAAN; PHŒNICIA AND

CARTHAGE; JEWRY, CYPRUS, TROY, AND ETRURIA 172

X. THE SWORD IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA, AND ANCIENT

INDIA 199

XI. THE SWORD IN ANCIENT GREECE: HOMER; HESIOD AND HERODOTUS:

MYCENÆ 220

XII. THE SWORD IN ANCIENT ROME: THE LEGION AND THE GLADIATOR 244

XIII. THE SWORD AMONGST THE BARBARIANS (EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE) 262

CONCLUSION 280

INDEX 281

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FIG. PAGE

1. INDIAN WÁGH-NAKH 8

2. WÁGH-NAKH, USED BY MARÁTHÁS 8

3. BALISTES CAPRISCUS; COTTUS DICERAUS; NASEUS FRONTICORNIS 9

4. SPEAR OF NARWHAL; SWORD OF XIPHIAS; RHINOCEROS-HORN; WALRUS

TUSKS 10

5. NARWHAL’S SWORD PIERCING PLANK 10

6. METAL DAGGERS WITH HORN CURVE 10

7. MÁDU OR MÁRU 11

8. THE ADAGA 12

9. SERRATED OR MULTIBARBED WEAPONS 13

10. WEAPONS MADE OF SHARK’S TEETH 13

11. ITALIAN DAGGER, WITH GROOVES AND HOLES FOR POISON 13

12. SWORD WITH SERRATED BLADE OF SAW-FISH 13

13. ANCIENT EGYPTIANS THROWING KNIVES 18

14. JAPANESE WAR-FLAIL 21

15. TURKISH WAR-FLAIL 21

16. MORNING STAR 21

17. DEER-HORN ARROW-HEAD 24

18. HORN WAR CLUBS WITH METAL POINTS 24

19. DOUBLE SPEAR AND SHIELD 24

20. SPINE OF DIODON 24

21. WALRUS TOOTH USED AS SPEAR POINT; TOMAHAWK OF WALRUS TOOTH 24

22. STING OF MALACCAN LIMULUS CRAB 25

23. THE GREENLAND NUGUIT 25

24. NARWHAL SHAFT AND METAL BLADE 25

25. JADE PATTU-PATTUS 25

26. BONE ARROW-POINT FOR POISON; IRON ARROW-HEAD FOR POISON 26

27. WILDE’S DAGGER 26

28. HOLLOW BONE FOR POISON 26

29. BONE KNIFE 26

30. BONE ARROW-POINT ARMED WITH FLINT FLAKES 26

31. BONE SPLINTER EDGED WITH FLINT FLAKES 26

32. HARPOON HEAD 29

33. LISÁN IN EGYPT AND ABYSSINIA 32

34. LISÁN OR TONGUE 32

35. TRANSITION FROM THE BOOMERANG TO THE HATCHET 34

36. AUSTRALIAN PICKS 34

37. INDIAN BOOMERANGS 35

38. BOOMERANG AND KITE 36

39. AFRICAN BOOMERANGS 36

40. TRANSITION FROM THE MALGA, LEOWEL OR PICK TO THE BOOMERANG 37

41. THE STICK AND THE SHIELD 38

42. THROW-STICKS 38

43. OLD EGYPTIAN BOOMERANG 39

44. BULAK SWORD 39

45. HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTION ON WOODEN SWORD OF BULAK 39

40. TRANSITION FROM CELT TO PADDLE SPEAR AND SWORD FORMS 41

47. CLUBS OF FIJI ISLANDS 41

48. WOODEN SWORDS AND CLUBS OF BRAZILIAN INDIANS 41

49. PAGAYA, SHARPENED PADDLE 42

50. CLUBS 43

51. PADDLES 43

52. SAMOAN CLUB 44

53. WOODEN SABRE 44

54. WOODEN CHOPPER 44

55. KNIFE (WOOD), FROM VANNA LAVA 44

56. IRISH SWORD 45

57. WOODEN RAPIER-BLADE 45

58. FRAGMENTS OF STONE KNIVES FROM SHETLAND 46

59. FLINT DAGGERS 46

60. AUSTRALIAN SPEARS ARMED WITH FLINTS AT SIDE 48

61. SWORD OF SABRE FORM, WITH SHARKS’ TEETH 48

62. DITTO, ARMED WITH OBSIDIAN 48

63. WOOD- AND HORN-POINTS 49

64. MEXICAN SWORD OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, OF IRON WOOD, WITH

TEN BLADES OF BLACK OBSIDIAN FIXED INTO THE WOOD 49

65. MAHQUAHUITLS 50

66. MEXICAN WARRIOR 50

67. MEXICAN SWORD, IRON-WOOD, ARMED WITH OBSIDIAN 50

68. MEXICAN SPEAR-HEAD (FIFTEENTH CENTURY), BLACK OBSIDIAN,

WITH WOODEN HANDLE 50

69. NEW ZEALAND CLUB 50

70. AUSTRALIAN SPEARS, WITH BITS OF OBSIDIAN, CRYSTAL, OR GLASS 51

71. ITALIAN POISON DAGGERS 51

72. ARAB SWORD, WITH DOWN-CURVED QUILLONS, AND SAW BLADE 51

73. SEPHURIS AT WADY MAGHARAH (OLDEST ROCK TABLETS). THIRD

DYNASTY 61

74. SORIS AND THE CANAANITES AT WADY MAGHARAH (OLDEST ROCK

TABLETS), FOURTH DYNASTY 61

75. TABLET OF SUPHIS AND NU-SUPHIS AT WADY MAGHARAH. (FOURTH

DYNASTY.) 62

76. THE WINGED CELT, OR PALSTAVE 71

77. COPPER CELTS IN THE DUBLIN COLLECTION 72

78. SCYTHE-SHAPED BLADE 73

79. STRAIGHT BLADE 73

80. STRAIGHT BLADE 73

81. SCYTHE-SHAPED BLADE 73

82. FINE SPECIMEN OF EGYPTIAN DAGGER IN POSSESSION OF MR. HAYNS,

BROUGHT BY MR. HARRIS FROM THEBES 80

83. BRONZE KNIFE, FROM THE PILE-VILLAGES OF NEUCHÂTEL 82

84. PERUVIAN KNIFE. METAL BLADE, SECURED IN A SLIT IN THE HAFT

BY STRONG COTTON TWINE 82

85. OLDEST FORM (?) 88

86. METAL CELTS 88

87. KNIFE FOUND AT RÉALON (HAUTES ALPES) 88

88. THE GLAIVE 89

89. EGYPTIAN AXES OF BRONZE 89

90. IRISH BATTLE-AXE 91

91. AXE USED BY BRUCE 91

92. GERMAN PROCESSIONAL AXE 91

93. HALBARDS 92

94. HALBARDS 93

95. BECHWANA’S CLUB AXE; THE SAME, EXPANDED; THE SAME, BARBED;

SILEPE OF THE BASUTOS; HORSEMAN’S AXE OF THE SIXTEENTH

CENTURY 93

96. HINDU HATCHET FROM RAJPUTANA 94

97. GERMAN HATCHET OF BRONZE PERIOD 94

98. BURGUNDIAN AXE; FRANCISQUE OR TAPER AXE 94

99. IRON SCRAMASAX 94

100. SCRAMASAX 94

101. GUNNAR’S BILL 95

102. VOULGES 95

103. EGYPTIAN SACRIFICIAL KNIVES (IRON) 101

104. IRON SMELTING FURNACE AMONGST THE MARÁVE PEOPLE 118

105. PORTABLE AFRICAN BELLOWS 121

106. THE ITALIAN FOIL 125

107. POMMEL; QUILLONS; PAS D’ANE 125

108. DOUBLE GUARD (GUARD AND COUNTERGUARD) 125

109. STRAIGHT QUILLONS AND LOOPS 125

110. FANTASTIC FORM 125

111. THE THREE FORMS OF THE SWORD 126

112. DELIVERING POINT 127

113. THE INFANTRY ‘REGULATION’ SWORD 129

114. SCYMITAR 130

115. CLAYMORE 130

116. } DIAGRAMS ILLUSTRATING THE DIRECT }

117. } AND THE OBLIQUE CUT } 130

118. SECTIONS OF SWORD-BLADES 131

119. FOIL WITH FRENCH GUARD 133

120. REGULATION SWORD FOR INFANTRY 133

121. SCYMITAR-SHAPE 133

122. YATAGHAN 134

123. ORNAMENTAL YATAGHAN AND SHEATH 134

124. SECTIONS OF THRUSTING-SWORDS 135

125. PIERCED BLADE 136

126. PIERCED BLADE AND SHEATH 136

127. FLAMBERGE 136

128. GERMAN MAIN-GAUCHE 136

129. PATERNOSTER 136

130. MALAY KRÍS 137

131. WAVE-EDGED DAGGER 137

132. SAW-TOOTH BLADE 137

133. MAIN-GAUCHE 137

134. SWORD-BREAKERS 138

135. ONE-EDGED WAVE BLADE 138

136. COUNTERGUARD 138

137. TOOTHED-EDGE 138

138. HOOKED-EDGE 138

139. EXECUTIONER’S SWORD 139

140. JAPANESE TYPE 139

141. CHINESE SABRE-KNIFE 139

142. OLD PERSIAN SWORD 139

143. SCYMITAR 139

144. OLD TURKISH 140

145. CHINESE 140

146. OLD TURKISH SCYMITAR 140

147. THE DÁO 140

148. SAILOR’S CUTLASS 140

149. HINDU KITÁR 140

150. GOLD COAST 141

151. BRONZE DAGGER; SWORD 145

152. SINGLE-STICK IN EGYPT 153

153. EGYPTIAN SOLDIER AND SHIELD 153

154. EGYPTIAN SOLDIERS 153

155. EGYPTIAN SOLDIER 153

156. EGYPTIANS FIGHTING, FROM PAINTINGS OF THEBES; EGYPTIAN

SOLDIERS, FROM THEBAN BAS-RELIEFS 153

157. BRONZE HATCHETS IN WOODEN HANDLES, BOUND WITH THONGS 154

158. POLE-AXES 154

159. KHETEN OR WAR-AXES 154

160. DIFFERENT FORMS OF THE EGYPTIAN KHOPSH (KOPIS), WITH EDGES

INSIDE AND OUTSIDE 156

161. EGYPTIAN SLING; UNKNOWN WEAPON; SHEATHED DAGGER; HATCHET;

SCORPION, OR WHIP-GOAD 157

162. EGYPTIAN DAGGERS 157

163. EGYPTIAN DAGGER OF BRONZE IN BRITISH MUSEUM 157

164. OFFICER OF LIFE-GUARD TO RAMESES II., APPARENTLY ASIATIC 157

165. BRONZE SWORD, FOUND AT AL-KANTARAH, EGYPT 157

166. AXE; SPEAR-HEAD; KHOPSH; LANCE-HEAD 158

167. BELT AND DAGGER 158

168. EGYPTIAN DAGGERS 158

169. ASSYRIAN DAGGERS, SHEATHS, AND BELTS 159

170. SHORT SWORD FROM CAUCASUS 160

171. EGYPTIAN CHOPPER-SWORDS 160

172. EGYPTIAN KHOPSH 160

173. BRONZE DAGGERS AND SHEATH 161

174. SHAPES OF EGYPTIAN BLADES 161

175. SWORD-DAGGERS 161

176. ABYSSINIAN SWORD, A LARGE SICKLE 164

177. SMALLER ABYSSINIAN BLADE 164

178. ABYSSINIAN SWORD IN SHEATH 164

179. FLISSA OF KABYLES 164

180. DANKALI SWORD 165

181. CONGO SWORD 165

182. UNYORO DAGGER-SWORD 166

183. ZANZIBAR SWORDS 166

184. GOLD COAST SWORDS 167

185. ASHANTI SWORD-KNIFE 167

186. SWORDS OF KING GELELE OF DAHOMY 167

187. BEHEADING SWORD 168

188. WASA (WASSAW) SWORD 168

189. KING BLAY’S SWORD 168

190. CAPTAIN CAMERON’S MANYUEMA SWORDLET, SHEATH, AND BELT 169

191. POKWÉ OF THE CAZEMBE’S CHIEFS 170

192. GABOON SWORDS, BOTH EVIDENTLY EGYPTIAN 170

193. CLEAVER OF THE HABSHI PEOPLE 170

194. FRANKISH BLADE, WITH MID-GROOVE OUT OF CENTRE 171

195. CYPRIAN DAGGER 173

196. NOVACULA 189

197. NOVACULA? 189

198. NOVACULA, SICKLE? RAZOR? 189

199. SILVER DAGGER 189

200. COPPER SWORD FROM THE ‘TREASURY OF PRIAM’ 192

201. MARZABOTTO BLADE 195

202. ASSYRIAN SWORD 199

203. ASSYRIAN LANCE, WITH COUNTER-WEIGHT 203

204. ASSYRIAN SPEAR-HEAD 203

205. ASSYRIAN ‘RAZOR’ 203

206. BABYLONIAN BRONZE DAGGER; ASSYRIAN SWORDS; ASSYRIAN

BRONZE-SWORD 204

207. DAGGER-SWORD IN SHEATH 204

208. DAGGER-SWORD 204

209. CLUB-SWORD 204

210. FANCY SWORD 204

211. ASSYRIAN SWORDS 205

212. ASSYRIAN SWORDS 205

213. ASSYRIAN DAGGER 205

214. ASSYRIO-BABYLONIAN ARCHER 206

215. ASSYRIAN FOOT SOLDIER 206

216. ASSYRIAN SOLDIER HUNTING GAME 206

217. FOOT SOLDIER OF THE ARMY OF SENNACHERIB (B.C. 712–707) 206

218. ASSYRIAN WARRIOR, WITH SWORD AND STAFF 206

219. ASSYRIAN WARRIORS AT A LION HUNT 206

220. ASSYRIAN EUNUCH 206

221. BRONZE SWORD, BEARING THE NAME OF VUL-NIRARI I., FOUND NEAR

DIARBEKR 208

222. PERSIAN ARCHER 209

223. PERSIAN WARRIOR 209

224. THE PERSIAN CIDARIS, OR TIARA 209

225. PERSIAN ACINACES 210

226. PERSIAN ACINACES 210

227. SWORD FROM MITHRAS GROUP 210

228. SWORD IN RELIEF, PERSEPOLIS SCULPTURES 210

229. PERSIAN ACINACES 211

230. DAGGER-FORMS FROM PERSEPOLIS 211

231. ACINACES OF PERSEPOLIS 212

232. ACINACES OF MITHRAS GROUP 212

233. HINDÚ WARRIORS 215

234. JAVANESE BLADE, SHOWING INDIAN DERIVATION; HINDÚ SABRE 215

235. BATTLE-SCENE FROM A CAVE IN CUTTACK, FIRST CENTURY A.D. 216

236. THE FIRST HIGHLANDER 217

237. ARJUNA’S SWORD 217

238. JAVANESE SCULPTURES WITH BENT SWORDS 218

239. PESHÁWAR SCULPTURES 218

240. TWO-EDGED BRONZE SWORD AND ALABASTER KNOB, MYCENÆ 223

241. GOLD SHOULDER-BELT, WITH FRAGMENT OF TWO-EDGED BRONZE

RAPIER 228

242. BLADE FROM MYCENÆ 229

243. A LONG GOLD PLATE 229

244. WEAPONS FROM MYCENÆ 229

245. SWORD BLADES FROM MYCENÆ 229

246. SWORD BLADES FROM MYCENÆ 230

247. BRONZE LANCEHEAD (?) 230

248. TWO-EDGED BRONZE SWORD AND DAGGER 230

249. TWO-EDGED BRONZE SWORDS AND ALABASTER KNOB 231

250. RAPIER BLADES OF MYCENÆ 232

251. WARRIOR WITH SWORD 232

252. BRONZE SWORD FOUND IN THE PALACE, MYCENÆ 233

253. BRONZE DAGGER: TWO BLADES SOLDERED 233

254. PHÁSGANON 235

255. GREEK PHÁSGANA 235

256. SHORT SWORD (PHÁSGANON) OF BRONZE, FOUND IN CRANNOG AT

PESCHIARA, AND PROBABLY GREEK 235

257. TWO-EDGED BRONZE SWORD AND ALABASTER POMMEL 236

258. KOPIS WITH POMMEL 236

259. KOPIS WITH HOOK 236

260. KUKKRI BLADE OF GHURKAS 236

261. THE DANÍSKO 237

262. GREEK XIPHOS 238

263. GALLO-GREEK SWORD 238

264. GALLO-GREEK SWORD 238

265. MAYENCE BLADE 238

266. GALLO-GREEK BLADE AND SHEATH 238

267. BRONZE PARAZONIUM 239

268. ‘HOPLITES’ (HEAVY ARMED) 240

269. GREEK COMBATANTS WITH SWORD AND LANCE 240

270. ROMAN SOLDIER 246

271. HELMETS OF HASTARII (FROM TRAJAN’S COLUMN); HELMETS OF

HASTARII; BRONZE HELMET (FROM CANNÆ) 246

272. HASTATUS (FROM TRAJAN’S COLUMN) 247

273. CENTURION’S CUIRASS, WITH PHALERÆ OR DECORATIONS 248

274. ROMAN SWORD; GLADIUS 255

275. BRONZE TWO-EDGED EARLY ROMAN ENSIS 255

276. SWORD OF ROMAN AUXILIARY 255

277. ROMAN SWORD 255

278. SWORD AND VAGINA (SHEATH) 256

279. SWORD AND VAGINA (SHEATH) 256

280. THE PUGIO 256

281. TWO-EDGED ROMAN STILETTOS 257

282. SWORD OF TIBERIUS 258

283. GERMAN OR SLAV SWORD 263

284. SCRAMASAX FROM HALLSTADT 263

285. DANISH SCRAMASAX 263

286. BLADE AND HANDLE OF BRONZE WITH PART OF EAGLE 265

287. GALLIC SWORD OF BRONZE 266

288. SWORD FOUND AT AUGSBURG 270

289. BRONZE 271

290. THE SPATHA OF SCHLESWIG 272

291. SHORT KELTIC SWORD 272

292. DANISH SWORD 274

293. BRITISH SWORD, BRONZE 278

THE BOOK OF THE SWORD.

CHAPTER I.

PREAMBLE: ON THE ORIGIN OF WEAPONS.

Man’s civilisation began with Fire—how to light it and how to keep it

lit. Before he had taken this step, our primal ancestor (or ancestors)

evidently led the life of the lower animals. The legend of ‘Iapetus’

bold son’ Prometheus, like many others invented by the Greeks, or

rather borrowed from Egypt, contained under the form of fable a deep

Truth, a fact, a lesson valuable even in these days. ‘Forethought,’

the elder brother of ‘Afterthought,’ brought down the _semina flammæ_

in a hollow tube from Heaven, or stole it from the chariot of the

Sun. Here we have the personification of the Great Unknown, who,

finding a cane-brake or a jungle tree fired by lightning or flamed by

wind-friction, conceived the idea of feeding the σπέρμα πυρὸς with

fuel. Thus Hermes or Mercury was ‘Pteropédilos’ or ‘Alipes;’ and his

ankles were fitted with ‘Pedila’ or ‘Talaria,’ winged sandals, to show

that the soldier fights with his legs as well as with his arms.[3]

I will not enlarge upon the imperious interest of Hoplology: the

history of arms and armour, their connection and their transitions,

plays the most important part in the annals of the world.

The first effort of human technology was probably weapon-making.

History and travel tell us of no race so rude as to lack artificial

means of offence and defence.[4] To these, indeed, man’s ingenuity and

artistic efforts must, in his simple youthtide, have been confined. I

do not allude to the complete man, created full-grown in body and mind

by the priestly castes of Egypt, Phœnicia, Judæa, Assyria, Persia,

and India. The _Homo sapiens_ whom we have to consider is the ‘Adam

Kadmon,’[5] not of the Cabbalist, but of the anthropologist, as soon

as he raised himself above the beasts of the field by superiority of

brains and hands.

The lower animals are born armed, but not weaponed. The arm, indeed, is

rather bestial than human: the weapon is, speaking generally, human,

not bestial. Naturalists have doubted, and still doubt, whether in

the so-called natural state the lower animals use weapons properly

so termed. Colonel A. Lane Fox, a diligent student of primitive

warfare, and a distinguished anthropologist,[6] distinctly holds

the hand-stone to be _the_ prehistoric weapon. He quotes (Cat. pp.

156–59) the ape using the hand-stone to crack nutshells; the gorillas

defending themselves against the Carthaginians of Hanno; and Pedro

de Cieza (Cieça) de Leon[7] telling us that ‘when the Spaniards [in

Peru] pass under the trees where the monkeys are, these creatures

break off branches and throw them down, making faces all the time.’

Even in the days of Strabo (xv. 1) it was asserted that Indian monkeys

climb precipices, and roll down stones upon their pursuers—a favourite

tactic with savages. Nor, indeed, is it hard to believe that the

Simiads, whose quasi-human hand has prehensile powers, bombard their

assailants with cocoa-nuts and other missiles. Major Denham (1821–24),

a trustworthy traveller, when exploring about Lake Chad, says of the

quadrumans of the Yeou country: ‘The monkeys, or, as the Arabs say, men

enchanted (_Beny Adam meshood_),[8] were so numerous that I saw upwards

of a hundred and fifty assembled at one place in the evening. They did

not appear at all inclined to give up their ground, but, perched on the

top of a bank some twenty feet high, made a terrible noise, and, rather

gently than otherwise, pelted us as we approached within a certain

distance.’ Herr Holub,[9] also, was ‘designedly aimed at by a herd of

African baboons perched among the trees;’ and on another occasion he

and his men had to beat an ignominious retreat from ‘our cousins.’

‘Hence,’ suggests Colonel A. Lane Fox, ‘our “poor relation” conserves,

even when bred abroad and in captivity, the habit of violently shaking

the branch by jumping upon it with all its weight, in order that the

detached fruit may fall upon the assailant’s head.’ In Egypt, as we see

from the tomb-pictures, monkeys (baboons or cynocephali) were taught to

assist in gathering fruit, and in acting as torch-bearers. While doing

this last duty, their innate petulance caused many a merry scene.[10]

I never witnessed this bombardment by monkeys. But when my regiment

was stationed at Baroda in Gujarát, several of my brother officers

and myself saw an elephant use a weapon. The intelligent animal,

which the natives call Háthi (‘the handed’[11]), was chained to a

post during the dangerous season of the wet forehead, and was swaying

itself in ill-temper from side to side. Probably offended by the sudden

appearance of white faces, it seized with its trunk a heavy billet,

and threw it at our heads with a force and a good will that proved the

worst intention.

According to Captain Hall—who, however, derived the tale from the

Eskimos,[12] the sole living representatives of the palæolithic age in

Europe—the polar bear, traditionally reported to throw stones, rolls

down, with its quasi-human forepaws, rocks and boulders upon the walrus

when found sleeping at the foot of some overhanging cliff. ‘Meister

Petz’ aims at the head, and finally brains the stunned prey with the

same weapon. Perhaps the account belongs to the category of the ostrich

throwing stones, told by many naturalists, including Pliny (x. 1),

when, as Father Lobo explained in his ‘Abyssinia,’ the bird only kicks

them up during its scouring flight. Similar, too, is the exploded

shooting-out of the porcupine’s quills, whereby, according to mediæval

‘Shoe-tyes’[13] men have been badly hurt and even killed. On the other

hand, the Emu kicks like an Onager[14] and will drive a man from one

side of a quarter-deck to the other.

But though Man’s first work was to weapon himself, we must not believe

with the Cynics and the Humanitarians that his late appearance in

creation, or rather on the stage of life, initiated an unvarying and

monotonous course of destructiveness. The great tertiary mammals which

preceded him, the hoplotherium, the deinotherium, and other -theria,

made earth a vast scene of bloodshed to which his feeble powers could

add only a few poor horrors. And even in our day the predatory fishes,

that have learned absolutely nothing from man’s inhumanity to man,

habitually display as much ferocity as ever disgraced savage human

nature.

Primitive man—the post-tertiary animal—was doomed by the very

conditions of his being and his media to a life of warfare; a course

of offence to obtain his food, and of defence to retain his life.

Ulysses[15] says pathetically:

No thing frailer of force than Man earth breedeth and feedeth;

Man ever feeblest of all on th’ Earth’s face creeping and crawling.

The same sentiment occurs in the ‘Iliad’; and Pliny, the pessimist,

writes—‘the only tearful animal, Man.’

The career of these wretches, who had neither ‘minds’ nor ‘souls,’

was one long campaign against ravenous beasts and their ‘brother’

man-brutes. Peace was never anything to them but a fitful interval of

repose. The golden age of the poets was a dream; as Videlou remarked,

‘Peace means death for all barbarian races.’ The existence of our

earliest ancestors was literally the Battle of Life. Then, as now, the

Great Gaster was the first Master of Arts, and War was the natural

condition of humanity upon which depends the greater part of its

progress, its rising from the lower to the higher grade. Hobbism, after

all, is partly right: ‘Men were by nature equal, and their only social

relation was a state of war.’ Like the children of our modern day,

helpless and speechless, primæval Homo possessed, in common with his

fellow-creatures, only the instincts necessary for self-support under

conditions the most facile. Uncultivated thought is not rich in the

productive faculty; the brain does not create ideas: it only combines

them and evolves the novelty of deduction, and the development of what

is found existing. Similarly in language, onomatopœia, the imitation

of natural sounds, the speech of Man’s babyhood, still endures; and to

it we owe our more picturesque and life-like expressions. But, despite

their feeble powers, compulsory instruction, the Instructor being Need,

was continually urging the Savage and the Barbarian to evolve safety

out of danger, comfort out of its contrary.

For man, compelled by necessity of his nature to weapon himself,

bears within him the two great principles of Imitation and Progress.

Both are, after a fashion, his peculiar attributes, being rudimentary

amongst the lower animals, though by no means wholly wanting. His

capacity of language, together with secular development of letters and

literature, enabled him to accumulate for himself, and to transmit

to others, a store of experience acquired through the medium of the

senses; and this, once gained, was never wholly lost. By degrees

immeasurably slower than among civilised societies, the Savage digested

and applied to the Present and to the Future the hoarded wisdom of

the Past. The imitative faculty, a preponderating advantage of the

featherless biped over the quadruped, taught the former, even in his

infancy, to borrow _ad libitum_, while he lent little or nothing.

As a quasi-solitary Hunter[16] he was doomed to fray and foray, to

destroying others in order to preserve himself and his family: a

condition so constant and universal as to include all others. Become a

Shepherd, he fought man and beast to preserve and increase his flocks

and herds; and rising to an Agriculturist, he was ever urged to break

the peace by greed of gain, by ambition, and by the instinctive longing

for excitement.[17]

But there was no absolute point of separation, as far as the material

universe is concerned, to mark the dawn of a new ‘creative period’; and

the _Homo Darwiniensis_ made by the Aristotle of our age, the greatest

of English naturalists, is directly connected with the _Homo sapiens_.

There are hosts of imitative animals, birds as well as beasts; but the

copying-power is essentially limited. Moreover, it is ‘instinctive,’

the work of the undeveloped, as opposed to ‘reasoning,’ the process of

the highly-developed brain and nervous system. Whilst man has taught

himself to articulate, to converse, the dog, which only howled and

whined, has learned nothing except to bark. Man, again, is capable of

a development whose bounds we are unable to determine; whereas the

beast, incapable of self-culture, progresses, under the most favourable

circumstances, automatically and within comparatively narrow bounds.

Upon the imitative faculty and its exercise I must dwell at greater

length. It is regretable that the delicious wisdom of Pope neglected

to point out the great lesson of the animal-world in suggesting and

supplying the arts of offence and defence:—

Go, from the creatures thy instructions take...

Thy arts of building from the bee receive;

Learn from the mole to plough, the worm to weave;

Learn from the little nautilus to sail,

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.[18]

Man, especially in the tropical and sub-tropical zones—his early, if

not his earliest, home, long ago whelmed beneath the ocean waves—would

derive many a useful hint from the dreadful armoury of equinoctial

vegetation; the poison-trees, the large strong spines of the Acacia and

the Mimosa, _e.g._ the Wait-a-bit (_Acacia detinens_), the Gleditschia,

the Socotrine Aloe, the American Agave, and the piercing thorns of

the _Caryota urens_, and certain palms. The aboriginal races would be

further instructed in offensive and defensive arts by the powerful and

destructive _feræ_ of the sunny river-plains, where the Savage was

first induced to build permanent abodes.

[Heading: _DISTRIBUTION OF WEAPONS._]

Before noting the means of attack and protection which Nature

suggested, we may distribute Hoplology, the science of arms and weapons

of offence and defence, human and bestial, into two great orders, of

which the latter can be subdivided into four species:—

1. _Missile._

2. _Armes d’hast._—_a._ Percussive or striking; _b._ Thrusting,

piercing, or ramming; _c._ Cutting or ripping; _d._ Notched or

serrated.

Colonel A. Lane Fox (‘Prim. Warfare,’ p. 11) thus classifies the

weapons of ‘Animals and Savages’:—

_Defensive._ | _Offensive._ | _Stratagems._

Hides | Piercing | Flight

Solid plates | Striking | Ambush

Jointed plates | Serrated | Tactics

Scales | Poisoned | Columns

| Missiles | Leaders

| | Outposts

| | Artificial defences

| | War cries

My list is less comprehensive, and it bears only upon the origin

of the _Arme blanche_.

I. As has been said, the missile, the βέλος, is probably the first

form of weapon, and is still the favourite with savage Man. It favours

the natural self-preservative instinct. _El-Khauf maksúm_—‘fear is

distributed,’—say the Arabs. ‘The shorter the weapon the braver the

wielder’ has become a well-established fact. The savage Hunter, whose

time is his own, would prefer the missile; but the Agriculturist,

compelled to be at home for seed-time and harvest, would choose the

hand-to-hand weapon which shortens action. We may hold, without

undue credulity, that the throwing-arm is common to beasts, after a

fashion, and to man. Among the so-called ‘missile fishes’[19] the

Toxotes,[20] or Archer, unerringly brings down insects with a drop

of water when three or four feet high in the air. The Chætodon, or

archer fish of Japan, is kept in a glass vase, and fed by holding flies

at the end of a rod a few inches above the surface: it strikes them

with an infallible aim. This process is repeated, among the mammalia,

by the Llama, the Guanaco and their congeners, who propel their

acrid and fetid saliva for some distance and with excellent aim.[21]

And stone-throwing held its own for many an age, as we read in the

fifteenth century:—

Use eke the cast of stone with slynge or honde;

It falleth ofte, yf other shot there none is,

Men harneysèd in steel may not withstonde

The multitude and mighty cast of stonys.[22]

II. The stroke or blow which led to the cut would be seen exemplified

in the felidæ, by the terrible buffet of the lion, by the clawing

of the tiger and the bear, and by the swing of the trunk of the

‘half-reasoner with the hand.’ Man also would observe that the zebra

and the quagga (so called from its cry, _wag-ga, wag-ga_[23]), the

horse and the ass, the camel, the giraffe, and even the cow, defend

themselves with the kick or hoof-blow; while the ostrich, the swan,

and the larger birds of prey assault with a flirt or stroke of the

wing. The aries or sea-ram (_Delphinus orca_) charges with a butt.

The common whale raises the head with such force that it has been

held capable of sinking a whaler: moreover, this mammal uses the huge

caudal fin or tail in battle with man and beast; for instance, when

engaged with the fox-shark or thresher (_Carcharias vulpes_).[24]

These, combined with the force of man’s doubled fist, would suggest

the ‘noble art’ of boxing: it dates from remote antiquity; witness

the cestus or knuckle-duster of the classics, Greeks, Romans, and

Lusitanians. So far from being confined to Great or Greater Britain,

as some suppose, it is still a favourite not only with the Russian

peasants, but also with the Hausas, Moslem negroids who did such good

service in the Ashanti war. A curious survival of the feline armature

is the Hindu’s Wágh-nakh. Following Demmin, Colonel A. Lane Fox[25] was

in error when he described this ‘tiger’s-claw’ as ‘an Indian weapon of

treachery belonging to a secret society, and invented about A.D. 1659.’

Demmin[26] as erroneously attributes the Wágh-nakh to Sívají, the

Prince of Maráthá-land in Western India, who traitorously used it upon

Afzal Khan, the Moslem General of Aurangzeb, sent (A.D. 1659) to put

down his rebellion.[27] A meeting of the chiefs was agreed upon, and

the Moslem, quitting his army, advanced with a single servant; he wore

a thin robe, and carried only a straight sword. Sívají, descending from

the fort, assumed a timid and hesitating air, and to all appearance

was unarmed. But he wore mail under his flimsy white cotton coat, and

besides a concealed dagger, he carried his ‘tiger’s-claw.’ The Khan

looked with contempt at the crouching and diminutive ‘mountain rat,’

whom the Moslems threatened to bring back in cages; but, at the moment

of embracing, the Maráthá struck his Wágh-nakh into his adversary’s

bowels and despatched him with his dagger. The Wágh-nakh in question is

still kept as a relic, I am told, by the Bhonslá family.[28] Outside

the hand you see nothing but two solid gold rings encircling the

index and the minimus; these two are joined inside by a steel bar,

which serves as a connecting base to three or four sharp claws, thin

enough to fit between and to be hidden by the fingers of a half-closed

hand. The attack is by ripping open the belly: and I have heard of

a poisoned Wágh-nakh which may have been suggested by certain poison

rings in ancient and mediæval Europe.[29] The date of invention is

absolutely unknown, and a curious and instructive modification of it

was made by those Indians-in-Europe, the Gypsies.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.—INDIAN WÁGH-NAKH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.—WÁGH-NAKH, USED BY MARÁTHÁS (India Museum.)]

III. The thrust would be suggested by the combats of the goat, the

stag, and black cattle, including the buffalo and the wild bull, all

of which charge at speed with the head downwards, and drive the horns

into the enemy’s body. The gnu (_Catoblepas G._) and other African

antelopes, when pressed by the hunter, keep him at bay with the point.

In Europe ‘hurt of hart,’ a ripping and tearing thrust, has brought

many a man to the grave. The hippopotamus, a dangerous animal unduly

despised, dives under the canoe, like the walrus, rises suddenly, and

with its lower tusks, of the hardest ivory, drills two holes in the

offending bottom. The black rhinoceros, fiercest and most irritable

of African fauna, though graminivorous, has one or two horns of

wood-like fibre-bundles resting upon the strongly-arched nasal bones,

and attached by an extensive apparatus of muscles and tendons. This

armature, loose when the beast is at peace, becomes erect and immovable

in rage, thus proving in a special manner its only use—that of war. It

is a formidable dagger that tears open the elephant and passes through

the saddle and its padding into the ribs of a horse. The extinct

sabre-toothed tiger (_Machairodus latidens_), with one incisor and five

canines, also killed with a thrust. So, amongst birds, the bittern,

the peacock, and the American white crane peck or stab at the eye;

the last-named has been known to drive its long sharp mandibles deep

into the pursuer’s bowels, and has been caught by presenting to it a

gun-muzzle; the bird, mistaking the hole, strikes at it and is caught

by the beak.[30] The hern defends herself during flight by presenting

the sharp long beak to the falcon. The pheasant and partridge, the

domestic cock and quail, to mention no others, use their spurs with

a poniard’s thrust; the Argus-pheasant of India, the American Jacaná

(_Parra_), the horned screamer (_Palamedea_), the wing-wader of

Australia (Gregory), and the plover of Central Africa (Denham and

Claperton), carry weapons upon their wings.

[Heading: _THE ARMS OF ANIMALS._]

[Illustration: FIG. 3.

1. BALISTES CAPRISCUS;

2. COTTUS DICERAUS;

3. NASEUS FRONTICORNIS.]

According to Pliny (viii. 38) the dolphins which enter the Nile are

armed with a knife-edged spur on the back to protect themselves

from the crocodiles. Cuvier refers this allusion to the _Squalus

centrina_ or _Spinax_ of Linnæus. The European ‘file-fish’ (_Balistes

capriscus_), found in a fossil state, and still existing, though

rare in British waters, remarkably shows the efficiency, beauty, and

variety of that order’s armature. It pierces its enemy from beneath

by a strong erectile and cirrated spine on the first anterior dorsal;

the base of the spear is expanded and perforated, and a bolt from the

supporting plate passes freely through it. When the spine is raised, a

hollow at the back receives a prominence from the next bony ray, which

fixes the point in an erect position. Like the hammer of a fire-piece

at full cock, the spear cannot be forced down till the prominence is

withdrawn, as by pulling the trigger. This mechanism, says the learned

and experienced Professor Owen,[31] may be compared with the fixing and

unfixing of a bayonet: when the spine is bent down it is received into

a groove in the supporting plate, and thus it offers no impediment to

swimming.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.—1. SPEAR OF NARWHAL; 2. SWORD OF XIPHIAS; 3.

RHINOCEROS-HORN; 4. WALRUS TUSKS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 5.—NARWHAL’S SWORD PIERCING PLANK.]

[Illustration: FIG. 6.—METAL DAGGERS WITH HORN CURVE.]

The pugnacious and voracious little ‘stickleback’ (_Gasterosteus_) is

similarly provided. The ‘bull-head’ (_Cottus diceraus_, Pallas[32])

bears a multibarbed horn on its dorsum, exactly resembling the spears

of the Eskimos and the savages of South America and Australia. The

yellow-bellied ‘surgeon’ or lancet-fish (_Acanthurus_) is armed, in

either ocean, with a long spine on each side of the tail; with this

lance it defends itself dexterously against its many enemies. The

_Naseus fronticornis_ (Lacépède) bears, besides the horn-muzzle,

trenchant spear-formed blades in the pointed and serrated tail.

The sting-fish or adder-pike (_Trachinus vipera_) has necessitated

amputation of the wounded limb: the dorsals, as well as the opercular

spines, have deep double grooves in which the venomous mucous secretion

is lodged—a hint to dagger-makers. The sting-rays (_Raia trygon_

and _R. histrix_[33]) twist the long slender tail round the object

of attack and cut the surface with the strong notched and spiny

edge, inflicting a wound not easily healed. The sting, besides being

poisonous, has the especial merit of breaking off in the wound: it

is extensively used by the savages of the Fiji, the Gambier, and the

Pellew Islands, of Tahiti, Samoa, and many of the Low Islands.[34]

These properties would suggest poisoned weapons which cannot be

extracted. Such are the arrows of the Bushman, the Shoshoni, and the

Macoinchi of Guiana, culminating in the highly-civilised stiletto of

hollow glass.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.—MÁDU OR MÁRU.]

The sword-fish (_Xiphias_), although a vegetable feeder, is mentioned

by Pliny (xxxii. 6) as able to sink a ship. It is recorded to have

killed a man when bathing in the Severn near Worcester. It attacks

the whale, and it has been known to transfix a vessel’s side with its

terrible weapon. The narwhal or sea-unicorn (_Monodon monoceros_)

carries a formidable tusk, a Sword-blade of the same kind similarly

used.[35]

Here may be offered a single proof how Man, living among, and

dependent for food upon, the lower animals, borrowed from their habits

and experience his earliest practice of offence and defence. The

illustration represents a ‘Singhauta,’[36] ‘Mádu’ or ‘Máru’ (double

dagger), made from the horns of the common Indian antelope, connected

by crossbars. In its rude state, and also tipped with metal, it is

still used as a weapon by the wild Bhíls, and as a crutch and dagger

by the Jogis (Hindús) and Fakirs (Hindís or Moslems), both orders

of religious mendicants who are professionally forbidden to carry

secular arms. It also served for defence, like the parrying-stick of

Africa and Australia, till it was fitted with a hand-guard, and the

latter presently expanded into a circular targe of metal. This ancient

instrument, with its graceful curves, shows four distinct stages of

development: first, the natural, and, secondly, the early artificial,

with metal caps to make it a better thrusting weapon. The third process

was to forge the whole of metal; and the fourth and final provided

it with a straight, broad blade, springing at right angles from the

central grip. This was the ‘Adaga’[37] of mediæval writers.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.—THE ADAGA.]

IV. The first idea of a trenchant or cutting instrument would be

suggested by various reeds and grasses; their silicious leaves at

certain angles cleave to the bone, as experience has taught most

men who have passed through a jungle of wild sugar-cane. When

full-grown the plants stand higher than a man’s head, and the

flint-edged leaves disposed in all directions suggest a labyrinth of

sword-blades. Thus the Mawingo-wingo (_Pennisetum Benthami_), like

the horse-tail or ‘shave-grass’ of Spain, was used as knives by the

executioners of Kings Sunna and Mtesa of Uganda, when cutting the

human victims to pieces.[38] Of the same kind are the ‘sword-grass’

and the ‘bamboo-grass.’ Many races, especially the Andamanese and the

Polynesian Islanders, make useful blades of the split and sharpened

bamboo: they are fashioned from the green plant, and are dried and

charred to sharpen the edge. Turning to the animal world, the cassowary

tears with a forward cut, and the wounded coot scratches like a cat.

The ‘old man kangaroo,’ with the long nail of the powerful hind leg,

has opened the stomach of many a staunch hound. The wild boar attacks

with a thrust, followed by a rip, cutting scientifically from below

upwards. This, as will appear, is precisely the plan adopted by certain

ancient forms of sabre, Greek and barbarian, the cutting edges being

inside, not outside, the curve. I may add that the old attack is one of

our latest improvements in broadsword exercise.[39]

The offensive weapon of the sting-ray, and of various insects, as well

as the teeth of all animals, man included, furnish models for serrated

or saw-edged instruments. Hence Colonel A. Lane Fox observes:[40] ‘It

is not surprising that the first efforts of mankind in the construction

of trenchant instruments should so universally consist of teeth, or

flint-flakes, arranged along the edge of staves.’ But evidently the

knife preceded the saw, which is nothing but a knife-blade jagged.

Other familiar instances would be the multibarb stings of insects,

especially that of the common bee. Again, we have the mantis, an

orthopter of the Temperates and the Tropics, whose fights, enjoyed by

the Chinese, are compared with the duels of sabrers. For the rasping

blow and parry they use the forearm, which carries rows of strong

sharp spines; and a happy stroke beheads or bisects the antagonist.

To this category belongs the armature of the saw-fish (_Pristis_),

a shark widely distributed and haunting the arctic, temperate, and

tropical seas. Its mode of offence is to spring high from the water and

to fall upon the foe, not with the point, but with either edge of its

formidable arm: the row of strong and trenchant barbs, set like teeth,

cuts deeply into the whale’s flesh. Hence, in New Guinea, the serrated

blade becomes a favourite Sword, the base of the snout being cut and

rounded so as to form a handle.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.—SERRATED OR MULTIBARBED WEAPONS.

1. Sting of the common Bee; 2. Sting of Ray.]

[Illustration: FIG. 10.—WEAPONS MADE OF SHARKS’ TEETH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 11.—ITALIAN DAGGER, WITH GROOVES AND HOLES FOR

POISON.]

[Illustration: FIG. 12.—SWORD WITH SERRATED BLADE OF SAW-FISH.]

Thus man, essentially a tool-making animal, and compelled by the

conditions of his being to one long battle with the brute creation,

was furnished by his enemies, not only with models of implements and

instruments, and with instructions to use them, from witnessing the

combats of brutes, but actually with their arms, which he converted

to his own purposes. Hence the weapon and the tool were, as a rule,

identical in the hands of primæval man; and this forms, perhaps, the

chief test of a primitive invention. The earliest drift-flints ‘were

probably used as weapons both of war and the chase, to grub roots, to

cut down trees, and to scoop out canoes.’[41] The Watúsi of Eastern

Africa make their baskets with their sharpened spear-heads; and the

so-called Káfirs (Amazulu, &c.) still shave themselves with the

assegai. Hence, too, as like conditions engender like results, the arms

and implements of different races resemble one another so closely as to

suggest a common origin and actual imitation, even where copying was,

so to speak, impossible.

Let us take as an instance two of the most widespread of weapons.

The blow-pipe’s progressive form has been independently developed

upon a similar plan, with distinctly marked steps, in places the most

remote.[42] Another instance is the chevaux-de-frise, the spikes of

metal familiar to the classics.[43] They survive in the caltrops or

bamboo splints planted in the ground by the barefooted Mpangwe (Fans)

of Gaboon-land and by the Rangos of Malacca.

In the early days of anthropological study we read complaints that

‘it is impossible to establish, amongst the implements of modern

savages, a perfectly true sequence,’ although truth may be arrived

at in points of detail; and that ‘in regard to the primary order of

development, much must still be left open to conjecture.’ But longer

labour and larger collections have lately added many a link to the

broken chain of continuity. We can now trace with reasonable certainty

the tardy progress of evolution which, during a long succession of

ages, led to the systematised art of war. The conditions of the latter

presently allowed society periods of rest, or rather of recovery; and

more leisure for the practice which, in weapons as in other things,

‘maketh perfect.’[44] And man has no idea of finality: he will stop

short of nothing less than the absolutely perfect. He will labour at

the ironclad as he did the canoe; at the fish-torpedo as he did the

petard.[45]

[Heading: _ARMS AND ARTS._]

From the use of arms, also, arose the rudimentary arts of savage

man. Music began when he expressed his joy and his sorrow by cries

of emotion—the voice being the earliest, as it is still the best, of

music-makers. It was followed by its imitations, which pass through

three several stages, and even now we know nothing more in the way of

development.[46] When the savage clapped together two clubs he produced

the first or drum-type; when he hissed or whistled he originated the

pipe-type (syrinx, organ, bagpipe, &c.); and the twanging of his bow

suggested the lyre-type, which we still find—‘tickling the dried guts

of a mewing cat.’[47] Painting and sculpture were the few simple lines

drawn and cut upon the tomahawk or other rude weapon-tool. ‘As men

think and live so they build,’ said Herder; and architecture, which

presently came to embrace all the other arts, dawned when the Savage

attempted to defend and to adorn his roost among the tree branches or

the entrance to his cave-den.[48]

After this preamble, which has been longer than I expected, we pass to

the first or rudest forms of the Weapons Proper used by Savage Man.

CHAPTER II.

MAN’S FIRST WEAPONS—THE STONE AND THE STICK. THE EARLIEST AGES OF

WEAPONS. THE AGES OF WOOD, OF BONE, AND OF HORN.

What, then, was Man’s first weapon? He was born speechless and

helpless, inferior to the beasts of the field. He grew up armed, but

badly armed. His muscles may have been stronger than they are now; his

poor uneducated fisticuff, however, could not have compared with the

kick of an ass. As we see from the prognathous jaw, he could bite, and

his teeth were doubtless excellent[49]; still, the size and shape of

the maxilla rendered it an arm inferior to the hyæna’s and even to the

dog’s. He scratched and tore, as women still do; but his nails could

hardly have been more dangerous than the claws of the minor felines.

He had, however, the hand, the most perfect of all prehensile

contrivances, and Necessity compelled him to use it. The stone, his

first ‘weapon,’ properly so called, would serve him in two ways—as a

missile, and as a percussive instrument. Our savage progenitor, who

in days long before the dawn of history, contracted the extensor and

relaxed the flexor muscles of his arm when flinging into air what he

picked up from the ground, was unconsciously lengthening his reach

and taking the first step in the art and science of ballistics. His

descendants would acquire extraordinary skill in stone-throwing, and

universal practice would again make perfect. Diodorus of Sicily (B.C.

44),[50] who so admirably copied Herodotus, says that the Libyans ‘use

neither Swords, spears, nor other weapons; but only three darts and

stones in certain leather budgets, wherewith they fight in pursuing

and retreating.’ The Wánshi (Guanches) Libyan or Berber peoples of the

Canarian Archipelago, according to Cà da Mosto (A.D. 1505), confirmed

by many, including George Glas,[51] were expert stone-throwers. They

fought their duels ‘in the public place, where the combatants mounted

upon two stones placed at the opposite sides of it, each stone being

flat at top and about half a yard in diameter. On these they stood fast

without moving their feet, till each had thrown three round stones at

his antagonist. Though they were good marksmen, yet they generally

avoided those missive weapons by the agile writhing of their bodies.

Then arming themselves with sharp flints (obsidian?) in their left

hands, and cudgels or clubs in their right, they fell on, beating and

cutting each other till they were tired.’ An instance is mentioned in

which a Guanche brought down with a single throw a large palm-frond,

whose mid-rib was capable of resisting the stroke of an axe. Kolben,

who wrote about a century and a half ago, gives the following account

of the ape-like gestures of the Khoi-Khoi or Hottentots[52]:—‘The most

surprising strokes of their dexterity are seen in their throwing of

a stone. They hit a mark to a miracle of exactness, though it be a

hundred paces distant and no bigger than a halfpenny. I have beheld

them at this exercise with the highest pleasure and astonishment, and

was never weary of the spectacle. I still expected after repeated

successes, that the stone would err; but I expected in vain. Still went

the stone right to the mark, and my pleasure and astonishment were

redoubled. You could imagine that the stone was not destined to err,

or that you were not destined to see it. But a Hottentot’s unerring

hand in this exercise is not the only wonder of the scene; you would be

equally struck perhaps with the manner in which he takes his aim. He

stands, not still with a lift-up arm and a steady staring eye upon the

mark, as we do; but is in constant motion, skipping from one side to

another, suddenly stooping, suddenly rising; now bending on this side,

now on that; his eyes, hands, and feet are in constant action, and you

would think that he was playing the fool, and minding anything else

than his aim; when on a sudden, away goes the stone with a fury, right

to the heart of the mark, as if some invisible power had directed it.’

Nearer home the modern Syrians still preserve their old dexterity: I

have often heard the tale, and have no reason to doubt its truth, of

a brown bear (_Ursus syriacus_) being killed in the Libanus by a blow

between the eyes.[53] When the Arab Bedawin are on the raid and do not

wish to use their matchlocks, they attack at night, and ‘rain stones’

upon the victim. The latter vainly discharges his ammunition against

the shadows flitting ghost-like among the rocks; and, when his fire

is drawn, the murderers rush in and finish their work. The use of the

stone amongst the wild tribes of Asia, Africa, and America is almost

universal. In Europe, the practice is confined to schoolboys; but the

wild Irish, by beginning early, become adepts in it when adults. As a

rule, the shepherd is everywhere a skilful stone-thrower.

Turner makes the ‘Kawas’ of Tanna, New Hebrides, a stone as long

as, and twice as thick as, an ordinary counting-house ruler: it is

thrown with great precision for a distance of twenty yards. The same

author mentions stones rounded like a cannon-ball, among the people

of Savage Island and Eromanga. Commander Byron notices the stones

made into missiles by the Disappointment Islanders. Beechey, whose

party was attacked by the Easter Islanders, says that the weapons,

cast with force and accuracy, knocked several of the seamen under

the boat-thwarts. Crantz tells us that Eskimo children are taught

stone-throwing at a mark as soon as they can use their hands. The late

Sir R. Schomburg describes a singular custom amongst the Demarara

Indians. When a child enters boyhood he is given a hard round stone

which he is to hand-rub till it becomes smooth, and he often reaches

manhood before the task is done. Observers have suggested that the only

use of the practice is a ‘lesson in perseverance, which quality, in the

opinion of many people, is best inculcated by engaging the minds of

youths in matters that are devoid of any other incentive in the way of

practical utility or interest.’

[Illustration: FIG. 13.—ANCIENT EGYPTIANS THROWING KNIVES.]

In more civilised times the knife, as a missile, would take the place

of the stone. We find that the ancient Egyptians[54] practised at a

wooden block, and the German _Helden_ (champions), seated on settles,

duelled by casting three knives each, to be parried with the shield.

The modern Spaniards begin to learn when children the art of throwing

the _facon_[55], _cuchillo_ or clasp-knife. The reapers of the Roman

Campagna, mere barbarians once civilised, also ‘chuck’ the sickle with

a surprising precision.

[Heading: _THE BOW._]

The habit of stone-throwing would presently lead to the invention of

the sling, which Meyrick considers,[56] strange to say, the ‘earliest

and simplest weapon of antiquity.’ The rudest form of this pastoral

weapon used only on open plains, a ball and cord, was followed by

the various complications of string- or thong-sling, cup-sling, and

stick-sling. The latter, a split stick which held the stone till the

moment of discharge, may have been the primitive arm: Lepsius shows

an Egyptian using such a sling and provided with a reserve heap of

pebbles. Nilsson suggests that David was thus weaponed when Goliath

addressed him, ‘Am I a dog that thou comest to me with staves?’—that

is, with the shepherd’s staff turned into a sling. And this form

survived longest in the Roman ‘fustibulus,’ which the moderns corrupted

to ‘fustibale’[57]: the latter, with its wooden handle, was used in

Europe during the twelfth century, and was employed in delivering

hand-grenades till the sixteenth. The primitive ball-and-cord, known

to the ancient Egyptians, is still preserved in the Bolas of the

South American Gaucho. A simultaneously invented missile would be the

hurling or throwing-stick and its modification, the Boomerang, of which

I have still to speak. The application of elasticity and resilience

being now well known, would suggest the rudest form of the bow[58] and

arrow. This invention, next in importance (though _longo intervallo_)

to fire-making and fire-feeding, is the first crucial evidence of the

distinction between the human weapon and the bestial arm. Nilsson and

many others hold the invention to have been instinctive and common to

all peoples; and we cannot wonder that it was made the invention of

demi-gods—Nimrod, Scythes[59] the son of Jupiter, or Perses son of

Perseus.[60] The missile arm at once showed man and beast separated

by an extensive difference of degree, if not of kind, and it has

played the most notable part, perhaps, of all weapons in the annals of

humanity or inhumanity. It led to the Greek _gastrapheta_, the Roman

_arcubalista_ (crossbow[61]); to the _palintonon_ or _balista_, and

the arblast (an enlarged species of the _arcus_, intended for throwing

darts of giant size); to the _Belagerungs-balister_, a fixed form; to

the catapult, _enthytonon_, _tormentum_, scorpion or _onager_,[62] and

to other formidable forms of classical artillery which preceded the

‘cheap and nasty’ invention of chemical explosives.

[Heading: _THE CLUB._]

So much for the Hand-stone as the forefather of missiles and of

ballistic science. Held in the fist it would give momentum, weight

and velocity, force and bruising power, to the blow. Thus it was the

forerunner of the club, straight and curved; the flail, the _bâton

ferré_, the ‘morning star,’ the ‘holy-water sprinkler,’ and a host of

similar weapons[63] that added another and a harder joint to man’s

arm. Clubs—which in practice are aimed at the head, whereas the spear

is mostly directed at the body[64]—would be easily made by pulling up

a straight young tree, or by tearing down a branch from the parent

trunk and stripping it of twigs and leaves. The club of Australia,

a continent to which we look for original forms, has the branching

rootlets trimmed to serve as spikes; moreover, the terminal bulge has

been developed in order to stop or parry the assailant’s weapon. In

fact the swell, ball, lozenge, or mushroom-head was the first germ of

the Australasian shield. The next step would be to fashion the ragged

staff with fire, with friction, and with flint knives, shells or other

scrapers, into a cutting as well as a crushing instrument; and here we

have one of the many origins of the Sword and of its diminutives, the

dagger and the knife. Pointed at the end, it would become the lance

and spear, the spud, spade, and palstave, the _pilum_, the dart, the

javelin, and the assagai.

Not a few authorities contend that the earliest weapons, the most

constant in all ages and continuous in all countries, were the

spear and the axe. The first would be a development of the pointed

hand-celt[65]; the latter of the leaf-formed or almond-shaped tool.

But firstly, these would be mostly confined to countries with a

well-developed Stone Age[66]; and secondly, the conversion of the

hand-stone into an _arme d’hast_ would assuredly be later than the club

and the sharpened stick or stake.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.—JAPANESE WAR-FLAIL.]

[Illustration: FIG. 15.—TURKISH WAR-FLAIL.]

[Illustration: FIG. 16.—MORNING STAR.]

Herodotus, the father of ancient history in its modern form, a

travelled student and a great genius, whose prose poem—for such it

is—has proved incomparably more useful to us than any works of his

successors, when describing a rock-sculpture of Sesostris-Ramses (ii.

106) makes him carry in his right hand a spear (Egyptian), and in his

left a bow (Lybian or Ethiopian). Hence some writers on Hoplology have

held that he considered these to be the oldest of weapons. But the

ancients did not study prehistoric man beyond confounding human bones

with those of extinct mammals. Augustus Cæsar was an early collector,

according to Suetonius (in ‘August.’ c. xxii.). ‘Sua vero ... excoluit

rebusque vetustate ac raritate notabilibus; qualia sunt Capræis immanum

belluarum ferarumque membra prægrandia, quæ dicuntur gigantum ossa et

arma heroum.’[67] The Emperor (whom the late Louis Napoleon so much

resembled, even in the matter of wearing hidden armour[68]) preferred

these curiosities to statues and pictures. The ancients also, like

Marco Polo and too many of the moderns, spoke of the world generally

after studying a very small part in particular. The Halicarnassian here

evidently alludes to an epoch which had made notable advances upon the

Quaternary Congener of the Simiads. We must return to a much earlier

age. Lucretius, whose penetrating genius had a peculiar introvision,

wrote like a modern scientist:—

Arma antiqua manus, ungues dentesque fuerunt,

Et lapides et item sylvarum fragmina rami;

Posterius ferri vis est, ærisque reperta,

Sed prius æris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus.[69]

Gentleman Horace is almost equally correct:—

Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris,

Mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter

Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro

Pugnabant armis quæ post fabricaverat usus.[70]

How refreshing is the excellent anthropology of these pagans after the

marvel-myths of man’s Creation propounded by the so-called ‘revealed’

religions.

[Heading: _THE ‘AGES.’_]

For the better distribution of the subject I shall here retain the

obsolete and otherwise inadmissible, because misleading, terms—Age

of Stone, Age of Bronze, Age of Iron.[71] From the earliest times

all the metals were employed, without distinction, for weapons

offensive and defensive: besides which, the three epochs intermingle

in all countries, and overlap one another; they are, in fact, mostly

simultaneous rather than successive. As a modern writer says, like

the three principal colours of the rainbow, these three stages

of civilisation shade off the one into the other; and yet their

succession, as far as Western Europe[72] is concerned, appears to be

equally well defined with that of the prismatic colours, though the

proportion of the spectrum may vary in different countries. And, as

a confusion of ideas would be created, especially when treating of

the North European Sword, by neglecting this superficial method of

classification, I shall retain it while proceeding to consider the

development of the White Arm under their highly conventional limits.

I must, moreover, remark that the ternary division, besides having no

absolute chronological signification, and refusing to furnish any but

comparative dates, is insufficient. Concomitant with, and possibly

anterior to, the so-called Stone Age, wood, bone, teeth, and horn were

extensively used; and the use has continued deep into the metal ages.

Throughout the lower valley of the River of the Amazons, where stone

is totally wanting, primitive peoples must have armed themselves with

another material. The hard and heavy trees, both of the Temperates and

the Tropics, supplied a valuable material which could be treated simply

by the use of fire, and without metal or even stone. Ramusio speaks

of a sago-wood (_Nibong_ or _Caryota urens_) made into short lances

by the Sumatrans: ‘One end is sharpened and charred in the fire, and

when thus prepared it will pierce any armour much better than iron

would do.’[73] The weapon would be fashioned by the patient labour

of days and weeks, by burying in hot ashes, by steaming and smoking,

by charring and friction, by scraping with shells and the teeth of

rodents, and by polishing with a variety of materials: for instance,

with the rasping and shagreen-like skin of many fishes, notably the

ray; with rough-coated grasses, and with the leaves of the various

‘sandpaper-trees’ which are hispid as a cat’s tongue. And the first

step in advance would be dressing with silex, obsidian, and other

cutting stones, and finishing with pumice or with the mushroom-shaped

corallines. I shall reserve for the next chapter a description of the

_sabre de bois_, unjustly associated in the popular saying with the

_pistolet de paille_.

[Heading: _THE ‘BONE AGE.’_]

Bone, which includes teeth, presented to savage man a hard and

durable material for improving his coarse wooden weapons. Teledamus

or Telegonus, son of Circe and founder of Tusculum[74] and Præneste,

according to tradition slew his father, Ulysses, with a lance-head

of fish bone—_aculeum marinæ belluæ_. The teeth of the Squalus and

other _gigantum ossa_ or megatherian remains supplied points for the

earliest projectiles, and added piercing power to the blow of the

club. That a Bone Age may be traced throughout the world,[75] and that

the phrase a ‘bone- and stone-using people’ is correct, was proved

by the Weltausstellung of Vienna (1873), whose splendid collection

found an able describer in Prof. A. Woldrich.[76] The caves of

venerable Moustier (Département Dordogne), of Belgium, and of Lherm

(Département Arriège) contributed many jawbones of the cave bear

(_Ursus spelæus_); the ascending ramus of the inferior maxilla had been

cut away to make a convenient grip, and the strong corner-teeth formed

an implement or an instrument, a tool or a weapon. The caves of Peggau

in Steiermark (Styria), of Palkau in Moravia, and the Pfahlbauten[77]

or Pile-villages of Olmütz, produced a number of bone articles and

remnants of the cave bear. These rude implements remind us of the

weapon used to such good effect by the Biblical Samson, the Hebrew type

of Hercules, the strong man, the slayer of monsters, and the Sun-god

(Shamsún).[78]

[Illustration: FIG. 17.—DEER-HORN ARROW-HEAD. (S. America.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 18—HORN WAR CLUBS WITH METAL POINTS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 19.—DOUBLE SPEAR AND SHIELD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 20.—SPINE OF DIODON.]

[Illustration: FIG. 21.—1. WALRUS TOOTH USED AS SPEAR POINT; 2.

TOMAHAWK OF WALRUS TOOTH.]

The wilder tribes of Cambodia convert the bony horn of the

sword-fish into a spear head, with which they confidently attack the

rhinoceros.[79] At Kotzebue Sound Captain Beechey found lances made

of a wooden staff ending in a walrus-tooth; and this defence was also

adapted to a tomahawk-point. The New Guinea tribes tip their arrows

with the teeth of the saw-fish and the spines of the globe-fish

(_Diodon_ and _Triodon_). The horny style of the Malaccan king-crab

(_Limulus_), a Crustacean sometimes reaching two feet in length, is

also made into an arrow-pile.[80] The Australians of King George’s

Sound arm their spears with the acute barbules of fishes; and the

natives of S. Salvador, when discovered by Columbus, pointed their

lances with fish-teeth. The Greenlander’s ‘nuguit’ (fig. 23) is

mentioned by Crantz as armed with the narwhal’s horn, and the wooden

handle is carved in relief with two human figures. By its side is

another spear (fig. 24) with a beam in narwhal-shape, the foreshaft

being composed of a similar ivory, inserted into the snout so as to

represent the natural defence. Here we see the association in the

maker’s mind between the animal from which the weapon is derived and

the purpose of destruction for which it is chiefly used. It also

illustrates the well-nigh universal practice amongst savages of

making their weapons to imitate animate forms. The reason may be a

superstition which still remains to be explained.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.—STING OF MALACCAN LIMULUS CRAB.]

[Illustration: FIG. 23.—TUE GREENLAND NUGUIT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.—NARWHAL SHAFT AND METAL BLADE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 25.—JADE PATTU-PATTUS.]

Foreshafts and heads of bone are still applied to the arrows of

the South African Bushmans. They alternate with wood, chert, and

metal throughout the North American continent, from Eskimo-land to

California. A notable resemblance has been traced between the bone-club

of the Nootka Sound ‘Indians,’ and the jade Pattu-Pattu or Meri of New

Zealand. Hence it has been suspected that this short, flat weapon, oval

or leaf-shaped, and made to hold in the hand, as if it were a stone

celt, was originally an imitation of the os humeri. Like the celt,

also, is the stone club found by Colonel A. Lane Fox in the bed of the

Bawn river, north Ireland.[81]

The long bones of animals, with the walls of marrow-holes obliquely

cut and exposing the hollow, were fastened upon sticks and poles,

forming formidable darts and spears. The shape thus suggests the bamboo

arrow-heads of the North Americans, whose cavity also served to carry

poison.[82] They would, moreover, easily be fashioned by fracture, and

by friction upon a hard and rough-grained substance, into Swords and

daggers. The Fenni, or Finns, of Tacitus (‘Germ.’ c. 46), having no

iron, used bone-pointed arrows. The Innuits, or Eskimos, of Greenland

and other parts of the outer north, form with the ribs of whales their

shuttles as well as their Swords. In ‘Flint Chips’ we find that the

ancient Mexicans had bone-daggers. Wilde[83] gives a unique specimen of

such a weapon found in the bed of the River Boyne ‘in hard blue clay,

four feet under sand, along with some stone spear-heads.’ Formed out of

the leg-bone of one of the large ruminants, it measures ten and a sixth

inches long, the rough handle being only two and a half inches[84]; the

blade is smooth, and wrought to a very fine point. This skeyne (the

Irish ‘scjan’[85]) looks like a little model of a metal cut-and-thrust

blade (fig. 27). Equally interesting is the knife-blade (fig. 29) found

with many other specimens of manufactured bone in the Ballinderry

‘Crannog’[86] (county Westmeath): the total length is eight inches,

and the handle is highly decorated. Other bone knives are mentioned in

the ‘Catalogue’ (pp. 262–63). Bone prepared for making handles, and

even ferules, for Swords and daggers is also referred to (p. 267):

the material, being easily worked and tolerably durable, has, indeed,

never fallen into disuse. In the shape of ivory,[87] walrus-tusk, and

hippopotamus-tooth it is an article of luxury extensively used in the

present day for the hafts of weapons and domestic implements. Lastly,

bone served as a base to carry mere trenchant substances. The museum

of Professor Sven Nilsson[88] shows (fig. 31) a smooth, sharp-pointed

splinter, some six inches long, grooved in each side to about a quarter

of an inch deep. In each of these grooves, fixed by means of cement,

was a row of sharp-edged and slightly curved bits of flint. A similar

implement (fig. 30) is represented in the illustrated catalogue of the

Museum of Copenhagen. Of this contrivance I shall speak at length when

treating of the wooden Sword.[89]

[Illustration: FIG. 26.—1. BONE ARROW-POINT FOR POISON; 2. IRON

ARROW-HEAD FOR POISON. (S. America.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.—WILDE’S DAGGER.]

[Illustration: FIG. 28.—HOLLOW BONE FOR POISON.]

[Illustration: FIG. 29.—BONE KNIFE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 30.—BONE ARROW-POINT ARMED WITH FLINT FLAKES.]

[Illustration: FIG. 31.]

[Heading: _‘AGES’ BEFORE THE ‘STONE AGE.’_]

While bone was extensively used by primitive Man, horn was the

succedaneum in places where it was plentiful. The Swiss lake-dwellings

have yielded stag’s horn and wooden hafts or helves, with bored holes

and sockets; borers, awls or drills; mullers, rubbers, and various

other instruments. The caverns of the Reindeer period in the south of

France are not less rich. Stag-horn axes are common in Scandinavia,

and one preserved by the Stockholm Museum bears the spirited outline

of a deer. Beads, buttons, and other ornaments are found in England.

This material, when taken from the old stag, is of greater density

than osseous matter and of almost stony hardness, as the cancellated

structure contains carbonate of lime; moreover it was easily worked by

fire and steam.

[Heading: _THE ‘HORN-AGE.’_]

Diodorus (iii. cap. 15) describes the Ichthyophagi as using antelopes’

horns in their fishing, ‘for need teacheth all things.’ The earliest

mention of a horn-arm is by Homer (‘Iliad,’ ii. 827, and iv. 105),

who describes Pandarus, the Lycian, son of Lycaon, using a bow made

of the six-spans-long[90] spoils of the ‘nimble mountain-goat.’ The

weapon may have retained the original form. The early Greek types

were either simple or composite. The Persians[91] preferred, and till

lately used, wood and horn, stained, varnished, and adorned as much as

possible. Duarte Barbosa[92] describes the Turkish bow at Hormuz Island

as ‘made of buffalo-horn and stiff wood painted with gold and very

pretty colours.’ The ‘Hornboge’ occurs in the ‘Nibelungenlied,’ and the

Hungarians appeared in Europe with horn-bows and poisoned arrows.

The bows of the Sioux and Yutahs are of horn, backed with a strip of

raw hide to increase the spring. The Blackfoot bow is made from the

horn of the mountain-sheep (Catlin), and the Shoshone of the Rocky

Mountains shape it by heating and wetting the horn, which is combined

with wood (Schoolcraft). The Eskimos of Polar America, where nothing

but drift-timber is procurable, are compelled to build their weapons

with several bits of wood, horn, and bone, bent into form by smoking or

steaming.

Admirable bows of buffalo-horn—small, but throwing far, and strong—are

still made in the Indus-valley about Multan. For this use the horns are

cut, scraped, thinned to increase elasticity; joined at the bases by

wooden splints, pegs, or nails, and made to adhere by glue and sinews.

Man would soon learn to sharpen his wooden shafts with horn-points, the

spoils of his prey. Hence the ancient Egyptians applied horn to their

light arrows of reed.[93] The Christy collection contains an arrow

from South America (?) armed with a pile of deer-horn. The Melville

Peninsula, being scant of materials, uses as arrow-piles the horns of

a musk-ox (_ovibos_, more _ovis_ than _bos_), and the thinned defences

of the reindeer strengthened by sinews. Antelope-horns are still used

as lance-points by the Nubians, the Shilluks, and the Denkas of the

Upper Nile; by the Jibbus of Central Africa, and by the tribes of the

southern continent.[94] The ‘Bantu’ or Kafir races, Zulus and others,

make their _kiri_ (kerry) either of wood or of rhinoceros-horn. It

varies from a foot to a yard long, and is capped by a knob as large

as a hen’s egg or a man’s fist: hence it is called ‘knob-stick’ or

‘throw-stick.’ The Ga-ne-u-ga-o-dus-ha (deer-horn war-club) of the

Iroquois ended in a point of about four inches long; since the people

had intercourse with Europeans they have learned to substitute metal.

The form suggests that the _martel-de-fer_ of Persia and India, used by

Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was derived from a

weapon of this kind: suitable points for arming it have been found in

England and Ireland. The Dublin Museum (case 21, Petrie) contains an

antler of the red deer converted into a thrusting weapon. The Jumbiyah

(crooked dagger) of the Arabs, the Khanjar[95] of Persia and India,

whence the Iberian Alfânge (El-Khanjar) and our silly ‘hanger,’ shows

by form and point that it was originally the half of a buffalo-horn

split longitudinally. The modern weapon, with metal blade and ivory

handle, has one side of the latter flat, betraying its origin by

retaining a peculiarity no longer required. The same is the case when

the whole Jumbiyah is, as often happens, made of metal[96] (fig. 6, p.

10).

[Illustration: FIG. 32.—HARPOON HEAD.]

The sufficiency of horn for the slender wants of uncivilised

communities was admirably illustrated by the discovery of a Pfahlbau,

or crannog, some three miles south of Laibach, the capital of Carniola,

and a little north of the Brunnsdorf village. The site is a low

mountain-girt basin, formerly a lake or broad of the Lai-cum-Sava

river, and still flooded after heavy rains. Surface-finds were picked

up in 1854–55, and regular explorations began in July 1875.[97] During

that year two hundred articles were dug up. The material was chiefly

stag-horn, tines, and beams, the latter often cut at the burr or

antler-crown. The chief objects—many of them artistic as those of the

French ‘Reindeer epoch’—were hatchets, hammers, needles, spindles, and

punches of horn and split bone; fish-hooks, pincers, and skin-scrapers

of hog’s tusks; with ornaments set in bone, and teeth bored for

stringing. Many of these articles showed signs of the saw-kerf or notch

which had probably been cut with sanded fibre acting like a file.

There were harpoon-heads of peculiar shape, supposed to be unpierced

whistles, the hole not having been bored through[98]: evidently they

were made to ‘unship’ when striking the Welsen (_Siluri_) of the

old lake, some of which must have been six feet long. The wooden

foreshaft, joined by a string to its head, acted as float, and betrayed

the position of the prey. This is the third stage of the harpoon:

the first would be merely a heavy, pointed stick, and the second a

spear with barbs. There were six horn _Dolche_ (daggers), and one

peculiar article, an edge of polished stone set in a horn-handle: the

latter shows at once the abundance of game, and the value and rarity

of the mineral, which probably belonged only to the rich. The eight

stone implements were of palæolithic type; the few metal articles—a

leaf-shaped sword-blade, a rude knife, lance-heads, arrow-piles,

needles, and bodkins—were chiefly copper, five only being bronze;

and the pottery corresponds with that of the neolithic period in the

museums of Copenhagen and Stockholm. Thus the find, like several in

Switzerland, showed a great preponderance of horns, bones, and teeth

during a transitional age when the rest of Europe was using polished

stone and metal.[99]

Prehistoric finds are still common in the Laibacher moorground

(1882). Lauerza, a hamlet on the edge of the swamp, supplied (Nov.

7) a large stone-axe (_Steinbeil_), pierced and polished, of the

quartzose conglomerate common in the adjacent highlands. This article

was exceptional, most of the stone implements being palæolithic. At

Aussergoritz appeared remnants of pottery and Roman tiles, a broken

hairpin of bronze, a spear of Roman type, and a ‘palstab,’[100] also

of bronze: the latter is the normal chisel-shaped hatchet with the

flanges turned over for fitting to the handle; it measures 16·5 cent.

long by 3·5 of diameter at the lower part. The sands of Grosscup also

yielded sundry fine bronze armlets of Etruscan make found upon embedded

skeletons. All the finds have been deposited in the Provincial Museum

at Laibach.

The use of horn, like that of bone, has survived to the present day,

and still appears in the handles of knives, daggers, and swords. It is

of many varieties, and it fetches different prices according to the

texture, the markings, and other mînutiæ known to the trade.[101]

CHAPTER III.

THE WEAPONS OF THE AGE OF WOOD: THE BOOMERANG AND THE SWORD OF

WOOD; OF STONE, AND OF WOOD AND STONE COMBINED.

_The Sword of Wood._

The ‘Age of Wood’ began early, lasted long, and ended late. As the

practice of savages shows, the spear was originally a pointed stick

hardened in the fire; and arrows, the diminutives of the spear, as

daggers are of the Sword, were tipped with splinters of bamboo, whose

Tabáshir or silicious bark acted like stone. The Peruvians, even after

they could beat out plates of gold and silver, fought with pikes having

no iron tips, but with the points hardened in the fire.[102] The same

was the case with the Australians,[103] who, according to Mr. Howard

Spensley,[104] also fashioned Swords of very hard wood: the Arabs of

the Tihámat or Lowlands of Hazramaut (the Biblical Hazramaveth) are

still compelled by poverty to use spears without metal. I pass over the

general use of this world-wide material to the epoch when it afforded a

true Sword.

The wooden Sword, as we see from its wide dispersion, must have

arisen spontaneously among the peoples who had reached that stage of

civilisation where it became necessary.[105] These weapons were found

in the hands of the Indians of Virginia by the well-known Captain John

Smith. Writing in 1606, Oldfield describes swords of heavy black wood

in the Sandwich Islands, and Captain Owen Stansley in New Guinea. Mr.

Consul Hutchinson notes the wooden swords used by the South American

Itonanamas, a sub-tribe of the Maxos. Those preserved in Ireland and

others brought from the Samoa Islands will be noticed in a future page.

They may mostly be characterised as flat clubs sharpened at the edge,

and used like our steel blades.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.—LISÁN IN EGYPT AND ABYSSINIA.]

The shape of the wooden sword greatly varies, and so does its origin.

Mr. Tylor fell into the mistake, so common in these classifying,

generalising, and simplifying days, of deriving the sabre, because it

is a cutting tool, from the axe, and the tuck or rapier from the spear

because it thrusts. Wooden sword-blades alone have three prototypes,

viz.:—

1. The club.

2. The throw-stick.

3. The paddle.

[Illustration: FIG. 34.—LISÁN OR TONGUE.]

I. The Bulak Museum (Cairo)[106] shows two good specimens of the

ancient ‘Lisán’ (‘tongue’-weapon) club or curved stick. The first

battles, says Pliny (vii. 57), were fought by the Africans against

the Egyptians with clubs which they called _phalangæ_. The shorter

club-sword (1 ft. 11 in.) has a handle ribbed with eighteen fine raised

rings. The longer or falchion-shaped weapon (2 ft. 5 in.) is hatched

at the grip with a cross pattern. Both are of hard wood blackened by

age, and both have the distinct cutting edge. The ancient war-club was

tipped with metal and whipped with thongs round the handle for firmer

grasp, like the Roman fasces. The modern Lisán-club, made of tough

mimosa-wood and about 2½ ft. long, is still used in close combat by the

Negroid tribes of the Upper Nile. To the Bishárins and Amri the Lisán

supplies, at dances and on festal occasions, the place of the sword. In

Abyssinia there is a lighter variety (1 ft. 6 in.) banded alternately

with red, blue, and green cloth, and protected by a network of brass

wire. The Ababdeh (modern Æthiopians), content with this, the spear,

and its pendant the shield, fear not to encounter tribes whose arms are

the matchlock and a ‘formidable looking, but really inoffensive sword

with a wondrous huge straight blade.’ These pastoral Nomads are of a

peculiar and interesting type. The short stature and the well-curved

and delicate limbs, whose action is quick, lithe, and graceful as the

leopard’s, connect them with the Bedawin of Arabia; while the knotted

and spiral locks standing on end, and resembling when tallowed a huge

cauliflower, affiliate them to the African Somal. Their arms are more

extensive than their dress, a mere waist cloth, the primitive attire of

tropical man; and they live by hiring their camels to caravans.

The Dublin Museum[107] also shows the transitional forms between the

club and the Sword. The weapon (_a_) numbered 143 is some twenty-five

inches long: the second (_b_) is labelled ‘No. 144, wooden club-shaped

implement, twenty-seven inches long.’

The club of the Savage developed itself in other directions to the

shepherd’s staff, the bishop’s crozier, and the king’s sceptre; hence,

too, the useless bâton of the field-marshal, and the maces of Mr.

Speaker and My Lord Mayor. Here we may answer the question why the

field-marshal should carry a stick instead of a Sword. The unwarlike

little instrument is simply the symbol of high authority:[108] it is

the rod, not of the Lictor, but of the Centurion, whose badge of office

was a vine-sapling wherewith to enforce authority. Hence Lucan (vi.

146) says of gallant Captain Cassius Scæva who, after many wounds, beat

off two swordsmen:—

Sanguine multo

Promotus Latiam longo gerit ordine vitem.

This use was continued by the drill-sergeant of Europe from England

to Russia. The club again survives in the constable’s staff and the

policeman’s truncheon.

[Heading: _THE BOOMERANG._]

The form of throwing-stick, which we have taught ourselves to call

by an Australian name ‘boomerang,’[109] thereby unduly localising an

almost universal weapon from Eskimo-land to Australia, was evidently

a precursor of the wooden Sword. It was well known to the ancient

Egyptians. Wilkinson shows (vol. i. chap. 4) that it was of heavy

wood, cut flat, and thus offering the least resistance, measuring 1

ft. 3 in. to 2 ft. long by 1½ in. broad. The shape, however, is not

the usual segment of a circle, but a shallow S-curve inverted (Ƨ),

more bent at the upper end, and straighter in the handle. One weapon

(p. 236) seems to bear the familiar asp-head.[110] The British Museum

contains a boomerang brought from Thebes by the Rev. Greville Chester,

and a facsimile was exhibited by General Pitt-Rivers.[111] The end

is much curved; the blade has four parallel grooves, and it bears

the cartouche of Ramses the Great. In no instance have we found the

round shape and the returning flight of its Australian congener. Three

illustrations[112] show a large sportsman (the master) bringing down

birds which rise from a papyrus-swamp, while a smaller figure (the

slave) in the same canoe holds another weapon at arm’s length.

[Illustration: FIG. 35.—TRANSITION FROM THE BOOMERANG TO THE HATCHET

(AUSTRALIA).]

[Illustration: FIG. 36.—AUSTRALIAN PICKS.

1, 2. Pick of New Caledonia; 3. Malga or Leowel Pick.]

Strabo[113] describes the (Belgian) Gauls as hunting with a piece of

wood resembling a pilum, which is hand-thrown, and which flies to a

distance farther than an arrow. He calls it the Γροσφὸς, which is also

described as a pilum, dart, or javelin by Polybius;[114] but evidently

this Grosphus means the throw-stick, usually termed by the Greeks

ἀγκύλη (Ancyle). Silius Italicus arms in the ‘Punica’ one of the Libyan

tribes which accompanied Hannibal with a bent or crossed _cateia_: the

latter is identified with the throw-stick by Doctor (now Sir) Samuel

Ferguson, poet and antiquary.[115] The encyclopædia of Bishop Isidore

(A.D. 600–636) explicitly defines the _cateia_ to be ‘a species of bat

which, when thrown, flies not far by reason of its weight; but where

it strikes it breaks through with extreme impetus, and if it be thrown

with a skilful hand it returns to him who threw it:—rursum redit ad eum

qui misit.’ Virgil also notices it:—

Et quos maliferæ despectant mœnia Abellæ

Teutonico ritu soliti torquere cateias. (_Æn._ vii. 740).

Jähn (p. 410)[116] remembers the _Miölner_, or hammer of Thor, which

flew back to the hand.

[Illustration: FIG. 37.—INDIAN BOOMERANGS.

1. War Hatchet, Jibba Negros; 2. Steel Chakra, or Sikh Quoit; 3.

Steel Collery; 4, 5. Collery of Madras, with knobbed handle.]

[Illustration: FIG. 38.—BOOMERANG AND KITE.]

It has been noted that this peculiarity of reversion or back-flight

is not generic, even in the true boomerang, but appertains only to

specific forms. Doubtless it was produced by accident, and, when found

useful for bringing down birds over rivers or marshes, it was retained

by choosing branches with a suitable bend. The shapes greatly differ in

weight and thickness, in curvature and section. Some are of the same

breadth throughout; others bulge in the centre; while others are flat

on one side and convex on the other. In most specimens the fore part

of the lath is slightly ‘dished’: hence the bias causes it to rise in

the air on the principle of a screw-propeller. The thin edge of the

weapon is always opposed to the wind, meeting the least resistance. The

axis of rotation, when parallel to itself, makes the missile ascend

as long as the forward movement lasts, by the action of the atmosphere

on the lower side. When the impulse ceases it falls by the line of

least resistance, that is, in the direction of the edge which lies

obliquely towards the thrower. In fact, it acts like a kite with a

suddenly broken string, dropping for a short distance. But as long as

the boomerang gyrates, which it does after the forward movement ends,

it continues to revolve on the same inclined plane by which it ascended

until it returns to whence it came. This action would also depend upon

weight; the heavy weapons could not rise high in the air, and must drop

by mere gravity before coming back to the thrower.

[Illustration: FIG. 39.—AFRICAN BOOMERANGS.

1, 2. Hunga-munga; 3. African Weapon; 4. Kordofan Weapon; 5. The

same developed; 6. Faulchion of Mundo Tribe; 7. The same developed;

8. Jibba Negros; 9. Knob-stick; 10. Ancient Egyptians (Rosellini);

11. Old Egyptian; 12–15. Tomahawks of Nyam-Nyams; 16. Fan (Mpangwe)

Tomahawk; 17. Dor Battle-axe; 18. Dinka and Shilluk Weapon.]

From Egypt the weapon spread into the heart of Africa. The Abyssinian

‘Trombash’ is of hard wood, acute-edged, and about two feet long; the

end turns sharply at an angle of 30°, but the weapon does not whirl

back.[117] The boomerang of the Nyam-Nyams is called _kulbeda_. Direct

derivation is also shown by the curved iron projectile of the Mundo

tribe on the Upper Nile, a weapon of the same form being represented

on the old Egyptian monuments. The ‘hunga-munga’ of the negros south

of Lake Chad, and the adjoining peoples, shows a further development

of spikes or teeth disposed at different angles, enabling the missile

to cut on both sides. The varieties of this form, with a profusion of

quaint ornaments, including lateral blades which answer the purpose

of wings, and which deal a severer wound, are infinite. Denham and

Clapperton give an illustration of a Central African weapon forming

the head and neck of a stork. So the Mpangwe negros[118] of the Gaboon

River, West Africa, shape their missiles in the form of a bird’s head,

the triangular aperture (fig. 40, No. 5) representing the eye.

[Illustration: FIG. 40.—TRANSITION FROM THE MALGA, LEOWEL OR PICK TO

THE BOOMERANG (AUSTRALIA).]

The throwing-stick has been found in Assyrian monuments: Nemrúd

strangling the lion holds a boomerang in his right hand. Thence the

weapon travelled East; and the Sanskrit Ástara, or Scatterer, was

extensively used by the pre-Aryan tribes of India. The Kolis, oldest

known inhabitants of Gujarát, call it ‘Katuriyeh,’ a term probably

derived from ‘Cateia’; the Dravidians of the Madras Presidency know

it as ‘Collery,’ and the Tamulian Kallar and Marawar (of Madura),

who use it in deer-hunting, term it ‘Valai Tadi’ (bent stick). The

Pudukota Rajah always kept a stock in arsenal. The length greatly

varies, the difference amounting to a cubit or more; and three feet by

a hand-breadth may be the average. The middle is bent to the extent

of a cubit; the flat surface with a sharp edge is one hand broad.

‘Its three actions are whirling, pulling, and breaking, and it is a

good weapon for charioteers and foot soldiers.’ Prof Oppert, writing

‘On the Weapons, &c. of the ancient Hindus’ (1880), tells us that the

Museum of the Madras Government has two ivory throw-sticks from Tanjore

and a common wooden one from Pudukota; his own collection contains

four of black wood and one of iron. All these instruments return,

as do the true boomerangs, to the thrower. The specimens in the old

India-House Museum conform with the natural curvature of the wood,

like the Australian; but, being thicker and heavier, they fall without

back-flight. Not a few of the boomerangs cut with the inner edge, the

shapes of the blade and of the grip making them unhandy in the extreme.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.—THE STICK AND THE SHIELD.

1. Various forms of Australian Tamarang or Parrying Shields;

2. Shield of Mundo Negros; 3. Negro parrying Shield; 4. Old

Egyptian Parrying Shield; 5. Dowak straight flat Throw-stick

(Australia); 6. Boomerang that does not return; 7. Boomerang

that does return.]

[Illustration: FIG. 42.—THROW-STICKS.

1. Australian Tombat; 2. Malga War-pick; 3–6. Australian Waddy

Clubs; 7. Hatchet Boomerang.]

[Illustration: FIG. 43.—OLD EGYPTIAN BOOMERANG.]

[Illustration: FIG. 44.—BULAK SWORD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 45.—HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTION ON WOODEN SWORD, OF

BULAK.]

From the throw-stick would naturally arise the Chakrá, the steel wheel

or war-quoit, which the Akális—a stricter order of Sikhs—carried in

their long hair, and launched after twirling round the forefinger.[119]

The boomerang-shape is also perpetuated in the dreaded Kukkri or Gurkha

Sword-knife, now used, however, only for hand-to-hand fighting. I

have mentioned the Cuchillo or Spanish clasp-knife- and the Italian

sickle-throwing. The Australian weapon was unknown, like the shield, to

Tasmania, whose only missile was the Waddy or throw-stick.

As the Australian club, swelling at the end, developed itself in one

direction, to the Malga (war-pick) and hatchet, so on the other line it

became, by being narrowed, flattened, and curved, the boomerang and the

boomerang-sword. Finally, the immense variety of curves—some of them

bending at a right angle—were straightened and made somewhat long-oval

and leaf-shaped for momentum and impetus.

[Heading: _THE BOOMERANG-SWORD._]

The direct descent of the curved wooden Sword of Egypt from the

boomerang is shown in many specimens. The blade becomes narrow,

flat, and more curved; the handle proves that it is no longer a

mere missile, and the grip is scored with scratches to secure a

firmer grasp.[120] The best specimen known to me is in the Bulak

Museum.[121] It is a light weapon of sycomore wood, measuring in

length 1 mètre 30 cent. (4 ft. 3 in.), in breadth nearly 15 cent. (6

in.), and in thickness 0·2 cent. (0·78 in.), while the depth of the

perpendicular connecting the arc with the chord is 10 cent. But what

makes it remarkable is that the Sword bears at one side the so-called

‘Cartouche’[122] of King Ta-a-a (17th dynasty), and at the other end of

the same side in a parallelogram the name and titles of Prince ‘Touaou,

the servant of his master in his expeditions.’ This fine specimen was

found with the mummy and other articles at the Drah Abu’l-Neggah, the

Theban cemetery.

The paddle or original oar, mostly used by savages with the face to

the bow,[123] is of two kinds. The long, pointed spear-like implement

serves, as a rule, for deeper, and the broad-headed for shallower,

waters. Both show clearly the transitional state beginning with the

club and ending with the Sword.

Mr. J. E. Calder,[124] describing the Catamaran of the swamp tea-tree

(_Melaleuca_, sp.) on the southern and western coasts of Tasmania,

says (p. 23): ‘The mode of its propulsion would shock the professional

or amateur waterman. Common sticks, with points instead of blades,

are all that were used to urge it with its living freight through the

water, and yet I am assured that its progress is not so very slow.’

Spears were employed in parts of Australia to paddle the light bark

canoes,[125] and the Nicobar Islanders have an implement combining

spear and paddle: it is of iron-wood, and of pointed-lozenge shape,

about five feet in length.[126]

[Heading: _THE CLUB-SWORD._]

The African paddles, usually employed upon lagoons and inland waters,

are broad-headed, either rounded off or furnished with one or more

short points at the end. Every tribe has its own peculiarities, and a

practised eye easily knows the people by their paddles. A broad blade,

almost rounded and very slightly pointed, is also made in the Austral

Isles, in the Kingsmill Islands, and in the Marquesas.

[Illustration: FIG. 46.—TRANSITION FROM CELT TO PADDLE SPEAR AND SWORD

FORMS.

1. Wooden Club Sword from New Guinea; 2. Paddle from New

Guinea; 3. New Zealand Pattu-Pattu, or Meri; 4. Pattu-Pattu

from the Brazil; 5. Analogous forms; 6. Ditto, ditto; 7–10.

Club Paddles from Polynesia; 11–13. Wooden Spears from Friendly

Islands.]

[Illustration: FIG. 47.—CLUBS OF FIJI ISLANDS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 48.—WOODEN SWORDS AND CLUBS OF BRAZILIAN INDIANS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 49.—PAGAYA, SHARPENED PADDLE.]

[Heading: _THE PADDLE-SWORD._]

The passage of the paddle into the Sword is well shown amongst

the wilder ‘Indians’ of the Brazil. The Tupis still employ the

Tacapé, Tangapé, or Iverapema, which is written ‘Iwarapema’ by Hans

Stade, of Hesse, in the charmingly naïve account of his travels and

captivity.[127] It was a single piece of the hard, heavy, and gummy

wood which characterises these hot-damp regions,[128] and of different

shapes with and without handles.[129] The most characteristic implement

is a long and rounded shaft with a tabular, oval, and slightly-pointed

blade: it was slung by a lanyard round the neck and hung on either

side. With a weapon of this kind the cannibal natives slaughtered Pero

Fernandes Sardinha, first Bishop of Bahia, and all his suite; the

‘martyrs’ had been wrecked on the shoals of Dom Rodrigo off the mouth

of the Coruripe River. The scene is illustrated in the ‘History’ of the

late M. de Varnhagen (p. 321).

A similar Brazilian instrument was the Macaná, still used on the Rio

das Amazonas, and there called Tamarana. It retains the form of the

original paddle, while for offensive purposes the pointed oval head is

sharpened all round. In parts of the Brazil the Macaná was a rounded

club; and the sharpened paddle used as a Sword was called Pagaye.[130]

The Peruvian Macaná and the Callua—the latter compared with a short

Turkish blade—were made of chonta-wood (_Guilielma speciosa_ and

_Martinezia ciliata_) which was hard enough to turn copper tools.[131]

Mr. W. Bollaert[132] tells us that the ‘Macaná was said by some to be

shaped like a long Sword, by others like a club.’ It was both. The

Tapuyas set these broad-headed weapons with teeth and pointed bones.

[Illustration: FIG. 50.—CLUBS.

1–4. Samoa Clubs; 5. Cross-ribbed Club; 6. Toothed Club (Fiji).]

[Illustration: FIG. 51.—PADDLES.

1–3. Spear Paddles; 4, 5. Leaf-shaped; 6. Austral Isles; 7. New

Ireland; 8. African, from Gaboon River; 9. African, from Coast

of Dahome.]

Ojeda, during his famous voyage to Carthagena, found the warlike Caribs

wielding great Swords of palm wood, and the women ‘throwing a species

of lance called _Azagay_.’ General Pitt-Rivers’ collection has a fine

flat Club-Sword, five feet two inches long, straight and oval pointed,

from Endeavour River, Queensland, and a smaller article, about three

feet, with a longer handle, from Australia. Barrow River, Queensland,

has supplied him with a half-curved wooden blade five feet long.

[Illustration: FIG. 52.—SAMOAN CLUB (Godeffroy Collection).]

[Illustration: FIG. 53.—WOODEN SABRE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 54.—WOODEN CHOPPER.]

[Illustration: FIG. 55.—KNIFE (WOOD), FROM VANNA LAVA.]

[Heading: _THE WOODEN SWORD._]

The fine Ethnological Museum of Herr Cesar Godeffroy[133] of Hamburg

and Samoa, illustrating the ethnology of the Pacific Islands,

contains many specimens of the knob-stick bevelled on one side of

the head to an edge and gradually passing into the Sword. On the

right-hand entrance-wall are, or were, two fine sabres (fig. 53)

of Eucalyptus-wood, labelled ‘Schwert von Bowen (Queensland).’

The Sandwich Islanders, we see, still wield the Sword-club with

sharp-cutting edges, like their neighbours of New Ireland. The savage

Solomon Archipelago has supplied a two-handed sabre of light and

bright-yellow wood; its longitudinal mid-rib shows direct derivation

from the paddle-club. There is also a lozenge-shaped hand-club, which

may readily have given a model to metal-workers. It is of hard, dark,

and polished wood, and the handle is whipped round with coir (Tafel xx.

p. 97): the length is seventy cent. by four of maximum breadth. The

Swords are unfortunately not figured in the catalogue; but there is a

fine wooden knife forty-nine cent. long by six cent. broad, with open

handle and highly-worked grip (Tafel xxi. p. 135). It comes from Vanna

Lava, Banks Group, New Hebrides, Polynesia (fig. 55).[134]

[Illustration: FIG. 56.—IRISH SWORD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 57.—WOODEN RAPIER-BLADE (Dublin Museum).]

The wooden Sword extended deep into the Age of Metal. Articles of the

kind have been brought from New Zealand, which are evident copies of

modern European weapons. Wilde (p. 452) gives the wooden Sword, found

five feet deep in Ballykilmunary near High Park, county Wicklow, with

some bog-butter, but he finds no indications of its age. The length

is twenty inches (fig. 56). Upon the side of the blade, and of a

piece with it, stands a projection whose purpose is unknown: it is

evidently inconvenient for a toy; but if the relic be a model for a

sand-mould, the excrescence would have left an aperture by which to

pour in the metal. This view is supported by the shape of the handle,

which resembles the grips of the single-piece bronze Swords found in

different parts of Europe. The Dublin Museum also contains[135] a blade

apparently intended for thrusting, and labelled ‘Wooden Sword-shaped

Object.’ The material is oak, blackened by burial in bog-earth: it has

a mid-rib, a bevelled point, and no appearance of being a model (fig.

57).

[Heading: _THE STONE-SWORD._]

Whilst wood was extensively used for Swords, the Age of Stone supplied

few. The broad and leaf-shaped silex-flakes, dignified by the name

of Swords, are only daggers and long knives. The fracture of flint

is uncertain, even when freshly quarried.[136] The workmen would

easily chip and flake it to form scrapers, axes, spear-heads, and

arrow-piles; but after a certain length, from eight to nine inches,

the splinters would be heavy, brittle, and unwieldy. Obsidian, like

silex, would make daggers rather than swords. Such are the stone

dirk and cutlass in the Kensington Museum. Several European museums

preserve these flat, leaf-shaped knives of the dark cherty flint found

in Egypt. The British Museum contains a polished stone knife broken at

the handle, which bears upon it in hieroglyphics the name of ‘Ptahmes

(Ptah-son), an officer.’ There is also an Egyptian dagger, of flint

from the Hay Collection, still mounted in its original wooden handle

apparently by a central tang, and with remains of its skin sheath.[137]

The Jews, who borrowed circumcision from the Egyptians, used stone

knives (τὰς μαχαίρας τὰς πετρίνας). Atys, says Ovid, mutilated himself

with a sharp stone,—

Ille etiam saxo corpus laniavit acuto;

and the Romans sacrificed pigs with flints. Several undated poniards in

our collections are remarkable: for instance, the English daggers of

black and white flint, rare in Scotland and unknown in Ireland; (_a_)

the Iberian or Spanish blade in the Christy Collection, five and a half

inches long, and found at Gibraltar; the Tizcuco blade of chalcedony,

eight inches long (_ibid._); (_b_) the Danish dagger in the Copenhagen

Museum, thirteen and a half inches long (the rounded handle makes it

a ‘marvel of workmanship’); and (_c_) the flint hatchet-sabre of the

same collection, fifteen and a half inches in length. It is a mystery

how the minute and delicate ornamentation, the even fluting like ripple

marks, on these Danish flint-daggers was produced.

[Illustration: FIG. 58.—FRAGMENTS OF STONE KNIVES FROM SHETLAND.]

[Illustration: FIG. 59.—FLINT DAGGERS.

_a._ Iberian or Spanish Blade (Christy Collection); _b._ Danish

Flint Dagger; _c._ Danish Flint Hatchet Sabre.]

A better substance than flint was found in the compact sandstone

and in granitic serpentine, so called because that rock resembles a

snake’s skin. It is easily worked, while it is harder than the common

serpentine. A dagger or knife found beside a stone cist in Perthshire

is described as a natural formation of mica-schiste.

The Stone Age produced nothing more remarkable than the Pattu-Pattu or

Meri of New Zealand, which an arrested development prevented becoming

a Sword. Its shape, that of an animal’s blade-bone, suggests its

primitive material; and New Guinea has an almost similar form, with

corresponding ornamentation in wood. What assimilates it to the Sword

is that it is sharp-edged at the top as well as at the side. It is

used for ‘prodding’ as well as for striking, and the place usually

chosen for the blow is the head, above the ear, where the skull is

weakest. Some specimens are of the finest green jade or nephrite,[138]

a refractory stone which must have been most troublesome to fashion.

[Heading: _THE SWORD OF WOOD AND STONE._]

Wood, however hard and heavy, made a sorry cutting weapon, and stone

a sorrier Sword; but the union of the two improved both. Hence we may

divide wooden Swords into the plain and the toothed blades, the latter—

Armed with those little hook-teeth in the edge,

To open in the flesh and shut again.

An obvious advance would be to furnish the cutting part with

the incisors of animals and stone-splinters. In Europe these would

be agate, chalcedony, and rock-crystal; quartz and quartzite; flint,

chert, Lydian stone, horn-stone, basalt, lava, and greenstone (or

diorite); hæmatite, chlorite, gabbro (a tough bluish-green stone),

true jade (nephrite), jadite, and fibrolite, found in Auvergne. Pinna

and other shells have been extensively used—for instance, by the

Andamanese—as arrow-heads and adze-blades.[139]

[Illustration: FIG. 60.—AUSTRALIAN SPEARS ARMED WITH FLINTS AT SIDE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 61.—SWORD OF SABRE FORM, WITH SHARKS’ TEETH (South

Pacific).

From the Meyrick Collection, now in the British Museum.]

[Illustration: FIG. 62.—ARMED WITH OBSIDIAN (Mexico).]

Tenerife, and the so-called New World, preferred the easily-cleft

green-black obsidian,[140] of which the Ynkas also made their knives.

The Polynesian Islands show two distinct systems of attachment. In the

first the fragments, inserted into the grooved side, are either tied or

made fast by gum or cement. In the second they are set in a row between

two small slats or strips of wood, which, lastly, are lashed to the

weapon with fibres. The points are ingeniously arranged in the opposite

direction, so as to give severe cuts both in drawing and withdrawing.

The Eskimos secure the teeth by pegs of wood and bone. The Pacho of the

South Sea Islanders is a club studded on the inner side with shark’s

teeth made fast in the same manner. The Brazilian Tapuyas armed a

broad-headed club with teeth and bones sharpened at the point.[141] In

‘Flint Chips’ we find that a North American tribe used for thrusting

a wooden Sword, three feet long, tipped with mussel-shell. Throughout

Australia the natives provide their spears with sharp pieces of

obsidian or crystal: of late years they have applied common glass,[142]

a new use for waste and broken bottles (fig. 70). The fragments are

arranged in a row along one side near the point, and are firmly

cemented. There is no evidence of this flint-setting in Ireland: but

the frequent recurrence of silex implements adapted for such purpose

has suggested, as in the Iroquois graves, that the wood which held them

together may have perished. We read in ‘Flint Chips’ that the Selden

Manuscript shows a flake of obsidian mounted in a cleft wooden handle,

the latter serving as a central support, with a mid-rib running nearly

the whole length. The sole use of the weapon was for thrusting.[143]

[Illustration: FIG. 63.—WOOD- AND HORN-POINTS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 64.—MEXICAN SWORD OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, OF IRON

WOOD, WITH TEN BLADES OF BLACK OBSIDIAN FIXED INTO THE WOOD. (This

weapon is twenty-five inches long.)]

The people of Copan (Yucatan) opposed Hernandez de Chaves with slings,

bows, and ‘wooden Swords having stone edges.’[144] In the account of

the expedition sent out (1584) by Raleigh to relieve the colony of

Virginia, we read of ‘flat, edged truncheons of wood,’ about a yard

long. In these were inserted points of stag-horn, much in the same

manner as is now practised, except that European lance-heads have

taken their place. Knives, Swords, and glaives, edged with sharks’

teeth,[145] are found in the Marquesas; in Tahiti, Depeyster’s Island,

Byron’s Isles, the Kingsmill Group, Redact Island,[146] the Sandwich

Islands, and New Guinea. Captain Graah notices a staff edged with

shark’s teeth on the cast coast of Greenland, and the same is mentioned

amongst the Eskimos by the late Dr. King.[147]

In the tumuli of Western North America, Mr. Lewis Morgan, the

‘historian of the Iroquois,’ mentions that, when opening the ‘burial

mounds’ of the Far West, rows of flint-flakes occurred lying side by

side in regular order; they had probably been fastened into sticks or

swords like the Mexican. Hernandez[148] describes the ‘Mahquahuitl’

or Aztec war-club as armed on both sides with razor-like teeth of

‘Itzli’ (obsidian), stuck into holes along the edge, and fastened with

a kind of gum. Mr. P. T. Stevens (‘Flint Chips,’ p. 297) says that this

Mexican broadsword had six or more teeth on either side of the blade.

Herrera, the historian, mentions, in his ‘Decads,’ ‘Swords made of

wood having a gutter in the fore part, in which the sharp-edged flints

were strongly fixed with a sort of bitumen and thread.’[149] In 1530,

according to contemporary Spanish historians, Copan was defended by

30,000 warmen, armed with these and other weapons,[150] especially with

fire-hardened spears. The same have been represented in the sculptures

of Yucatan, which imitated the Aztecs. Lord Kingsborough’s ruinous work

on Mexican antiquities, mostly borrowed from Dupaix, shows a similar

contrivance (_b_ and _c_). A Sword having six pieces of obsidian in

each side of the blade, is to be seen in a museum in Mexico.[151] A

Mexican Sword of the fifteenth century is of iron-wood, twenty-five

inches long, and armed with ten flakes of black obsidian; and the same

is the make of another Mexican Sword nearly four feet long.[152]

[Illustration: FIG. 65.—MAHQUAHUITLS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 66.—MEXICAN WARRIOR.]

[Illustration: FIG. 67.—MEXICAN SWORD, IRON-WOOD, ARMED WITH OBSIDIAN.

(One metre eight inches long.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 68.—MEXICAN SPEAR-HEAD (FIFTEENTH CENTURY), BLACK

OBSIDIAN, WITH WOODEN HANDLE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 69.—NEW ZEALAND CLUB.]

The next step would be to use metal for bone and stone. So the Eskimos

of Davis Strait and some of the Greenlanders show an advance in art by

jagging the edge with a row of chips of meteoric iron.[153] This would

lead to providing the whole wooden blade with an edge of metal, when

the latter was still too rare and too expensive for the whole weapon.

This economy might easily have overlapped not only the Bronze, but the

Iron Epoch.

The tooth-shaped edge was perpetuated in the Middle Ages, as we see

by serrated and pierced blades of Italian daggers. That it is not yet

extinct the absurd saw-bayonet of later years proves.

[Heading: _FIRST USE OF METALS._]

We now reach the time when Man, no longer contented with the baser

materials—bone and teeth, horn and wood—learned the use of metals,

possibly from an accidental fire, when

... a scrap of stone cast on the flame that lit his den

Gave out the shining ore, and made the Lord of beasts a Lord of men.

The discovery of ore-smelting and metal-working, following that of

fire-feeding, would enable Man to apply himself, with notably increased

success, to the improvement of his weapons. But many races here stopped

short. The Australian, who never invented a bow, contenting himself

with the boomerang, could not advance beyond the curved and ensiform

club before he was visited by the sailors of the West. His simplicity

in the arts has constituted him, with some anthropologists, the living

example of the primitive and prehistoric _genus homo_.[154] The native

of New Guinea, another focus of arrested civilisation, was found

equally ignorant of the metal blade. The American aborigines never

taught themselves to forge either cutting or thrusting Swords; and they

entertained a quasi-superstitious horror of the ‘long knife’ in the

hands of the pale-faced conqueror. This is apparently the case with

all the lower families of mankind, to whom the metal Sword is clean

unknown. If the history of arms be the history of our kind, and if the

missile be the favourite weapon of the Savage and the Barbarian, the

metal Sword eminently characterises the semi-civilised, and the use of

gunpowder civilised, man.

[Illustration: FIG. 70.—AUSTRALIAN SPEARS, WITH BITS OF OBSIDIAN,

CRYSTAL, OR GLASS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 71.—ITALIAN POISON DAGGERS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 72.—ARAB SWORD, WITH DOWN-CURVED GUILLONS AND SAW

BLADE. (Musée d’Artillerie, G. 413, inscription not legible.)]

A chief named Shongo, of Nemuro, in Japan, assured Mr. John Milne[155]

that, ‘in old times, when there were no cutting tools of metal, the

people made them of Aji, a kind of black stone, or of a hard material

called ironstone. Even now implements of this material are employed by

men who dwell far in the interior.’ Here, then, is another instance of

the stone and the metal ‘Ages’ overlapping, even where the latter has

produced the perfection of steel-work.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PROTO-CHALCITIC OR COPPER AGE OF WEAPONS.

I will begin by noticing that the present age has settled a question

which caused much debate, and which puzzled Grote (ii. 142) and

a host of others half a century ago, before phosphor-bronze was

invented. This was the art of hardening (not tempering) copper and its

alloys. All knew that these metals had been used, in cutting the most

refractory substances,[156] granite, syenite, porphyry, basalt, and

perhaps diorite,[157] by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Trojans,

and Peruvians. But none knew the process, and some cut the knot by

questioning its reality. When you cannot explain, deny—is a rule with

many scientists. The difficulty was removed by the Uchatius-gun,[158]

long reported to be of ‘steel-bronze,’[159] but simply of common

bronze hardened by compression. At the Anthropological Congress of

Laibach[160] (July 27–29, 1878), Gundaker Graf Wurmbrandt, of Pettau,

exhibited sundry castings, two spear-heads and a leaf-shaped blade of

bright bronze (Dowris copper) adorned with spirals to imitate the old

weapons. They were so indurated by compression that they cut the common

metal.

Again, at the Anthropological Congress of Salzburg (August 8, 1881),

Dr. Otto Tischler, of Prussian Königsberg, repeated the old experiment,

showing how soft copper and bronze could be hardened by the _opus

mallei_ (simple hammering). Moreover his metal thus compressed could

cut and work the common soft kinds without the aid of iron or steel.

He exhibited two bronze plates in which various patterns had been

punched by bronze dies. The hammering, rolling, beating, and pressing

of copper for the purpose of hardening are well known to modern, and

doubtless were to ancient workmen. The degree of compression applied is

the feature of the discovery, or rather re-discovery.[161]

It may be doubted whether old Egypt and Peru knew our actual process

of hydraulic pressure, whose simplest form is the waterfall. But they

applied the force in its most efficient form. The hardest stones

were grooved to make obelisks; the cuts were filled with wedges of

kiln-dried wood, generally sycomore; and the latter, when saturated

with water, split the stone by their expansion. And we can hardly deny

that a people who could transport masses weighing 887 tons[162] over a

broken country, from El-Suwan (Assouan) to Thebes, a distance of 130

miles, would also be capable of effecting mechanical compression to a

high degree.

Buffon (‘Hist. Nat.’ article ‘Cuivre’) believed in the ‘lost art.’

Rossignol[163] (pp. 237–242) has treated of the _trempe_ (διά τινος

βαφῆς) _que les anciens donnèrent au cuivre_; and relates that the

chemist Geoffrey, employed by the Comte de Caylus, succeeded in

hardening copper and in giving it the finest edge; but the secret was

not divulged. Mongez, the Academician, held that copper was indurated

by immersion and by gradual air-cooling, but that _la trempe_ would

soften it.[164] In 1862 David Wilson, following Proclus and Tzetzes,

declares the process of hardening and tempering copper so as to give

it the edge of iron or steel, a ‘lost art.’ Markham[165] supposes

that the old Peruvians hardened their copper with tin or silica; and

he erroneously believes that tin is scarcely found in that section of

South America.

Modern archæological discovery has suggested that in many parts of the

world we must intercalate an age of virgin Copper between the so-called

Stone and Bronze Periods. The first metal, as far as we know, was the

stream-gold, washed by the Egyptians; and, as Champollion proved, the

hieroglyphic sign for Núb (gold) is a bowl with a straining-cloth

dripping water.[166] The fable of glass-discovery by the Sidonians

on the sands of the Belus,[167] a tale which has _le charme des

origines_, explains, I have said, how a bit of metalliferous stone,

accidentally thrown upon the fire in a savage hut, would suggest one

of the most progressive of the arts. And soon the ‘featherless biped,’

like the Mulciber and the Mammon of Milton—

Ransack’d the centre, and with impious hands

Rifled the bowels of their mother earth

For treasures better hid.

The greater antiquity of copper in Southern Europe was distinctly

affirmed, as has been seen, by the Ancients. The use of sheeting, or

plating, on wood or stone was known as long ago as the days of Hesiod

(B.C. 880–850?):

Τοῖς δ’ ἦν χάλκεα μὲν τεύχεα, χάλκεοι δέ τε οἶκοι,

Χαλκῷ δ’ εἰργάζοντο, μέλας δ’ οὐκ ἔσκε σίδερος.—_Erga_, 149.

Copper for armour and arms had they, eke Copper their houses,

Copper they wrought their works when naught was known of black

iron.[168]

Copper sheets[169] were also used for flooring, as we learn from the

χάλκεος οὐδός (Copper threshold) of Sophocles (‘Œdip. Col.’); and

the treasury-room of Delphi, as opposed to the λάϊνος οὐδός (stone

threshold). So in the Palace of Alcinous (‘Odys.’ vii. 75) the walls

and threshold were copper, the pillars and lintels were silver, and the

doors and dogs of gold.

The same practice was continued in the Bronze Period, as Dr. Schliemann

proved when exploring the Thalamos attached to the Treasury of Minyas

at Orchomenus. Nebuchadnezzar, in the ‘Standard Inscription,’ declares

that he plated with copper the folding-doors and the pillars of the

Babylon rampart, and it is suspected that gold and silver sheeted the

fourth and seventh stages of the Temple of Belus, _vulgò_ the Tower of

Babel.

Lucretius[170] is explicit upon the priority of copper—[171]

Posterius ferri vis est ærisque reperta,

Sed prior æris erat quam ferri cognitus usus.

Ære solum terræ tractabant, æreque belli

Miscebant fluctus et volnera vasta ferebant.—V. 1286.

He justly determines its relation to gold—

Nam fuit in pretio magis æs, aurumque jacebat,

Propter inutilitatem, hebeti mucrone retusum.—V. 1272.

And he ends with the normal sneer at his own age—

Nunc jacet æs, aurum in summum successit honorem.—V. 1274.

Virgil, a learned archæologist, is equally explicit concerning the

heroes of the Æneid and the old Italian tribes—

Æratæ micant peltæ, micat æreus ensis.—Æn. vii. 743.

And similarly Ennius—

Æratæ sonant galeæ: sed ne pote quisquam

Undique nitendo corpus discerpere ferro.[172]

Even during her most luxurious days Rome, like Hetruria, retained

in memoriam the use of copper (or bronze?) for the sclepista or

sacrificial knife. When founding a city they ploughed the pomœrium

with a share of æs. The Pontifex Maximus and priests of Jupiter used

hair-shears of the same material, even as the Sabine priests cut their

locks with knives of æs. The Ancile or sacred shield was also of æs.

Pope, and other writers of his time, translated copper and bronze by

‘brass’ (copper and zinc); and in older English ‘native brass’ was

opposed to ‘yellow copper’ (_cuivre jaune_). The same occurs in the

A. V. Tubal Cain (the seventh in descent from Adam) is ‘an instructor

of every artificer in _brass_ and iron’[173] (Gen. iv. 22). Moses is

commanded to ‘cast five sockets of _brass_ for pillars’[174] (Exod.

xxvi. 37). Bezaleel and Aholiab, ‘artists of the tabernacle,’ work in

_brass_ (Exod. xxxi. 4). We read of a ‘land whose stones are iron,

and out of whose hills thou mayest dig _brass_’ (Deut. viii. 9). Job

tells us, ‘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.’[175] Hiram of Tyre was ‘cunning to work all

works in _brass_’ (casting and hammer-wrought), for Solomon’s Temple,

which dates from about two centuries after the time of the Trojan war

(B.C. 1200). In Ezra (viii. 27) the text mentions ‘two vessels of fine

copper, precious as gold;’ and the margin reads ‘yellow or shining

_brass_.’ Nor is the old word quite forgotten: we still speak of a

‘_brass_ gun.’

‘In the _Brazen_ Age,’ unphilosophically says Schlegel (‘Phil. of

Hist.’ sect. ii.), ‘crime and disorder reached their height: violence

was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were

of _copper_, and their implements and utensils _brass_ or bronze.’ I

should generally translate, with Dr. Schliemann and Mr. Gladstone, the

Homeric χαλκός, ‘copper,’ not bronze, chiefly because the former is

malleable and is bright, two qualities certainly not possessed by the

alloy. There are alloys which are malleable,[176] and others (Dowris

copper) which shine; but this is not the case with common bronze, and

no poet would note its brilliancy as a characteristic.

Pure copper, however, would generally be used only in lands where tin

for bronze, and zinc for brass, were unprocurable: isolated specimens

may point only to a temporary dearth. Thus, the Copper Age must have

had distinct areas. M. de Pulsky and M. Cartenhac (‘Matériaux,’ &c.)

held to a distinct Copper Age between the Neolithic and the Bronze.

Dr. John Evans considers the fabrication due to want of tin or to

preference of copper for especial purposes. But the types of copper

tools, &c., are not transitional.

The native ore was used in many districts of North America. Celts of

various shapes from Mhow, Central India, were analysed by Dr. Percy,

who found no tin in them. Tel Sifr in Southern Babylonia and the island

of Thermia in the Greek Archipelago supplied similar articles. They are

also discovered exceptionally in Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Hungary,

France, Italy, and Switzerland. I have noticed the use of the unmixed

metal in the Crannogs of Styria. It seems to have prevailed in Istria:

at Reppen-Tabor near Trieste, the supposed field of battle with the

Romans that decided the fate of the Peninsula (B.C. 178), was found a

fine lance-head of pure copper eight and a half inches long: it is now

in the Museo Civico. The same was the case with Dalmatia; at Spalato

and elsewhere I saw axe-heads of unmixed metal. And we have lately

obtained evidence that old Lusitania, like Ireland,[177] was in similar

conditions.

Thus the Age of Copper would be simply provisional in certain

localities, separating the periods of horn and bone, teeth and wood,

from that of alloys; even as the latter led, in the due line of

development, to the general adoption of iron and steel for Swords and

other weapons. But we have no need for dividing the epochs with the

perverse subtilties of certain naturalists, who use and abuse every

pretext for creating new species. If there be any sequence, it would

be copper, bronze, and brass. In most places, however, the ages were

synchronous, and some races would retain the use of the pure metal,

even when tin and zinc lay at their doors.

The Venus (♀) of alchemy was called in the Semitic tongues _nhs_ or

_nhsh_, in Arab _nahás_, and in Hebrew _nechosheth_ (נחשת). The term

is popularly derived from a triliteral root signifying a snake, the

crooked reptile, the serpent that is in the sea (Job xvi. 13; Is.

xxvii. 1; Amos ix. 3, &c.); either because the metal is poisonous, like

the Ophidæ, or from its brightness of burnish. Similarly, _dhahab_

(זהב), gold, was named from its splendour; and silver, also meaning

money (_argentum_, argent), was _kasaf_ (כסף), the pale metal, the

‘white gold’ of Egypt. Both _nechosheth_ and _nahás_ apply equally to

copper, bronze, and brass; hence we must probably read ‘copper Serpent’

for ‘_brazen_ Serpent,’ and ‘City of Copper’ for ‘City of _Brass_.’

[Heading: _COPPER IN CYPRUS._]

There is the same ambiguity in the Greek and the Roman terms. The word

χαλκός (_chalcus_) is popularly derived from χαλάειν, ‘to loose,’

because easily melted: I should prefer Khal or Khar, ‘Phœnicia,’ whose

sons introduced it into Greece. The Hellenes dug it in Eubœa, where

Chalcis-town[178] gave rise to the ‘stone’ χαλκῖτις (_chalcitis_,

Pliny, xxxiv. 2). They also knew the ore as ἡ κύπρος; and when the

Romans, who annexed Cyprus in B.C. 57, worked the mines, their produce,

says Josephus, was called χαλκὸς κύπριος. _Chalcos_ is essentially

ambiguous unless qualified by some epithet, as ἔρυθρος (red), μέλας

(black), αἴθιοψ (Ethiopian colour = ruddy brown), πόλιος (iron-grey),

and so forth. In fact, like _æs_, it is a generic term for the

so-called ‘base metals’ (iron,[179] copper, tin, lead, and zinc), as

opposed to the ‘noble metals’—gold and silver, to which we should add

platinum.

Worse still, χαλκεύς (_khalkefs_), a copper-smith, was applied to the

blacksmith,[180] and even to the _chrysochoös_, or gold-caster, at

the court of Nestor (‘Od.’ iii. 420, 432); and to χαλκεῖα or χαλκήϊα,

smithies in general. The Roman _æs_, opposed to the _cyprium_ or _æs

cyprium_[181] of Pliny (xxxiv. 2, 9), and _smaragdus cyprius_ or

malachite, is equally misleading unless we render it ‘base metal.’ We

know not how to translate Varro[182] when he speaks of the cymbals at

the feast of Rhea: ‘Cymbalorum sonitus, ferramentorum jactandorum vi

manuum, et ejus rei crepitus in colendo agro qui fit, significant quod

ferramenta ea ideo erant ære’ (copper, bronze, brass?), ‘quod _antiqui_

illum colebant ære antequam ferrum esset inventum.’ Here he wisely

limits the dictum to Greece and Rome.

According to S. P. Festus (_sub voce_), ‘ærosam appellaverunt antiqui

insulam Cuprum,[183] quod in eâ plurimum æris nascitur.’ We now derive

the Sacred Island from ‘Guib’ (pine-tree), ‘er’ (great), and ‘is’

(island); ‘Guiberis,’ alluding to its staple growth. General Palma (di

Cesnola[184]) prefers the Semitic ‘kopher’ (_Lawsonia inermis_), the

henna-shrub, even as Rhodes took its name from the rose or malvacea;

and he finds in Stephanus Byzantinus[185] that the plant was then

abundant. The diggings are alluded to by all the great geographers of

antiquity, Aristotle (‘de Anim.’ v. 17[186]), Dioscorides (v. 89),

Strabo (xvi. 6), and Pliny (xii. 60, xxxiv. 20). In Ezekiel (xxvii. 13)

the trade in copper vessels is attributed to Javan (Ionia), Tubal, and

Meshech; the latter are the Moschi of Herodotus (vii. 78), a Caucasian

people who may have originated the ‘Moscows’ or Russians. Agapenor

and his Arcadians were credited with having introduced copper-mining

into Neo-Paphos; yet there is no doubt that the Phœnicians had worked

metal there before the Greek colonisation. Menelaus (‘Od.’ iv. 83–4)

visits Cyprus for copper; and Athene-Mentor fetches it, as well as

‘shining iron’ (steel?), from Temése (Τεμέση, ‘Od.’ i. 154).[187] These

diggings, together with those of Hamath (Amathus, Palæo-Limassol),

Soli, Curium, and Crommyon, are mentioned by Palma, who also alludes

to an ‘unlimited wealth of copper.’ Yet, despite this and the general

assertion that copper was the most important production of Cyprus, we

have found only the poorest mines at Soli in the Mesaoria-plain, the

counterslope of the Pedia. The island, it is true, has been wasted

and spoiled by three centuries of the ‘unspeakable Turk.’ But the

researches of late travellers and collectors—and these have been

exhaustive since the British occupation—have hitherto failed to find

extensive traces of mining. The rarity, together with the poverty of

the matrix, would suggest the following explanation.

Cyprus was probably not so much a centre of production as a depôt of

trade which collected the contributions of adjacent places—e.g. the

isle of Siphanos (Sifanto), where copper has been found with iron and

lead. Such was the general history of islands and archipelagos outlying

barbarous and dangerous coasts on the direct lines of commerce, various

sections of the world’s great mercantile zone and highway of transit

and traffic. The Cassiterides, also, served as storehouses for the

stream-tin and the chalcopyrite (copper pyrites) of Cornwall and of

Devonshire, whilst they enjoyed the fame of producing it. During the

Middle Ages, Hormuz or Ormuz (Armuza), in the Persian Gulf, served, and

Zanzibar still serves, as a centre of import, export, and exchange, as

a magazine and as a shipping station for its mainland.

One of the ores which occurs in the greatest number of places[188] and

in the largest quantities; having a specific gravity ranging from

8·830 to 8·958; harder and more elastic than silver; the most tenacious

of metals after iron and platinum; malleable when cold as well as when

hot, so as not to require the furnace; melting at a temperature between

the fusion points of silver and gold (1196° F.); and readily cast in

sand-beds and moulds, Copper must have been used in the earliest ages,

and has continued to our day, when the art of smelting it—at Swansea,

for instance, in South Wales—is perhaps more advanced than that of any

other ore. When the stone-and-bone weaponed peoples began their rude

metallurgy, they would retain, with similar habits of thought, the same

principles of design. The old Celtis, Celt, or chisel of serpentine or

silex, would be copied in the newly-introduced and gradually-adopted

weapon-tool of metal; and the transition would be so gradual that we

trace without difficulty the process of development. The first metal

blade was probably a dagger of copper, preserving the older shape of

wood, horn, and stone: possibly it resembled the copper knife found at

Memphis in 1851 by Hekekyan Bey; and this afterwards would grow to a

Sword. Wood, stone, copper, and bronze, iron and steel, must long have

been used simultaneously, slowly making way for one another, as the

musket took the place of the matchlock, the rifle of the musket.

According to Pliny (vii. 57), ‘Aristotle supposes that Scythes,

the Lydian, was the first to fuse and temper copper; while

Theophrastus,[189] in Aristotle’s day, ascribes the art to Delas,

the Phrygian. Some give the origin to the Chalybes, others to the

Cyclopes.’ Achilles, the pupil of Chiron (ibid. v. 20), is represented

in pictures as scraping the _ærugo_[190] or verdigris off a spear

into the wound of Telephus, the effect of which diacetate would soon

be followed by the discovery of blue-stone (sulphate of copper, blue

copperas) or blue vitriol, still a favourite in the East. Pausanias

(‘Æliaca’) further informs us that Spanish copper, or copper from

Tartessus, was the first used. The classics agree that Cadmus (not

‘the foreigner,’ but the ‘old man,’ _El-Kadim_, or the ‘Eastern man,’

_El-Kadmi_) introduced metallurgy into Greece.

[Heading: _EGYPTIAN COPPER MINES._]

We have ample evidence of extensive working and use of copper, called

‘Khomet,’ by the peoples of the Nile Valley. The ore occurs in the

Wady Hammámát, the Egyptian Desert, and the so-called ‘Sinaitic’

Peninsula. As the Pyramids are the oldest of buildings, so the works

in Wady Magharah (Valley of Caves) are perhaps the most ancient mines

in the world.[191] They were first opened (circ. B.C. 3700–3600) by

the eighth king of the Third Dynasty, the Sephouris of Manetho, the

Senoferu (‘he that makes good’) of the inscriptions, who lies buried

in the pyramid of Mi-tum (Maydúm).[192] A rock-tablet of this Pharaoh,

the ‘great god, the subduer, conqueror of countries,’ shows him holding

a foreigner by the hair and smiting the captive with a mace. Above his

head are carved a graver (pick?) and a mallet. Soris, first Pharaoh of

the Fourth Dynasty, ‘Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt, ever living,’ also

strikes down an enemy and shows the same symbols. They again appear

in the tablet of Souphis, the Shufu or Khufu of the Tables of Abydos

and Sakkara,[193] and the Cheops of the Great Pyramid, whilst they

are wanting in that of his brother Nu-Shufu (Souphis II.) or Khafra

(Cephren) of the Pyramid.

[Illustration: FIG. 73.—SEPHURIS AT WADY MAGHARAH (OLDEST ROCK

TABLETS). THIRD DYNASTY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 74.—SORIS AND THE CANAANITES AT WADY MAGHARAH

(OLDEST ROCK TABLETS). FOURTH DYNASTY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 75.—TABLET OF SUPHIS AND NU-SUPHIS AT WADY

MAGHARAH. (FOURTH DYNASTY.)]

The diggings were not abandoned till the days of Amenemhat, of the

Twelfth Dynasty, when the labourers were removed to Sarábit-el-Khádim,

the ‘Men-hirs’ (not heights) of the Servant in the Wady Nasb or Valley

of Sacrificial Stone. Here gangs of miners, guarded by a strong force,

extracted (as the slag-heaps show) Mafka or Mefka[194] (copper?

malachite?[195] turquoise?), ‘black metal’ (copper), ‘green stones’

(malachite?), manganese, and iron. Supt and Athor or Hathor (Venus),

the Isis of pure light, who presided over the Mafka-land, and who was

the ‘goddess of copper,’ are mentioned in a tablet. Other hieroglyphs

contain the names and titles of the rulers, and fragments of vases

bear the name of Mene-Pthah,[196] one of the supposed Pharaohs of the

Exodus. The ‘hands’ left their marks by graffiti or scribblings, and

there are extensive remains of slave-quarters, of deep cuts, and of

rock-sunk moulds for running the metal into ingots, Sarábit-el-Khádim

continued working until Ramses IV. (Twentieth Dynasty), the last

royal name there found: his date in round numbers would be B.C. 1150.

Agatharchides (B.C. 100) reports that chisels of chalcos (λατομίδες

χαλκαῖ) were found buried in the ancient gold mines of Egypt, and hence

he deduces that the use of iron was unknown.

[Heading: _COPPER IN AFRICA AND ASIA._]

From Kemi or Χημία, ‘black-earth land,’ _alias_ Egypt, the art of

metallurgy doubtless extended southwards into the heart of Africa.

Hence travellers wonder when they see admirable and artistic

blacksmiths amongst races whose sole idea of a house is a round hut

of wattle and dab. The only coppers in South Africa with which I am

familiar are those of Katanga in the Cazembe’s country,[197] where the

Portuguese have long traded. Captain Cameron[198] was shown a calabash

full of nuggets found when clearing a water-hole. In Uguhha he procured

a ‘Handa’ from Urua, a Saint Andrew’s cross with central ribs to the

arms, measuring diagonally fifteen to sixteen inches by two inches wide

and half an inch thick: the weight was two and a half to three pounds.

The people prefer this ‘red copper’ to the ‘white copper,’ as they call

gold. In the Pantheon of Yoruban Abeokuta, ‘Ogun,’ the local Vulcan and

Wayland Smith, god of metal-workers and armourers, is symbolised by a

dwarf spear of copper or iron, and human sacrifices are, or were, made

to it. Barth (vol. iii.) notes the copper (ja-n-Karfi) in El-Hofrah

(‘the Diggings’) of Waday, south of Dar-For; and in the Kano, the

Runga, and the Bute countries. Copper wire is worn by the women of the

hill-lands of Gurma, but it is supposed to be brought from Ashanti (?).

Africa, however, is as yet unexplored as regards its mineral wealth,

and we are only beginning to work our old-world California—the Gold

Coast. Farther south the highly-important copper-mines of Pemba, now

Bemba, and other parts of the inner Congo and Benguella regions,

were discovered by the Capitão-Mór, Balthazar Rebello de Aragão, in

1621–23.[199] Still more to the south, Namaqua-land supplies chalcitic

ores, a native carbonate, reduced with cow-chips.

In Asia mines were worked by the ancient Assyrians for copper as

well as lead and iron, and the former was applied to their weapons,

tools, and ornaments.[200] The Kurds and Chaldæans still extract from

the Tiyari heights about Lizan and the valley of Berwari various

minerals—copper, lead, and iron; silver, and perhaps gold. Upon the

Steppes of Tartary, and in the wildest parts of Siberia, the remains of

old copper-furnaces, small and of rude construction, are met with. The

Digaru Mishmís of Assam have copper-headed arrows.

The Chinese declare that in olden times men used the metal for arms,

which in the days of the Thsin (B.C. 300) began to be made of iron.

Sir John Davis (i. 230) confirms the fact that the Chinese Sword and

backsword, both wretched weapons, were originally of copper, long ago

changed to iron. Dr. Pfizmaier tells us that about B.C. 475 the King

of U sent a steel blade to his minister, U-tse-tsui, wherewith to

behead himself. According to Pliny, the Seres exported iron to Europe

together with their tissues and their skins. The Chinese distinguish

between Thse-thung (purple copper) and Thing-sung (green copper) or

bronze. They prefer the ‘Tze-lae,’ or natural ore, gathered in the

torrent-beds of Kwei-chow and Yun-nan, and the latter exclusively

produces the famous Pe-tung,[201] or white copper, which takes a fine

polish like silver. They made copper the base of their coinage as

well as their weapons. Amongst their many charms and talismans are

the ‘money-swords,’ a number of ancient copper coins pierced with

a square central hole, and connected by a metal bar shaped like a

cross-hilted Sword. These are suspended over the testerns of beds and

sleeping-couches, that the guardianship of the kings in whose reigns

the money was issued may keep away ghosts and spirits.

The Japanese copper[202] is of the finest quality, and is used as a

standard of comparison. The superiority of the metal, which contains

a percentage of gold, enabled the self-taught native workmen to

produce those castings which are the admiration and the despair of

the European artist. The copper delivered at Nagasaki and Kwashi is

from Beshki, Akita, and Nambu; other places produce the more ordinary

kinds. The rich red surface is due to a thin and tenaciously adhering

film of dioxide: this has been imitated in England. The famous Satzuma

copper, held to be the best in the world, was prepared under Government

officials, none being sold privately. The ore was roasted in kilns

for ten to twenty days, smelted in large furnaces with charcoal, and

cast in water to make the well-known Japanese ingots. These were bars

measuring about half an inch on the side, by seven to nine inches in

length, and weighing some ten taels, nearly equal to one pound. They

were packed in boxes each weighing a picul (= 125 to 133⅓ lbs. avoir.),

about the load of a man. The price of course greatly varied. The trade

was at first wholly in the hands of the Hollanders, who made a good

thing of their monopoly. There was also an old traffic in Japanese

copper on the eastern coast of India, especially Coromandel. The

opening of the empire has caused revolutionary changes.

[Heading: _THE COPPER AGE._]

Copper was abundantly produced in Europe, and the pure metal was used

throughout the continent with the exception of Scandinavia, where

specimens are exceedingly rare. The iron age of Denmark begins with

the Christian era, and was preceded only by bronze and stone. We know

nothing of the discovery of copper in Ireland. It is supposed in legend

to have been introduced by the Fir-bolgs (bag-men, Belgæ?), or by the

Tuatha (gens) de Danaan (the Danes?). These oft-quoted races, known

to us only by name, have been affiliated with a host of continentals,

even with the Greeks.[203] It would be mere guess-work to consider the

Irish style of treating the ores—by spalling or breaking the stone,

by wasting, fluxing, or smelting. We have, however, many specimens

which explain the casting. The metal was called by the natives Uma or

Umha, a Keltic word; also Dearg Umha, red copper, opposed to Ban[204]

Umha (white copper) or tin; and this term afterwards became ‘stan,’

evidently from stannum (Gall. Estain). There are still traditions of

copper mines having existed at an early period; and, among the wonders

related by Nonnius (Archæol. Soc. Ireland), we find Loch Lein, now

Killarney, surrounded by four circles of copper, tin, lead, and iron.

Of late years ‘miners’ hammers,’ the native name for stone pounders,

have been dug up in the neighbourhood of that lake, in Northern

Antrim, at an ancient mine in Ballycastle, and in sundry parts of

Southern Ireland.[205] The metal occurs in small quantities at Bonmahon

(Waterford); copper and cobalt at Mucross, and grey copper ore in Cork,

Kerry, Tipperary, and Galway. In 1855 some 1157 tons were shipped to

Swansea.

The Greenlanders and Eskimos cut and hammer their pure native copper,

without smelting, into nails, arrow-piles, and other tools and weapons.

Mackenzie (second voyage) tells us that pure copper was common among

the tribes on the borders of the Arctic Sea, whose arrow-heads and

spear-heads were cold-wrought with the hammer. Columbus (fourth

voyage), before touching the mainland of Honduras, saw at Guanaga

Island a canoe from Yucatan[206] laden with goods, amongst which he

specifics ‘copper hatchets, and other elaborate articles, cast and

soldered; forges, and crucibles.’[207] At Hayti the great Admiral

(first expedition) had mentioned masses of native copper weighing six

arrobas (quarters).[208] When the Spaniards first entered the province

of Tupan they mistook the bright copper axes for gold of low touch,

and bought with beads some six hundred in two days:[209] Bernal Dias

describes these articles as being very highly polished, with the handle

curiously carved, as if to serve equally for an ornament and for the

field of battle.

[Heading: _COPPER IN AMERICA._]

In North America there are two great copper regions which supplied the

whole continent[210]—Lake Superior and the lower Rio Grande. The former

shows the first transitional steps from stone to metal. The ore occurs

in the igneous and trappean rocks that wall in the vast fresh-water

sea, and is found in solid blocks: one, fifty feet long, six feet deep,

and six feet in average thickness, was estimated to weigh eighty tons.

At Copper Harbour, Kawunam Point, a single vein yielded forty thousand

pounds. The largest mass in the Minnesota Mine (Feb. 1857) occupied

Mr. Petherick and forty men for twelve months: it was forty-five feet

long, thirty-two feet broad (max.), and eight feet thick; containing

over forty per cent. ore, and weighing four hundred and twenty to five

hundred tons. Malleable and ductile, representing an average of 3·10

per cent. native silver, and with a specific gravity of 8·78 to 8·96,

it required no crucible but Nature’s; it wanted only beating into

shape, and it needed nothing of the skilled labour necessary for the

ores of Cornwall and Devon, which contributed so largely to the wealth

of Tyre. The workings are supposed to belong to the race conveniently

called ‘Mound-builders,’ and to date from our second century, when

the Damnonians of Cornwall were in a similar state of civilisation.

‘Cliff Mine’ supplied fine specimens of weapons and tools, arrow-piles

and spear-heads, knives and three-sided blades like the old bayonet.

The socket was formed by hammering flat the lower end, and by turning

it over partially (without overlapping) at each side, so as to make a

flange. Professor James D. Butler (‘Prehistoric Wisconsin’) facsimiles

twenty-four copper implements. The ‘Indians’ called the metal

Miskopewalik (red iron), opposed to black iron. As is also proved by

the Brockville relics, the people had the art of hardening copper.

The mines of the lower Rio Grande supplied Mexico with materials for

arms and tools. According to Captain R. H. Bonnycastle,[211] the

metal was found in New Mexico and in the volcanic rocks of Mechoacan

(Valladolid, New Spain). Mexico, like Peru, used the crucible and added

bronze to copper. The metals were under the god Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec

Tubal Cain-ben-Lamech.

Another great centre of the Copper Age was the land ‘where men got gold

as they do iron out of Biscay.’ The Peruvian army, a host of three

hundred thousand levied from a total population of twenty millions,

was armed with bows and arrows, clubs, pikes, javelins, war-axes (of

stone and copper), and the paddle-sword;[212] while the people of

Anahuac (Mexico) had bows and spears, clubs and axes, knives and Swords

one-handed and two-handed, the Mahquahuitl set with obsidian teeth.

In the former country the pre-Ynkarial Aymaras, who dug for gold and

silver, copper and tin, and who employed alloys, almost ignored for

their ‘Ayri’ (cutting implements) the use of iron and steel, which they

called Quella (Khellay). The Andes range is popularly derived from

the Quichua word Anta[213] (copper): the native ore occurred in the

parts above the cultivation-line, and it abounded in the cupriferous

sandstones of Bolivian Corocoro. The Huaunanchuco country (Rivero and

Tschudi, p. 203),[214] conquered by the ninth Ynka, produced a fine

collection of stone and copper axes, chisels, pins, and tweezers. Blas

Valera, one of the earliest writers, still often quoted, tells us that

‘Anta’ served in place of iron, and that the people worked it more than

other ores, preferring it to gold (_Khori_) and silver.[215] Of it were

made their knives, carpenters’ tools, women’s dress-pins (_Tupies_),

polished mirrors, and ‘all their rakes and hammers.’ Garcilasso de

la Vega adds: ‘pikes, clubs, halberts, and pole-axes,[216] made of

silver, copper, and some of gold, the “tears of the sun,” having sharp

points, and some hardened by the fire’; also carpenters’ axes; adzes

and hatchets; bill-hooks of copper, and blow-pipes of the same metal

about a yard long applied to earthen or clay pots which they carried

from place to place. A nugget or loose pebble acted as bell-clapper,

and copper statuettes were coated or plated with precious metals. The

‘Royal Commentaries of the Yncas’ tells us that copper served in

place of iron for making weapons of war: the people valued it highly

because more useful than gold and silver; the demand was greater than

for any other metal, and it paid tribute (vol. i. pp. 25, 43, 48).

We find notices of copper hammers, bellows-nozzles, adzes, axes, and

bill-hooks (i. p. 102). Cieza de Leon (chap. lxiii.) tells us that the

Peruvians placed a piece of gold, silver, or copper in the corpse’s

mouth. He mentions vases of copper and of stone (chap. civ.), and small

furnaces of clay where they laid the charcoal and blew the fire with

thin canes instead of bellows (ibid.). The Introduction (p. lii) notes

the Peruvian use of copper-trowels for smoothing and polishing walls,

and a ‘terrible weapon of copper in the shape of a star.’ According to

Rivero and Tschudi (chap. ix.) the Peruvians could not work copper as

well as gold or silver; yet they made idols, vases, solid staves a yard

long with serpents inlaid, and sceptre-heads decorated with condor-like

birds. The household _vaisselle_ of the Ynkas consisted of gold and

silver, copper and stone. Rivero, analysing Peruvian weapons and tools

(hatchets and chisels), found from five to ten per cent. silica: he

could not determine whether it was an artificial or an accidental

impurity. Tschudi (1841) discovered copper arms in a tomb three leagues

from Huaco, and established the fact that the Peruvians used the

paddle-sword and the scymitar.[217] A copper axe, found in a Huaca (old

grave) at the now well-known Arica, was associated with a thong-sling

and with other primitive instruments.

The people of New Granada, according to the tale of Bollaert,[218]

‘gilt’ their copper by ‘rubbing the juice of a plant on it and then

putting it into the fire, when it took the gold colour’—a process which

reminds us of Pliny’s ox-gall varnish. Ecuador forged copper nippers

for tweezers. The Chitchas, or Muiscas (i.e. men), of Bogota, who knew

only gold and ignored copper, tin, lead, and iron, made their weapons

and tools of hard wood and stone. Thomas Ewbank,[219] of New York,

catalogues as breast-plates two laminæ of copper and one of bronze,

the latter being notably the lighter. Out of sundry ‘bronzes’ from

Peru he found four of pure copper. Chile had abundant mines of copper,

and her metal is held to be the toughest: a bar three-eighths of an

inch thick will bend backwards and forwards forty-eight times before

breaking. Her chief centres are Copiapo (i.e. ‘turquoise’), Huasco,

Coquimbo, Aconcágua and Caléo. The Couche range at Guatacondo, in sight

of the desert of Atacama, which gave a name to Atacamite (submuriate

of copper), is said to supply from the same vein gold, silver, copper,

and coquimbite or white copperas called Pampua (packfong?).[220] Gillis

(Plate viii. 12, 3) described, amongst the antiquities found near the

great Ynkarial High-road, a cast copper axe, weighing about three and

a quarter pounds: he doubts, however, that the ancient Chilians worked

in that metal. The wild Araucanians called gold ‘copper’ (Bollaert, p.

184). According to Molina, the Puelche tribe extracted from the mines

of Payen a copper containing half its weight (?) in gold; and the same

natural alloy was found in the Curico mines.

[Heading: _COPPER._]

Returning to the Old World, we see copper tools denoted in Egyptian

hieroglyphs by a reddish-brown tint;[221] iron and steel, as in

Assyria, being coloured, not grey, but water-blue.[222] With these

yellow tools the old workmen are seen cutting stone blocks and

fashioning colossal statues. Dr. John Forbes, of Edinburgh,[223] had

a large chisel of pure copper, showing marks of use, found with a

wooden mallet in an Egyptian tomb. A flat piece of copper, apparently a

knife-blade, was turned up when boring thirteen feet below the surface

where stands the statue of Ramses II. (B.C. 1400).[224] The Abbé

Barthélemy proved, to the satisfaction of P. J. Rossignol, that the

arms of the Greeks were first of copper; that iron was introduced about

the date of the Trojan war (circ. B.C. 1200),[225] and that after this

time ‘Athor-Venus’ was no more in use. Ulysses (‘Iliad,’ i. 4, 279)

offers Achilles all the gold and copper he can collect, and Achilles

will carry off all the gold, the red copper (χαλκὸν ἐρυθρόν), women,

and iron or steel (σίδηρον), when Peleides returns that noble answer:

Hostile to me is the man as the hatefullest gateway of Hades,

Whoso in thought one thing dare hide and utter another.[226]

Numa ordered the priests to cut their hair with copper, not iron,

scissors.[227] Copper vases and kettles as tomb-furniture were found

by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenæ: the museum of the Warwakeion at Athens

contains seven of these funeral urns. They have also been met with at

Etruscan Corneto and Palestrina, and in Austrian Hallstatt,[228] a

cemetery which dates from the days when iron was coming into use, and

apparently belongs to a much later period than Mycenæ. The Hindús had

a copper coinage, and that of the sub-Himalayan Gangetic provinces

appears older than Greek art. There is a copper coin bearing on the

reverse the rude figure of a horse, and on the obverse a man with

legend in old Buddhist (Pali) letters Khatrapasa Pagámashasa.[229] The

Jews, who, like the Etruscans, had a copper coinage, used the metal

for offence and defence. As amongst the Philistines, Phœnicians, and

Carthaginians, whose relics have been found in the Cannæ Plain, the

metal was at first pure. The ‘bow of steel’ (Job xx. 24, Ps. xviii.

34) should be rendered ‘bow of copper,’ either copper-plated or (more

probably) so tempered as to be elastic. Goliah of Gath (B.C. 1063), who

measured nine feet six inches, carried a target, greaves, a spear with

an iron head, and a scale-coat[230] of copper: the spear-head weighed

six hundred and the armour five thousand shekels (each 320 grains

Troy), or 33·33 and 277·77 lbs.[231] David was armed (1 Sam. xvii. 38)

with a helmet of copper. Ishi-benob (B.C. 1018), who was ‘of the sons

of the giant,’ carried a spear weighing three hundred shekels (about

sixteen and a half pounds) of copper. Finally, Buffon believes that the

arms of the ancient Asiatics were cuprine.

[Heading: COPPER IN EUROPE.]

Mr. John Latham declares:[232] ‘Copper is a metal of which, in its

unalloyed state, no relics have been found throughout England. Stone

and bone first, then bronze or copper and tin combined, but no copper

alone. I cannot get over this hiatus, cannot imagine a metallurgic

industry beginning with the use of alloys.’ But this is a negative

argument. The simple mineral would soon disappear to make bronze, and

we have some pure specimens. Sir David Brewster[233] describes a large

battle-axe of pure copper found on the blue clay, twenty feet deep

below the Ratho Bog. Philips[234] gives the analysis of eight so-called

‘bronzes,’ including three Swords, one from the Thames and two from

Ireland: the spear-head was of impure but unalloyed copper, 99·71 to

0·28 sulphur. Dr. Daniel Wilson[235] analysed in 1850 seven British

‘bronzes,’ and found one Scottish axe-head, rudely sand-cast, of almost

pure copper, the natural alloy of gold and silver not reaching to one

per cent. Moreover, the Romans certainly smelted copper in England,

where lumps of pure metal, more or less rounded, have been found, but

always in association with bronze articles. Pennant describes a relic

discovered at Caerhun (or Caerhen), the old Conovium, near Conway and

Llandudno, which still works copper: it was shaped like a cake of

beeswax, measuring eleven inches by three and three-quarter inches in

thickness; it weighed forty-two pounds, and the upper surface bore

in deep impression, ‘Socio Romæ’ (to the partner at Rome). Obliquely

across the legend ran in smaller letters, ‘Natsoc.’ It had evidently

been smelted upon the spot. In later days our country imported her

copper from Sweden and Hungary: this appears in the specification of

patent to George Danby, Jan. 21, 1636. Calamine was shipped as ballast.

Our great works began during the last century and culminated in Swansea.

[Illustration: FIG. 76.—THE WINGED CELTS, OR PALSTAVE.

1. Semilunar blade; the rounded side edges are ornamented

in the casting with a raised hexagon pattern; they project

somewhat above the level of the flat surface of the implement.

The curved stops, which are rudimentary, have their concavities

facing the handle. 2. In the Palstave celt the loop is usually

placed beneath the stock, and in the socketed ones it is always

close to the top. The cut, drawn one-third of the actual size,

represents the usual position of the loop. The lunette cutting

edge, with marked recurved points, presents the appearance of

having been ground.[236] These implements were cast in moulds

of bronze, examples of which have been brought to light at

various times. The third illustration represents the upper part

of one of these celt moulds and the method of casting: they

were for a long time a source of confusion to the discoverers,

although Colonel Vallancy assigns them to their true use.]

Wilde (p. 490) expresses the general opinion when he asserts that ‘the

use of copper invariably preceded that of bronze.’ He well explains

by two reasons why so few antique implements of pure copper have been

found in Ireland: either a very short period elapsed between the

discovery of treating the pure ores and the introduction of bronze;

or the articles, once common, were recast and converted into the more

valuable mixed metal. The latter cause is made probable by the early

intercourse with Cornwall, one of the great tin emporia. ‘Tin-stone’

(native peroxide of tin or stannic acid) is produced in small

quantities by Ireland, and Dr. Charles Smith[237] declares that he

collected it.

Wilde also notices, in the Royal Irish Academy, weapons, tools, and

ornaments of red metal or pure copper. These are thirty celts of the

greatest simplicity and the earliest pattern, rudely formed tools, a

few fibulæ, a trumpet, two battle-axes, and several Sword-blades of the

short, broad, and curved shape usually called scythes.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.—COPPER CELTS IN THE DUBLIN COLLECTION.]

The pure copper celts, formed upon two or three types, are the oldest

in the Dublin collection, and were probably the immediate successors

of the stone implement. As a rule they have one side smoother than

the other, as if they had been run into simple stone moulds; they are

also thicker and of rougher surface than the bronze article. For the

most part they are rude and unornamented wedges of cast metal: a few

are lunette-shaped and semilunar blades. The cleansed specimens show a

great variety of colour. When first found, the brown crust, peculiar

to the oxidised metal, readily distinguishes them from the bronze

patina, the beautiful varnish of æruginous or verdigris hue, artificial

malachite resembling in colour the true native carbonate of copper.

[Heading: _COPPER SWORDS._]

The broad scythe-shaped Swords, numbering forty-one, are supposed to

be ‘specially and peculiarly Irish.’ The straight blades are shown by

their large burrs, holes, and rivets either to end in massive handles

of metal, or to be attached to wooden staves, long or short. Of this

kind some are curved. As many are of ‘red bronze’ (pure copper),

darkened by oxidation, it is probable that they are of great antiquity,

like the celts of that period. Although in some cases the points have

been broken off, yet the edges are neither hacked, indented, nor worn;

hence the conclusion that they were true stabbing Swords. Yet Mr.

John Evans declares that he knows no such thing as a copper Sword.

In this matter he partially follows Lévesque de la Ravalière, who

declared copper arms unknown to the Greeks[238] and Romans, Gauls and

Franks: this savant was refuted and charged with unfairly treating his

authorities by the Comte de Caylus in a description of seven copper

Swords dug up (1751) at Gensal in the Bourbonnais. The Abbé Barthélemy

attributed seven copper blades to the Franks in the reign of Childeric.

We have ample evidence that ‘copper’ is ambiguously used by modern

travellers. The modern discoverer of Troy[239] gives us, in his last

and revised volume, a full account of exploring fifty-three feet

deep of débris and laying bare the stratified ruins of seven cities,

including that of the ‘ground floor’ and the Macedonian ruins. The two

lowest bear witness to a copper age anterior to bronze, whilst they

yielded the only gilded object, a copper knife, and the most advanced

art in specimens of hand-made pottery.[240] The second from below was

walled, and the third, the most important, was the Burnt City, the

city of the golden treasures, identified with Ilios. The explorer

claims to have reduced the Homeric Ilium to its true proportions.

The grand characteristic in his finds is the paucity of iron, which

appeared only in the shape of oxidised ‘sling-bullets’: tin is also

absent. Both these metals, it is true, oxidise most readily; yet, had

the objects been numerous, they would have left signs, in rust and

stains. From ‘Troy’ we learn (p. 22) that ‘all the copper articles met

with are of pure copper, without the admixture of any other metal’:

the author also finds that ‘implements of pure copper were employed

contemporaneously with enormous quantities of stone weapons and

implements.’ He will not admit (‘Troy,’ p. 82) that he has reached the

bronze period when he discovers in the ‘Trojan stratum,’ at a depth of

thirty-three to forty-six and fifty-two feet, nails, knives, lances,

and ‘elegantly-worked battle-axes of pure copper.’[241] And we can

accept the copper, for much of it was analysed by Professor Landerer,

of Athens, ‘a chemist well known through his discoveries and writings.’

He examined the fragments found in the ‘Treasury of Priam,’ and made

all of them to consist of pure copper, without any admixture of tin or

zinc (‘Troy,’ p. 340). When treating of the Bronze Age, I shall show

that alloys were not wanting.

[Illustration: FIG. 78.—SCYTHE-SHAPED BLADE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 79.—STRAIGHT BLADE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 80.—STRAIGHT BLADE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 81.—SCYTHE-SHAPED BLADE.]

CHAPTER V.

THE SECOND CHALCITIC AGE OF ALLOYS[242]—BRONZE, BRASS, ETC.: THE

AXE AND THE SWORD.

The use of copper, I have said, would be essentially transitional; and

the discovery of smelting one kind of metal would lead immediately to

that of others and to their commixture. Moreover, when casting and

moulding began to be a general practice, unalloyed copper difficult to

smelt, and when melted thick, sluggish, and pasty, would not readily

run without some mixture into all the sinuosities of the mould. In

this chapter I propose to notice the second chalcitic age—that of the

earliest combinations of metals, their workers, and their application

to weapons.

J. P. Rossignol, following the opinion of the symbolists and

mysticists, as the Baron de Saint Croix,[243] Creuzer, Freret, and

Lobechs,[244] assigns a Divine origin—after the fashion of the day—to

metallurgy, making it resemble in this point Creation, articulate

language,[245] and the discovery of corn and wine. So he understands

the θεολογούμενα (subjects of a theological nature) alluded to by

Strabo (x. 3, § 7). It is the old hypothesis of supernatural agency

in purely natural matters, a kind of luxus-wonder, as the Germans

call useless miracles, which had waxed stale, even in the days of

Horace—‘parcus Deorum cultor et infrequens.’ He considers the Curetes

and Corybantes, the Cabiri (Kabeiroi) of Lemnos and Imbros, and the

Idæi Dactyli of Crete, the Telchines of Rhodes, and the Sinties, Sinti,

or Saii of Thrace (Strabo, xii. 3, § 20) as metallurgic δαίμονες, or

genii prisoned in human form, and typifying the successive steps of

the art. In these days we hardly admit the _intersit_ of a deity when

human nature suffices to loose the knot; nor do we believe that our

kind began by worshipping types. Man has always worshipped one thing,

himself, and himself only, either in the flesh or in the ghost—that

is, in the non-flesh or the objective nothing—till he arrived at the

transcendental Man, the superlative, the ideal of Himself.

[Heading: _THE GOD-SMITHS._]

How little of fact is known about the mysterious tribes above mentioned

becomes evident by a glance at the classics. All six are supposed to be

Asiatics, worshippers of Rhea (the earth), the great mother of the gods

and queen of the metal workers. Yet Strabo explains Curetes from Greek

terms κόροι (boys), κόραι (girls), κουρά (tonsure), and κουροτροφεῖν

(to bring up the Boy, i.e. Jupiter). Similarly their brethren, the nine

Corybantes, were termed from their dancing gait and negro-like butting

with the head, κορύπτοντας. They inhabited Samothrace (Samothracia

alta): this venerable and holy island, in hoar antiquity a general

rendezvous of freemasonry, or rather of free-smithery, forms a triangle

with metallic Thasos and with volcanic Lemnos.

The three or four Cabiri[246] bear a Semitic name, Kabir = the great or

the old. They seem at first to have represented Ptah-Sokar-Osiris,[247]

and Herodotus (iii. 37) mentions their temple at Memphis. They became

in Phœnicia the earliest boatmen or primordial shipbuilders, identified

by some with the Sesennu or Egyptian Octonary; by others with the seven

planets or the stars of Typho, our Great Bear;[248] and by others,

again, with the seven Khnemu (gnomes) or pygmy-sons who waited upon

their father Ptah-Vulcan. They inhabited Lemnos, where Hephæstus, when

expelled, like Adam, from the lowest heaven, took refuge among the

Pelasgi (Diod. Sic. lib. v.): hence the latter preserved their worship.

Damascius (‘Life of Isidorus’) says: ‘The Asclepius of Berytus is

neither Greek nor Egyptian, but of Phœnician origin; for (seven) sons

were born to Sadyk, called Dioscuri and Cabiri, and the eighth of them

was Esman (i.e. Octavius, No. 8), who is interpreted Asclepius.’[249]

The Idæan Dactyli (fingers or toes) who occupied ‘fountful Ide’[250]

consisted of five brothers, representing the _dextra_ or lucky hand

(science, art), and five sisters for the _sinistra_ or unlucky

(witchcraft, ill omens). The names of these ‘hands’ (iron-workers) were

Kelmis (fire or heat = the smelter), Damnameneus (the hammer, or who

governs by strength, Thor), Hercules (force, animal or mental), and

Akmon (the anvil or passive principle). Hence Pyracmon the Cyclop, one

of the seven architect brothers who, according to Strabo (viii. 6),

came from Lycia and built the ‘Cyclopean Wall’ in the Argolid. These

Cyclopes[251] (monocular giants) worked metal, and under their magic

hands,

Fluit æs rivis aurique metallum;

Vulnificusque chalybs vasta fornice liquescit.

By later writers, the Cyclopes, who

... Stridentia tingunt

Æra lacu (_Æn._ viii. 445, _Georg._ iv. 172),

were held to be Sicilians.

The Telchines (fascinators, from θέλγειν, to charm) are mentioned

as metallurgists by Stesichorus the Sicilian (nat. B.C. 632): they

were the sons of Thalassa, i.e. they came from beyond the sea; they

colonised Telchinis, and they made arms and statues of the gods

like the Dædalides or artist families of later Athens. The Sinties

(plunderers) from τὸ σίνεσθαι (to pill), who, according to Hellenicus

of Lesbos (nat. B.C. 496), were pirates besides being coppersmiths

(χαλκυές), and who were eventually murdered by their wives, represented

the ancient Lemnians. So Homer (‘Od.’ viii. 290) speaks of the

‘barbarous Sintian men’ who received Vulcan when kicked out of

Paradise. A modern school of Tsiganologues would identify them with

prehistoric Gypsies, who have still a tribe called Sindi; but this

theory would bring the arts from India westwards, whereas the current

flowed the clean contrary way. Finally, Herodotus (i. 28), initiated in

the mysteries, makes the Chalybes[252] or iron-workers, neighbours (and

congeners?) of the Phrygians.

It is not difficult to see the general gist of such legends. All

these tribes probably came (like Pelops, Tantalus, and Niobe) from

the same place, Phrygia, the fertile plateau of Asia Minor, and its

Katakekaumene or volcanic tract. It was, as far as we know, the first

western centre which developed the ‘Aryan’ or non-Semitic element of

the old Egyptian tongue. It also formed the _point de départ_ of the

European[253] (miscalled ‘Indo-European’) branch of the family that

owned the Arya-land (Airyanem-vaejo), whose ethnic centre was the

barbarous region about Ray, Heri, or Herat.[254] Hence, says Herodotus

(iii. 2), the Egyptians owned the Phrygians to surpass them in

antiquity. The emigrants would pass to the islands Samothrace, Lemnos,

Thera,[255] the Cyclades and Crete; to Greece, Thessaly and Epirus,

Attica, Argos, and the farthest south, where ‘Pelops the Phrygian,’

son of King Tantalus, colonised the Morea and founded the Pelopid

race. Then they would find a home in Italy, Hetruria, and Iapygia

(or Messapia), Peucetia and Daunia, and finally they would settle in

Iberia, Spain, and Portugal, where the Briges or Brygi (Phrygians) have

left their names in the Braganza of the present day.

These Proto-Phrygians and Phrygo-Europeans, of whom several tribes

returned to Asia, were the prehistoric metal-workers. The smith (from

_smitan_, to strike) was sacred in the dawn of history; and the

Sword-maker was not inferior to him. Those who have witnessed the awe

and reverence with which savages and barbarians regard a European

mechanic at his forge will see exemplified the emotional feeling which

led to the human becoming the superhuman.[256]

[Heading: _ALLOYS._]

The first step in κρατέρωμα (hardening of metals) was, according

to Hesychius, Μίξις χαλκοῦ καὶ κασσιτέρου (the mingling of copper

and tin). The alloy was known generically as chalcos (base metal),

specifically as χαλκὸς μέλαινος (black chalcos). The Latins persisted

in terming it simply _æs_; e.g. _æs inauratum_ (gilt bronze). Our

word bronze derives from _brunus_ (fuscous, sombre, brown); _brunum

æs_. Hence the Low Latin (A.D. 805) _brunea_, _brunia_, or _bronia_,

a lorica or thorax; and the Low Greek πόρτας μπρούτξινες (pronounce

broutzines), ‘portals of bronze.’ The word is also derived from the

Basque or Iberian _bronsea_.

Tin, one of the least durable of metals, at the same time readily

fused and one of the easiest to treat metallurgically, was called by

the Greeks κασσίτερος, and by the Latins _cassiteron_,[257] whence

probably the Arab. قصدير, and the Sanskrit कस्तीर. The Hebrew name is

בדיל (Badíl = a substitute, a separation, an alloy). Hut (white metal)

in Egyptian includes silver and tin: in Coptic it is Thram, Thran, or

Basensh. Kalaí (Linschoten’s ‘Calaem’) is the popular term for tin in

India: the word is Arabic rather than Turkish. Tenekeh (tin-plate) in

Arabic is an evident congener of the Assyrian [Cuneiform] ‘Anaker,’

and it remarkably resembles the Scandinavian Din, German Zinn, and our

Tin. As we find ‘Teyne’ in Chaucer and old writers, ‘tin’ may come

from its easy ‘thinning’ or beating out. The later Latins changed the

_plumbum album_ or white lead of Pliny (iv. 30) to _stannum_: whence

our word derived through the neo-Latin. The origin of Kassiteron,

Kasdír, Kastira, is disputed, and philologists remark that Cassi is

a British (Keltic) prefix, as in Cassi-belanus. Tin was found in the

Caucasus, in India, in Southern Persia (Drangæ Country); in Tuscany, in

Iberia (Spain and Portugal),[258] in Sweden, Saxony, Bohemia, Hungary,

and notably in England. There are still deposits near the modern

Temeswar (Pannonia), and the granite hills of Gallicia and Zamora are

not exhausted. It is now produced in Russia, Greenland, the Brazil, and

the United States. Wilkinson would fetch the alloy of ancient Egypt

from Spain, India, Malacca, or even from Banca,[259] between Sumatra

and Borneo; the Banca tin-mines, long worked by the Chinese were first

visited by the Portuguese in 1506. But compounds of tin and copper were

common in Egypt at the time of the Sixth Dynasty (B.C. 3000). Tin is

mentioned as early as B.C. 1452 in the Book of Numbers (xxxii. 22),

with gold and silver, ‘brass’ (copper, especially pyrites), iron, and

lead[260] (‘oferet’). In B.C. 760 the prophetic books, called from

Isaiah (i. 25) and from Ezekiel (xxii. 18, 20), make tin an alloy of

silver.

The Egyptians would derive their metals in the first place from Upper

Egypt; and their first Kheft or mines of gold (_khetem_) and copper

lay in the Thebaid. Secondly, they would resort to the land of Midian

on the eastern flank, and running south of the long narrow gulf,

El-Akabah: this grand range of Ghats or Coast Mountains was in those

days a noted mining centre, and it has still a great industrial future.

Thirdly, by means of the Phœnicians, who apparently taught the Greeks

metallurgy which they learned in Egypt, they would import their tin

from Southern France, Spain, and England.[261]

[Heading: _TIN._]

It is a disputed question whether the Phœnicians discovered the

tin-stones and the stream-tin of the Cassiterides,[262] or whether the

ore was worked by the ‘Welsh of the Horn’—the barbarians of Cornwall

and Devonshire, who in those days were probably confined to small

coast-clearings.[263] Herodotus, indeed, knows nothing (iii. 115) of

‘any islands called the Cassiterides (tin islands) whence the tin

comes.’ These Silures or Scilly Islands were evidently mere depôts,

not sites of production. The Phœnicians kept their secret well, and

lost their ships rather than betray it; so says Strabo (iii. 5, § 11),

whose Cassiterides appear to be the Azores.[264] The age when the trade

was first opened is disputed; some place it B.C. 1500, others[265]

reduce it to B.C. 400. Diodorus Siculus (v. 21–2) tells us that tin

was found and run into pigs near the Belerium Promontory (Land’s

End); thence it was carted to Ictis (Vectis, not the Isle of Wight,

but Saint Michael’s Mount and Love Island);[266] and lastly horsed

across Gaul to the Rhone. There is in the Truro Museum[267] a pig of

tin, flat above and reniform below (the shape of the mould), two feet

eleven inches by eleven inches broad, with a particular mark; it has

been suggested that this is Phœnician. ‘Cassiter Street’ in Bodmin

is supposed to retain the classical name. The second Thursday before

Christmas Day is called in Cornwall (Kern-Walli, Cornu Galliæ) ‘Picrous

Day,’ from the man who discovered the ‘streaming’ (or washing) of

‘stean’ or tin. Strabo gives a bad account of the people of the twelve

Cassiterides and their Cornishmen, the latter ‘resembling the Furies

we see in tragic representations.’ These pleasant persons would find

stream-tin, almost fit for use, lying upon the surface by the side of

copper pyrites—the latter harder than tin, but still comparatively soft

and ductile. Both ores were easily fused, while iron was comparatively

difficult and tedious to smelt; and the two (copper and tin) combined

were not only more fusible, but they also continued longer in the fluid

state, facilitating casting and moulding. Hence Worsäae believes that

England was an ancient centre of bronze, whence the alloy was diffused

throughout Europe. It is usually stated that the bronze-using period

in England began between B.C. 1400 and 1200, and lasted eight to ten

centuries, the invasion of Cæsar taking place during the early ‘Iron

Age.’

The great bronze manufacture which we have first to consider is Egypt.

The exact average proportion of the alloy is hard to ascertain,[268]

the tin varying from ten to twenty per cent., and the copper from

eighty to ninety per cent. A dagger analysed by Vauquelin gave copper

eighty-five, tin fourteen, and iron one per cent. Wilkinson’s bronze

chisel, nine and a quarter inches long, and weighing one pound twelve

ounces, found in a quarry at Thebes, contained in one hundred parts

94·0 copper, 5·9 tin, 0·1 iron; consequently its edge is at once turned

by hard stone. He repeatedly mentions bronze chisels (ii. ch. vii.

&c.), and he seems to suspect that they were sheathed and pointed with

steel. Of course, he was puzzled to explain how the ‘bronze or brass

blades were given a certain degree of elasticity.’[269]

[Illustration: FIG. 82.—FINE SPECIMEN OF EGYPTIAN DAGGER IN POSSESSION

OF MR. HAYNS, BROUGHT BY MR. HARRIS FROM THEBES.

The material is bronze, and still is slightly elastic. There

is a mid-rib, but not strongly marked. The tang, which is

continued to the pommel, measures 4 inches long by a minimum

of 5/12. The handle, of two slices of hippopotamus hide, has

26 ridges for firmer grasp, and there are rivets of bronze at

the 6th and the 23rd ridges. There is no pommel, but here the

handle is rounded off between two slices of hide, and the tang

goes right through.]

The result of Egyptian metallurgy is admirable, both in material

and finish. At what period bronze was introduced we ignore; a cast

cylinder, however, bearing the name of Pepi, dates from B.C. 3000 in

the Sixth Dynasty of Middle Egypt, which includes Nitaker (Nitocris).

Knives appear in the sculptures dating from before that time. A bronze

dagger in the Berlin Museum, found by Sig. Passalacqua in a tomb at

Thebes, retains a spring which might be of steel. My friend, Mr. W. P.

Hayns, of the Alexandrian Harbour Works, showed me a specimen brought

from Thebes by the late Mr. Harris, made of bronze still slightly

elastic. The total length measures one foot, of which the blade is

half; the latter, slightly leaf-shaped, has a minimum breadth of one

inch and three-twelfths, and one inch at the shoulder. The tang, which

is prolonged to the handle-end (four inches), has a minimum width of

five-twelfths. The grip of two plates, hippopotamus hide (?), probably

boiled, and not unlike wood, has twenty-six ridges for firmer hold, and

there are bronze rivets at the sixth and the twenty-third ridges: it is

without pommel, the end being simply rounded off.

It is held that mummies of the Eleventh Dynasty were buried with

bronze sabres; and there is a bronze dagger of Thut-mes[270] III.

(Eighteenth Dynasty), circa B.C. 1600. As late as Mene-ptah II. of the

Nineteenth Dynasty (B.C. 1300–1266), we read in the list of his loot,

after the Prosopis battle, of bronze-armour, Swords, and daggers.

Among the Etruscans, before the foundation of Rome, bronze statues

were known; and Romulus is said to have placed a statue of himself,

crowned by Victory, in a bronze quadriga taken at Comertium. According

to Pausanias (iii. 12, § 8), Theodorus of Samos invented casting in

bronze (B.C. 800–700): this author discredits the Arcadian legend that

Neptune dedicated a bronze statue to Poseidon (the Sidonian?) Hippios

(Wilkinson, ii. chap. vii.). But the Samians cast a bronze vase in B.C.

630.

The importance of the Uchatius re-discovery, that is, of hardening

bronze as well as copper by hydraulic pressure, not by phosphorus,[271]

becomes evident by Wilkinson’s reflections. ‘We know of no means of

tempering copper, under any form, or united with any alloys for such

a purpose’ (as hollowing out hieroglyphics). He suggests that the old

Egyptian letters, sometimes exceeding two inches in depth, and the

alt-reliefs nine inches high, on granite coffins, may have been worked

with wheel-drill and emery powder.[272] The Egyptians had also the

secret of gilding bronze, as many of their remains prove; moreover,

they produced by acids a rich patina of dark and light greens.

[Heading: _METALLURGY IN ASSYRIA._]

The Assyrians rivalled in metallurgy their ancient instructors the

Egyptians: and the art passed eastwards to Persia, which inherited

Assyrian and Babylonian civilisation. Diodorus Siculus, following

Ctesias the oft-quoted contemporary of Xenophon, describes immense

works of bronze decorating the gardens of Semiramis. In Assyria, again,

the proportion of the alloy greatly varied. Layard[273] quotes the

following assays of Assyrian bronze:

No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4

Copper 89·51 89·85 88·37 84·79

Tin 0·63 9·78 11·33 14·10

————— ————— ————— —————

90·14 99·63 99·70 98·89

No. 1 shows the proportions found in a bronze dish from ‘Nimroud’; No.

4 in a bell; and the fore-leg of a bull[274] yielded 11·33 tin to 99·70

copper. The Mesopotamians were able to cast their bronze extremely

thin, which is no small difficulty; they fashioned it into weapons,

temple utensils, and domestic articles, and they skilfully ‘elaborated

it by chasing and by curious ornamental tracery.’ They used it in their

most sumptuous decorations, as the thrones prove; and the beautiful

workmanship of their vases shows abnormal skill in the toreumatic

treatment of bronze. Gilt specimens of bronze from Nineveh are in the

British Museum.

Dr. Schliemann questions the popular assertion that the age of Hesiod

and of Homer ignored alloys and fusion, knowing only plating, the

plates being hammer-wrought (‘Od.’ iii. 425). This explorer found

the strata of copper and lead scoriæ at the so-called Troy from

twenty-eight to twenty-nine and a half feet deep. He notes also small

crucibles and a mould of mica-schist (twenty-six feet deep), which was

probably intended for bronze casting. He finds no iron; but copper

and its alloy, bronze, are abundant. M. Damour of Lyon[275] analysed

the drillings of two ‘copper’ battle-axes from ‘Ilium,’ in fact, from

‘Priam’s Treasury’; they contained 0·0864 and 0·0384 parts tin to

0·9067 and 0·9580 copper. Nearly the same proportion of alloy was found

in a common two-edged axe dug at a depth of three and a quarter feet,

and therefore in the remains attributed to a Greek colony. Dr. Percy

analysed, with the following results, the handle of a bronze vase and a

Sword:

Copper (mean) 86·36

Tin (mean) 13·06

—————

99·42

The specific gravity (at 60° F.) was 8·858. The extreme proportions of

the alloy in other articles were 10·28 tin to 89·69 copper (a usual

ratio in ancient bronzes[276]), and 0·09 tin to 98·47 copper, the

latter being almost pure.

[Illustration: FIG. 83.—BRONZE KNIFE, FROM THE PILE-VILLAGES OF

NEUCHÂTEL.

(Half-size.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 84.—PERUVIAN KNIFE, METAL BLADE, SECURED IN A SLIT

IN THE HAFT BY STRONG COTTON TWINE.]

Mongez, of the Institut, describing a bronze Sword found in France,

gives the proportions as 87·47 per cent. of copper to 12·53 of tin.

Analyses of Greek bronzes in the British Museum yielded 87·8 per cent.

copper to 12·13 tin. A bronze knife has been found in the Palafittes

(Pile-villages) of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.[277] Worsäae (‘Primæval

Antiquities’) makes the Bronze Period in Denmark and Northern Europe

begin about B.C. 500 to 600, and last some 1,100 years. It is not

found among the Normans. But it was developed in Ireland and Scotland,

in China and Japan, in Mexico and in Peru: Cieza de Leon notes the

admirable bronze work of the Ynkarial empire.

A Peruvian chisel, analysed by M. Vauquelin, contained 0·94 copper to

0·06 tin. In other tools the proportion of the latter metal varied

from two to four, six and even seven per cent. As a rule the people

used only half the proper proportion of tin, which they called

Chayantanka—a name suggesting the Old-World ‘Tanuk.’ Humboldt mentions

a cutting tool found near Cuzco with ninety-four per cent. of copper

and six of tin. Rivero (i. 201) notices in Peru brass (?) hammers and

bellows-nozzles, axes, adzes, bill-hooks, and other tools, of bronze

as well as copper. The Mexicans cast their tin ingots in T-shape. The

Peruvians hardened copper also with silver for quarrying-tools and

crow-bars. Velasco (ii. 70) tells us that when the Ynka Huasca was

being led to prison by order of his brother, a woman secretly gave him

a bar of metal, ‘silver with bronze, brass, or an alloy of silver,

copper, and tin’ (Bollaert, p. 90); by means of this he cut through the

jail wall during the night. Hutchison (ii. 330) mentions a buckler from

Ipijapa in Ecuador, and Ewbank (p. 454) notices an old Peruvian bronze

knife.[278]

[Heading: _PROPORTIONS OF ALLOYS._]

The admirable bronzes of China and Japan are well known in the English

market, and Raphael Pumpelly,[279] who studied direct from the native

workmen, has printed interesting notes on the ornamental alloys, or

Mokume, applied to Swords and other articles. Damask-work is produced

by soldering alternately thirty to forty sheets of rose-copper, silver,

_shakdo_ (copper one to gold ten per cent.), and _gui shi bu ichi_

(silver and copper). The mass is then cut into deep patterns with

the reamer. An alloy of silver (thirty to fifty per cent. of copper)

produces the favourite tint, a rich grey colour, and this becomes a

bluish black like niello by being boiled after polishing in a solution

of sulphate of copper, alum, and verdigris. Dr. Percy (p. 340)

describes the liquation of argentiferous copper in Japan.[280]

We owe to Dr. George Pearson[281] sundry experiments in alloys, which

first determined that the norm of the Old World and the best proportion

for weapons and tools are one tin to nine copper.

Fusing the metals, he found:

1 tin : 20 copper (5 per cent.) produces a dark-coloured bronze with

the red fracture of the pure metal.

1 tin : 15 (6½ per cent.) gives a stronger alloy and obliterates the

colour.

1 tin : 12, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 gradually increases hardness and

brittleness.

1 tin : 2 makes a mixture almost as brittle as glass.

The following table[282] shows the alloys now in common use, and the

purposes to which they are applied:

Tin Copper Per cent. Copper

11 108 = 90·76 Cannon, statues, machine brasses.

11 99 = 90 ‘Gun-metal’ proper (cannon).

11 84 = 84·44 ‘Gun-metal,’ machinery bearings.

11 72 = 86·75 Harder composition.

11 60 = 84·50 Not malleable.

11 44 = 80 Cymbals, Chinese gongs.

11 48 = 81·35 Very hard, culinary vessels.

11 36} = {76·69} ‘Bell-metal.’

12 36} {75·00}

11 24 = 68·57 Yellowish, very hard, sonorous.

11 4 = 26·66 Very white,[283] specula.[284]

The most popular alloy of copper, next to bronze, is brass, which is

harder and wears better than the pure metal. Originally, as now, it was

a mixture of copper and zinc, popularly called spelter (old _speautre_,

_speauter_, _spiauter_, _spialter_).[285] The proportions greatly

varied, one part of the latter to two of the former being the older

ratio, and the density increasing with the amount of copper from 8·39

to 8·56.

Beckmann tells us, in his valuable ‘History of Inventions,’[286] ‘in

the course of time an ore which must have been calamine (carbonate of

zinc) or blende[287] (sulphuret of zinc), was added to copper, and

gave it a yellow colour. The addition made it harder, more fusible and

sonorous, easily subject to the lathe, more economical to work, and a

worse conductor of heat than the pure metal.’ We have few specimens

of old art-works in ‘brass’ proper, although zinc was discovered by

analysis in an ancient Sword, chiefly copper.[288] Gibel assures

us that zinc occurs only in Roman alloys, the bronze of the Greeks

containing nothing beyond copper, tin, and lead. The Romans also could

varnish or lacquer brass, but it is not known whence they derived

the art. Percy notes (p. 521) that brass was produced ‘early in the

Christian era, if not before its commencement.’ He quotes in proof

a large coin of the Cassia Gens (B.C. 20) which contained copper

82·26 and zinc 17·31; a Vespasian (Rome, A.D. 71), an imperial Trajan

(Caria, circ. A.D. 110), a Geta (Carian Mylasa, A.D. 189–212), a Greek

Caracalla (A.D. 199), and many others. In modern times zinciferous ore

was imported by the Portuguese from the East a century before it was

common throughout Europe.[289] In the early seventeenth century the

Dutch captured one of their craft laden with spelter, and the secret

became known. Bishop Richard Watson says (1783) the cargo was _calaem_,

which he connects with ‘calamine’: the latter, like the German

_Galmei_, derives from _cadmia_.

Amongst the moderns _æs_ gave rise to _airain_. The French _leton_,

_laton_, _latton_, or _laiton_ (_cuivre jaune_); the Italian

_lattone_, _lottone_, and lastly _ottone_, and the Spanish _lata_ and

_laton_, German _Latun_, and English _latten_ (thin sheet brass),

the _latoun_ of Chaucer (‘Pardoner’s Prologue,’ 64), are either

from _luteum_, yellow (metal), or from the plant _luteum_ (_Reseda

luteola_), used to stain chrysocolla.[290] Our _brass_ is probably

the Scandinavian _bras_, cement; and the German _Mosch_, _Meish_, and

_Messing_, from _mischen_ = _miscere_.[291]

[Heading: _ORICHALCUM._]

It may be advisable to notice the ὀρειχάλκον[292] of the Homerids

and Hesiod, which Strabo also calls ψευδάργυρος (false silver), and

_aurichalcum_, and which the perverse ingenuity of commentaries has

made so mysterious.[293] In the poetic phase, which loves the vague,

this ‘mountain-copper’ was a mythic natural metal, ranking between

gold and silver, and chimerical as was the _chalcolibanon_[294] of the

Apocalypse (i. 15, ii. 18). The name does not occur in Pindar or the

Dramatists. Plato (the ‘Critias,’ § ix., treating of Atlantis,[295]

America) makes _oreichalc_, ‘now known only by name,’ the most

precious metal after gold. Pliny (xxxiv. 2) tells us truly enough that

_aurichalcum_ no longer exists.

The next application of the word was to ruby copper (?), a suboxide

whose beautiful crystals are formed in the natural state. Pollux and

Hesychius the grammarian (D.D. 380) define it as copper (χαλκός)

resembling gold; and Cicero puts the question whether, if a person

should offer a piece of gold for sale, thinking he was disposing of

only a piece of orichalcum, an honest man ought to inform him that

it was really gold, or might fairly buy for a penny what is _worth

a thousand times as much_.[296] Buffon compares it with tombac, or

Chinese copper containing gold.[297] Beckmann (_s. v._ ‘Tin’) notes

_aurichalcum_ or Corinthian brass in Plautus, ‘Auro contra carum.’

Festus speaks of ‘orichalcum (copper), stannum (zinc or pewter?),

cassiterum (tin), and aurichalcum (brass).’ The same signification

occurs in Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (fourth century); in Primasius,

Bishop of African Adrumetum (sixth century), and in Isidore, Bishop of

Seville (seventh century). Albertus Magnus (thirteenth century), the

Dominican monk, in treating ‘De Natura et Commixtione Æris,’ describes

how _cuprum_ became _aurichalcum_.

Strabo is mysterious. In one place he tells us that the Cyprian copper

alone produces the Cadmian stone, copperas-water, and oxide of copper.

In another (lib. xiii.) he says, ‘There is a stone near Andeira which,

being burnt, becomes iron. It is then put into a furnace, together

with some kind of earth,[298] when it (the stone? the earth? or both?)

drops or distils a ψευδάργυρος (mock silver, zinc?), which, with the

addition of copper, produces what is called _the mixture_, and which

some term _oreichalcum_.’ Pseudargyros, also found in the neighbourhood

of Tmolus, would here seem to mean zinc or _Cadmia fossilis_ (natural

calamine or carbonate of zinc). Pliny (xxxiv. 22) confuses with cadmia,

furnace calamine, and a particular ore of copper opposed to calchitis.

When Dioscorides (v. cap. 84) seems to allude to artificial or

furnace-calamine, an impure oxide of zinc, he may mean the more modern

_tutiya_ (Avicenna), _toutia_, _thouthia_,[299] _cadmie des fourneaux_,

or tutty. Reduced to powder, and mixed with an equal quantity of wetted

charcoal by way of fondant or flux, it is melted with copper to form

brass. The Avocat de Launey (1780) and Bishop Watson both agree that

Strabo’s orichalcum is brass.

Lastly, aurichalcum was made synonymous with _electrum_, natural

or artificial. The word Ἤλεκτρος[300] is popularly derived from

Helios, as rivalling the sun in sheen. According to Lepsius it is

the ‘usem’-metal of Thut-mes III.; Brugsch (i. 345) understands by

‘usem’ brass, and thinks Asmara or Asmala equivalent to the Hebrew

_hasmal_ or _hashmal_ = _electrum_. In Bunsen (v. 757) Kasabet and

Kakhi are brass (_aurichalcum_), and Khesbet is a metal connected with

Kassiteros = tin. The alloy was known to Hesiod (‘Scut.’ 142) and to

the ‘Odyssey’[301] (iv. 73), not to the ‘Iliad.’ Sophocles (‘Antig.’

1037) applied ‘Sardian electrum’ to gold, not to silver. Herodotus

(iii. 115), in the historic age (B.C. 480–30), gives the name of the

mythical metal to the ‘tears of the Heliades,’ which the Latins called

_succinum_ (_succum_), the Low-Latins _ambrum_, the Arabs _anbar_,

and we Amber. Pliny (xxxiii. 23), repeated by Pausanias (v. 12, § 6),

notes two kinds, natural (‘in all gold ore there is some silver’[302])

and artificial; in the latter the proportion of silver must not exceed

one-fifth. The staters of Lydian Crœsus, held by the Greeks to be the

most ancient of coins, were, according to Böckh, of electrum, three

parts gold and one part silver. Lucian applies the term to glass

(ὕαλος); and, lastly, it was taken for brass and confounded with

aurichalcum.[303]

I would suggest that this aurichalcum might also be the ‘Dowris

bronze’ of Ireland, so called because first observed at Dowris, near

Parsonstown, King’s County. Wilde (p. 360) supposes with others that

the gold-coloured alloy depended upon the admixture of a certain

proportion of lead, and compares it with the Cyprus copper termed by

the Romans _Coronarium_ (used for theatrical crowns), which was coated

with ox-gall.[304] Of this _or molu_ there are many articles in the

Dublin Museum, preserving their fine golden-yellow lustre: they had

probably been lacquered or varnished like modern brasses; and the

patina might be some gum-resin. When much tarnished, they were cleaned

by holding over the fire, and then by dipping in a weak solution of

acid, as is done with modern castings. Two specimens, a Sword and a

dagger-blade, were analysed (pp. 470, 483), and proved to contain

copper 87·67 to 90·72, tin 8·52 to 8·25, lead 3·87 to 0·87, with a

trace of sulphur in the Sword.[305] The specific gravities were 8·819

to 8·675. In a spear-head (p. 512), besides copper, tin, and lead, iron

0·31 and cobalt 0·09 were found.

There were other alloys of which we read but know little; such were the

_æs ægineticum_, _demonnesium_, and _nigrum_; the _æs deliacum_, whose

secret was lost in Plutarch’s day, and the Ταρτήσσιος χαλκὸς[306]

from Southern Spain, probably shipped at Gibraltar Bay. _Ollaria_ or

pot-copper (brass) contained three pounds of _plumbum argentarium_

(equal parts of tin and lead) to one hundred pounds of copper. _Æs

caldarium_ could only be fused. Finally, _græcanicum_ (Greek-colour)

was mould or second-hand copper (_formalis seu collectaneus_) with ten

per cent. of _plumbum nigrum_ (lead) and five per cent. of silver lead

(argentiferous galena?).

[Heading: _THE CELT AND THE SWORD._]

Metal, when first introduced, must have been rare and dear; the large

modern Sword, axe, or mall would hardly have been imitated in copper,

bronze, or iron. The earliest attempts at developing the celt[307]

would have produced nothing more artful than a cutting and piercing

wedge of the precious substance (fig. 85). As smelting and moulding

improved, the pointed end would develop into the knife, the dagger,

and the Sword; and the broad end would expand to the axe. This

composite weapon, uniting the club with the celt or hand-hatchet, and

appearing in Europe with the beginning of the Neolithic period, plays a

remarkable part in history, ancient, mediæval, and even modern; whilst

its connection with the Sword is made evident by the ‘glaive.’[308] The

expansion of the edge and of the flanges developed two principal forms.

For cutting wood the long-narrow was found most serviceable: where

brute force was less required, the weapon became a broad blade with a

long crescent-shaped edge.

[Illustration: FIG. 85.—OLDEST FORM (?).]

[Illustration: FIG. 86.—METAL CELTS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 87.—KNIFE FOUND AT RÉALON (HAUTES ALPES).

Half-size. It greatly resembles the bronze knife from the

Palafittes of Neuchâtel, figured by Desor. The Swiss knife,

however, has a tooth at the edge, near the hollow.]

[Heading: _THE AXE AND THE SWORD._]

The Akhu or war-axe was, as we might expect, known to ancient Egypt in

early days, and became an _objet de luxe_. A gold hatchet and several

of bronze were found buried as amulets in the coffin of Queen Askhept,

the ancestress of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Again, a bronze weapon

occurred with a mummied queen of the Seventeenth Dynasty (B.C. 1750).

Useful in war, the implement, probably when in the stone period, rose

to be a symbol of the Deity: hence, doubtless, the _hâches votives_ of

the later Bronze Age without edge to serve for work or weapons, and

intended only for religious use. The two-headed weapon was that outward

and visible sign of Labrandian Jove, so called from the λάβρα, which

in the Lydian tongue was synonymous with πέλεκυς. The emblem appears

on the medals of three Carian kings, the most notable being Mausolus

(or Mausollus), dating from B.C. 353. According to Plutarch (_De Pythiæ

Oraculis_) the Tenedians ‘took the axe from their crabs, ... because

it appears that the crabs alone have the figure of the axe in their

shells.’ Hence the double-headed weapon on the coins of Tenedos is a

votive or sacrificial, rather than a warlike, symbol. The Tenedian

Apollo also held the axe, which some regarded as the symbol of Tennes.

Aristotle and others maintained that a certain King of Tenedos decreed

that adulterers should be slain with the axe, and his carrying out

the law upon his own son gave rise to the proverb, Τενέδιος πέλεκυς,

denoting a rough-and-ready way of doing business.

[Illustration: FIG. 88.—THE GLAIVE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 89.—EGYPTIAN AXES OF BRONZE.]

Although the πέλεκυς is mentioned by Homer (‘Il.’ and ‘Od.’) as a

weapon as well as a tool, the Greeks, like the Assyrians, did not

much affect it. The Romans, who worshipped Quirinus in spear-shape,

bound the securis in a bundle of rods (_fasces_), bore it as a badge

of office, and placed it on consular coins. The weapon was lowered

in the salute, and thus, perhaps, arose our practice of dropping the

Sword-point, which is unknown to the East. The axe with expanded

blade upon Trajan’s column is in the hands of a workman. Possibly the

classics of Europe despised the weapon because it was proper to the

_securigeræ catervæ_ of the effeminate East. As early as the days of

Herodotus (I. chap. i. 215) the σάγαρις, the Armenian _sacr_, and the

Latin _securis_, made either of gold or chalcos, was the favourite

weapon of the Amazon[309] and the Massagetæ[310] horseman. In Ireland

the axe plays a part in the tales of Gobawn Saer: this goblin-builder

completed the dangerous task of finishing off a royal roof of cutting

wooden pegs, throwing them one by one into their places, and driving

them in by flinging the magic weapon at each peg in due succession.

From Egypt the axe passed into the heart of Africa. Here it still

serves, before and after use, as a medium of exchange; and this

circulation from tribe to tribe explains the various forms that have

overspread the Dark Continent. The Nile Valley again sent it eastward

through Hittite-land and Assyria to Persia and India, where the

crescent-shaped battle-axe has long been a favourite. The varieties of

form and colour are noticed by Duarte Barbosa[311] when describing the

‘Moors’ of Hormuz Island. It was adopted by the Turkish horseman, who

carried it at his saddle-bow. Klemm (‘Werkzeuge und Waffen’) notices

that it was a favourite Scandinavian weapon slung by a strap to the

back; and most of the deaths recounted in ‘Burnt Njal’ are the result

of it. The Norman long-hefted axe is common on the Bayeux tapestries.

A Scandinavian war-axe of the early seventeenth century was found on

the battle-field of Norwegian Kringelen; the handle is recurved so

as to fit the back socket. In Germany it was generally used during

the fifteenth century; in England during the sixteenth; and in the

seventeenth it became obsolete throughout Europe, except among the

Slavs and the Magyars. The German processional axe shows its latest

survival; blade and handle are of one piece of wood, ornamented with

the guild-devices, and so modified that the original weapon can hardly

be recognised. Similarly the Bergbarthe (mine-picks) of the German

Bergmänner (miners) were used, according to Klemm, for the defence

of cities, notably of Freiberg in 1643; and, made of brass as well

as iron, they are still carried in State processions. The axe, like

the spear, demarked boundaries. The charter given by Cnut (Canute)

to Christ Church, Canterbury, grants the harbour and dues thereof on

either side as far as a man standing on deck at flood-tide could cast a

taper-axe, and the custom of throwing the tool to mark boundaries has

been retained in some parts of the country to our day. It was with a

battle-axe that the Bruce of Bannockburn clove the skull of an English

champion to the chin. Monstrelet tells us that during the wars of

Jeanne d’Arc (Patay fought in A.D. 1429) the English carried hatchets

in their girdles.

[Illustration: FIG. 90.—IRISH BATTLE-AXE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 91.—AXE USED BY BRUCE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 92.—GERMAN PROCESSIONAL AXE.]

The Axe[312] was adopted by the Franks, as well as by the Scandinavians

and the Germans, especially the Saxons. Hence the two-edged axe

when affixed to long staves, forming a spear, became the Icelandic

Hall-bard[313] (hall-axe?), the Teutonic Alle-barde (‘all-cleaver’),

and the ‘Pole-axe,’ called from Poland (= Polje, the plain-country).

This modification was universal in Northern Europe during the first

ages of Christianity. The earliest shape (middle fourteenth to early

sixteenth centuries) was a broad and massive axe, mounted on a thick

and solid spear; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the

blade became more slender and hollow-edged, and the head longer and

more taper. The Swiss introduced the Halbert to France in the middle

fifteenth century: in the seventeenth century it was conventionalised,

the axe resumed its original aspect, and the spear grew to leaf-shape.

In this form it was retained by the subalterns and sergeants of the

British army till abolished with the pig-tails of ‘Shaven England.’ It

is not wholly forgotten on ceremonious occasions in certain European

Courts, and during all its changes it has ever retained its cousinly

likeness to the broadsword.

[Illustration: FIG. 93.—HALBARDS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 94.—HALBARDS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 95.—_a_, _b_. BECHWANA’S CLUB AXE; _c._ THE SAME,

EXPANDED; _d._ THE SAME, BARBED; _e._ SILEPE OF THE BASUTOS; _f._

HORSEMAN’S AXE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.]

[Heading: _AXE AND SCYMITAR._]

I have shown how the stone celt might become a metal knife, and thence

develop into the straight Sword. By noting the modifications it is as

easy to see that the axe might have produced the scymitar. The earliest

form would be a broad lance-head inserted into a common club (_a_), as

is still practised in many parts of Africa. The next improvement (_c_)

would convert the tool into an arm by increasing the cutting surface;

and another step (_d_) would make it lighter by reducing the blade to

a triangle of mere barbs, ⊣. Then (_e_) we have the Khond or

Circar battle-axe, and the Silepe of the South African Basutos who,

virtually discovered by Dr. Livingstone, have become so troublesome of

late years.[314] This T-shaped blade, perpetuated in the ‘Baïonette

Gras,’ was used in Switzerland and in Venice till the sixteenth

century, according to Meyrick and Demmin. Afterwards the straight back

next to the staff would be formed into two small and graceful crescents

(_f_); and the weapon became far better fitted for the requirements

of cavalry. This shape is world-wide, and was used in England _temp._

Elizabeth. A congener of the glaive was the _Francisque à lance

ouverte_, the broad-bladed ‘taper-axe,’ used for throwing as well as

for striking. According to the Abbé Cochet, this weapon took its name

from the Franks. The Francisque is termed a ‘defensive weapon’ in the

illustrated treatise ‘Armes et Armures.’[315] The Saxons preferred to

it the Sahs, Seax or Scramasax-knife, similarly used. The Francisque is

rare in the Saxon graves compared with the spear and knife, but it is

more common than the Sword.[316]

[Illustration: FIG. 96.—HINDÚ HATCHET FROM RAJPUTANA.]

[Illustration: FIG. 97.—GERMAN HATCHET OF BRONZE PERIOD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 98.—1. BURGUNDIAN AXE; 2. FRANCISQUE OR TAPER AXE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 99.—IRON SCRAMASAX (16 inches long).]

[Illustration: FIG. 100.—SCRAMASAX (18 inches long).]

[Heading: _THE BILL AND VOULGE._]

The Bill[317] (A.-S. _byll_, Irish _biail_, _securis_) was introduced

into England _temp._ Henry VI. about the fifteenth century, when it

was allied in form to the Halbard. Skinner considers it a _securis

rostrata_ (beaked axe). It was long a favourite in Scandinavia, and the

illustration represents the weapon of Gunnar, the Icelandic champion,

which sang before battle, as also did the Sword of Sigurd.

The glaive of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was followed by

the Guisarme, Gisarme, or Bisarme. This long blade, with a slender

spear-point projecting from the back, is still used by the Chinese; and

the Despots of Dahome borrowed it, like other quaint arms and customs,

from Europe. The _Voulge_, an intermediate form of the halbert and the

glaive, and probably a descendant of the former, was a battle-axe much

used by the Swiss in the fourteenth century. The war-scythe of the same

period figured by Demmin, and the scythe-Sword—a formidable-looking,

but unhandy weapon—were adopted by the Hungarian rebels as lately

as in 1848. Allied with these mediæval forms is a vast variety of

shapes known as the Spetum (Spiedo or Spit), the Ronçeur or Ranseur,

and the military fork. They were probably known to the Ancients, and

reintroduced into Europe by the peasantry who, compelled hastily to

arm themselves, would use the handy flails, sickles, and scythes. A

well-arranged and complete collection is still wanted to show the links

connecting them with a common prototype.

[Illustration: FIG. 101.—GUNNAR’S BILL.]

[Illustration: FIG. 102.—VOULGES.]

The interest of these weapons is chiefly connected with the various

forms of curved broadsword. The leaf-shaped metal-blade for thrusting,

which appears to be one of the earliest forms, and which is preserved

by the Somal and other barbarians, is, I have said, evidently a

spear-head fixed in a wooden handle.

Briefly to describe the Sword of the Early Bronze Age, during which,

by the by, cremation became almost universal in Europe. The weapon

is to a certain extent North European, and seems to have travelled

up the valleys of great rivers: Denmark has yielded two hundred and

fifty to six Italian bronze blades.[318] They are as a rule of fair

length, averaging about seventy-five centimetres: the profile is either

leaf-shaped, sub-leaf-shaped, or straight, ending in a bevelled point.

The hilt is of two kinds: either tanged or untanged: the tang is broad,

long, and pierced, with one or more holes for riveting; in this case

the handle was of wood, bone, or horn. Many hefts, however, as will

afterwards appear, are cast in a single piece with or without guard;

and the latter often disappears in a hollow triangular base, a crescent

or horse-shoe containing the shoulders with the concavity of the arch

towards the point; this also served in many weapons to receive the

rivets. The pommel is of various patterns, frequently a cone, oval,

globe, or dome with steps or with melon-like ridges.[319] In others,

especially amongst the old Kelts and Germans, it ended with a crutch or

crescent whose cusps were, in the richer kinds, adorned with spirals.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PROTO-SIDERIC OR EARLY IRON AGE OF WEAPONS.

‘Of all metallurgical processes, the extraction of malleable

iron may be regarded as amongst the most simple.’—Percy, _Iron,

&c._ p. 573.

We now come to the King of Metals that ‘breaketh in pieces and subdueth

all things’; the only ore friendly as well as fatal to the human form;

the most useful and the most deadly in the hand of man[320]—Iron.[321]

According to the Parian Chronicle (Arundelian Marbles), followed by

Thrasyllus (Clemens Alex. in ‘Strom.’), and by a host of writers,

iron-working was discovered in B.C. 1432 or 248 years before the

Trojan war. The latter, a crucial date, is, as will appear, wholly

undetermined; the various authorities have made it range through nearly

seven hundred years. But the life of Hellas is one great ‘appropriation

clause’: the Greeks were doughty claimants, childish in their _naïveté_

of conceit; they were burglars of others’ wits (convey, the wise it

call), and they made themselves do all things. Their legends, for

instance, accredit ‘Glaucus the Chian’ with having invented the art

and mystery of steel-inlaying. De Goguet (A.D. 1761) tells us that

the Phœnicians ranked amongst their oldest heroes two brothers who

discovered iron-working; the Cretans referred it to the oldest period

of their history,[322] and the Idæan Daktyls learnt it from the ‘mother

of the gods.’ Prometheus (in Æschylus) boasts of having taught mankind

to fabricate all metals: he also wears an iron ring supposed to be a

chain not an ornament; and it possibly symbolises the union of fire

and ore. The art of iron-working is referred, now to the Cyclopes,

of Sicily, then to the Chalybes,[323] who extended from Colchis to

Spain: Clemens (Alex.) refers the discovery of making malleable iron to

the Noropes of Danubian Pannonia, who dwelt between Noricum (Styria)

and Mæsia; and finally, to quote no more, Mr. J. Fergusson, a careful

writer, tells us that ‘the Aryans (?) were those who introduced the use

of iron, and with it dominated over and expelled (?) the older races.’

Modern discovery has proved that the invention, and indeed the general

adoption, of ‘Mars’ (♂) dates from the very dawn of history; and that

it is a mere theory to assume everywhere preceding millennia of bone

and stone, copper and bronze. It is clear, for instance, in Central

Africa, where copper and tin were unprocurable, that man must first

have used iron.[324] A good authority, Mr. St. John V. Day[325] (C.E.),

who was in charge of iron works in Southern India, claims for iron—cast

as well as wrought, and even for its carburet, steel—the credit of

being ‘unquestionably the earliest of substances with which man was

acquainted.’ This writer, however, denies, contrary to all tradition,

a ‘progressive rise in the quality of materials used by man’: that is,

from the soft and yielding to the hard and refractory. He holds that

Man, once master of metallurgy, ‘would be better able to deal with the

much more easily manipulated bones, stones, or wood.’ He supposes all

the metals, noble and ignoble, as well as gems and precious stones, to

have become familiar amongst Eastern races, ‘whether they be Semitic,

Aryan, Hamitic, Sporadic, or Allophyllian, by virtue of a civilisation

due to a natural innate insight.’ Hence he declares Egypt an enigma

to those who accept the dictum of ‘man’s gradual evolution from the

condition of a savage, an ignoramus,’ and he opines that this grim

being is simply a retrograde.[326]

These ideas trench upon old metallurgic superstitions and seem to run

into extremes. We _know_ nothing concerning the home of Proto-man,

which is perhaps deep under the waters. Anthropologists, who locate him

in Mesopotamia, ‘Aryaland’ (Central Asia), or Ethiopia, look only to

the origin of the present species, and the historic cycle. Our studies,

as far as they go, suggest that Man began in the Polar regions, and

that in hoar antiquity each racial centre had its own material—wood and

horn, bone and stone, copper, bronze, and iron.[327]

[Heading: _METAL IN EGYPT._]

For our first lesson in iron we must go back as usual to Kahi-Ptah (the

Ptah-region), that Nile Valley which is the motherland of all science,

of all art. Here Bunsen[328] provides us with the following table:

+--------------+------------------+-----------------------+

| HIEROGLYPHS | PHONETIC VALUE | TRANSLATION |

+--------------+------------------+-----------------------+

| | | |

| [Hieroglyph] | Ba. | Earth, Metal, Soul, |

| | | Circle, Seed, Corn. |

| | | |

| [Hieroglyph] | Ba. | Iron. |

| | | |

| [Hieroglyph] | Ba’a. | Iron, Earth. |

| | | |

| [Hieroglyph] | Ba’aenpe (Benipe | Iron. |

| | or Penipe). | |

| | | |

| [Hieroglyph] | Bet. | Iron. |

| | | |

+--------------+------------------+-----------------------+

Mr. Day (who has drawn it up) observes that ‘BA’ [Hieroglyph] is a

constant in the phonetic values assigned to the uncertain hieroglyphs

for iron, and feels disposed to believe it synonymous with χαλκός,

base metal in general. He would translate the Saidic ‘ΒΕΝΙΠΕ’ and the

Coptic ‘ΠΕΝΙΠΕ’ by ‘stone (ΒΕ) of (ΝΙ) sky or heaven (ΠΕ)’; in fact,

‘sky-stone,’ alluding to meteoric iron, probably the first utilised.

Dr. Birch holds ‘BA’ to be a general term for metal made particular, as

in Greece, by prefixed adjectives (white, black, yellow) denoting the

quality of the ore. And hence the determinative of ‘BA’ (metal, stone,

or hard wood) is the cube or parallelogrammic block which denotes

building and building materials.

Native iron may be distributed into two great divisions,

extra-terrestrial and terrestrial. The former is known as meteoric

or nickeliferous. Mr. Day (pp. 22–23) gives analyses of this form,

and takes, from Chladni[329] and others, a list of masses that fell

in Siberia, Thuringia, and Dauphiné; in West African Liberia, and in

American Sta. Fé de Bogotá, and Canaan, Connecticut. Though many trials

have been made in working extra-terrestrial metal, all have hitherto

failed; the phosphorus, nickel and its _alter ego_, cobalt, render the

forgings, in our present state of technology, too brittle for use.

Terrestrial or telluric iron is again divided into two classes—the

nearly pure ore and the native steel. According to the schedule of

Rosset:

Iron is a metal not cast and malleable.

Steel „ cast and malleable.

Pig-iron „ cast and not malleable.

That iron was common amongst the ancient Egyptians we may assume as

proved. Mr. A. Henry Rhind, when opening the tomb of Sebau (nat. B.C.

68), noted on the massive doors ‘iron hasps and nails,’ ‘as lustrous and

as pliant as on the day they left the forge.’ Belzoni, who died in

1823, found an iron sickle under the feet of one of the Karnak Sphinxes

dating from B.C. 600. In June 1837, Mr. J. R. Hill, employed by Colonel

Howard Vyse, when blasting and excavating the Jízeh[330] Pyramid, came

upon a piece of iron, apparently a cramp, near the channel-mouth of

one of the air-passages: it had thus been preserved from rust, and

its authenticity cannot be doubted. Some suggested that it was used

for scraping and finishing; others for finally levelling the faces of

dressed stone, but it tapers off from the middle to an edge on either

side and it narrows at one end.[331] This relic can hardly be of later

date than B.C. 4000–3600, when Khufu (Cheops) built his burial-place

and inscribed in it his hieroglyphic shield[332] or cartouche

[Hieroglyph]. Stowed away in the British Museum, it excited scant

attention till Dr. Lepsius at the Congress of Orientalists (London,

1874), suggested that it was of steel. A trial was made (Sept. 18); it

yielded readily to a few turns of the drill, and the surfaces of the

hole showed the whiteness and the brightness of newly-cut malleable

iron. Since that discovery, sacrificial iron knives have been found in

the Nile Valley, despite the ready oxidation of the metal in a climate

of the hot-damp category. In the Bulák Museum (Salle de l’Est), with

the wooden Swords, was a straight and double-edged iron blade that had

two ribs running along its length. Another room showed a straight,

double-edged, and round-pointed dagger of gilt iron. Of the latter

weapon there are three fine specimens (Salle du Centre).

[Heading: _IRON IN EGYPT._]

The literature of Egypt abounds in allusions to the use of iron.[333]

The Rev. Basil H. Cooper[334] believes that Mibampes the ‘Iron King,’

sixth successor of primæval Mena (circ. B.C. 4560),[335] bore on his

cartouche the word ‘Benipe’; and that no less than three records[336]

entitle him ‘Lover of Iron’ (i.e. the Sword); ‘thus attesting, not only

the extreme antiquity of the use of iron, but unfortunately (?) of

that most dreadful evil of all which are the scourges of humanity—war

(?).’ And so we see the nineteenth century repeating the Herodotian

half-truth, ‘Iron has been discovered to the hurt of Man’; and looking

only at one side of the question, the evils of War, without which,

I repeat, strong races could not supplant the weaker to the general

benefit of mankind. The Epos of Pentaur, the jovial temple scribe[337]

(circ. B.C. 1350), mentions ‘iron’ thrice; and Pharaoh Mene-Ptah

II., whose ‘Sword gave no quarter,’ had vessels of iron. In later

hieroglyphic literature the notices become too numerous to justify

quotation.

[Illustration: FIG. 103.—EGYPTIAN SACRIFICIAL KNIVES (IRON).]

The old Egyptians, according to Plutarch,[338] held iron to be the

ὀστέον Τυφῶνος, or bone of Set; whereas the σιδηρίτις λίθος, or magnet,

was that of his foe-god Horus, degraded to Charon in Greece and Rome.

This siderite was known to the Hellenes in its religious aspect as

Ἡράκλεια λίθος or Ἡράκλειον, either from Heraclea-town or from Hercules

(Pliny, xxxvi. 25). Siderite or loadstone, termed ‘Magnet’ from its

supposed discoverer, was also entitled ‘live iron,’ and its wounds were

supposed to be more deadly than those of the common ore.

The Nile-dwellers had not far to go for iron, which abounds in the

well-known Wady Hammámát, one of the earliest centres of Egyptian

mining; and, as Mr. Piazzi Smyth showed, it accumulates everywhere in

the fissures of the flaky limestone:[339] it is produced in Ethiopia

(the Sudan and Abyssinia); and in Midian, where the old Kemites opened

the copper mines, it appears in the shape of black sand and large

masses of titaniferous[340] and other ores. The monuments (Karnak

Table, &c.) specify, amongst objects of tribute, iron from the lands

of the Thuhi[341] (‘the fair people’), the Rutennu (Syrians and

Assyrians), and the Asi (or rebels generally?); from these countries it

was exported in the ore and in bricks and pigs. The tribute-tables of

Thut-mes III. (B.C. 1600) mention:—

One beautiful iron armour of the hostile king.

One beautiful iron armour of the King of Megiddo.

? lbs. weight, two suits of iron armour from Naharayn.

Iron suits of armour (taken by the warriors), and

Five iron storm-caps (?).

[Heading: _HEBREW IRON-AGE._]

Mr. Francis Galton[342] first discovered in the ancient copper-diggings

of the so-called ‘Sinaitic’ peninsula, a blackish mass, not unlike

iron-slag, which he conjectured to date before Moses’ days. A score

of years afterwards (early 1873), Mr. Hartland[343] examined the

junction of the Wadys Kemeh, Mukattab, and Maghárah, and found the

iron-ore imperfectly extracted: assays and analyses of the slags that

lay in heaps about the ruined works produced fifty-three per cent.

of metal. He determined that the mines at Serábit El-Khádim had been

constructed on the principle of the Catalan (or rather the Corsican)

forge;[344] and he discovered near them a temple and barracks for the

soldier-guards.[345]

It is hard to believe with Mr. Proctor that Abraham, a wandering

Chaldæan Shaykh, taught the Egyptians astronomy, astrology, and

arithmetic; or with Mr. Piazzi Smyth, that Melchisedek, the petty

chief of a village in Palestine, built _the_ Pyramid. Yet it is

only reasonable to suppose that the Israelites set out upon their

exodus or exodi, for there were probably many, provided with some

of the technological wisdom of the Egyptians. Joseph, according to

Brugsch (‘Hist.’ I. chap. xii.), rose to the honour of Zaphnatpaneakh

(Governor of the Sethroitic home), and Ro-hir or Procurator, under the

Shepherd-kings or ‘Hyksos,’ a word which he renders Hek-Shasu,[346]

lord of the Shasu (Arabs); he makes the Pharaoh of the Oppression,

Ramses II. (B.C. 1333–1300), and Mene-Ptah II. the Pharaoh of the

Exodus (B.C. 1300–1266). The Pentateuch, whatever be its date, well

knew the use of Barzil (ברזל), the Chaldæan Parzil or Parzillu.

According to Sir John Lubbock (‘Prehistoric Man’), ‘iron’ is four

times mentioned, and ‘brass’ (copper, bronze?) thirty-eight times in

‘the Law.’[347] From other sources we gather that the metal was either

עשות (_ashúth_, that is, ‘the worked,’ from the rad. _ashah_), or

מוצק (_muzak_, ‘the melted,’ fused, cast; from the root _zak_). The

Lord threatens that He will make ‘the skies as iron and the earth as

copper’ (Levit. xxvi. 19). In Deuteronomy (iv. 20), Egypt is compared

with an iron furnace; and mention is made of iron shoes (xxxiii. 25).

Job includes among riches, cattle, silver, gold, brass (copper?), and

iron; he tells us (xxviii. 2) that ‘iron is taken out of the earth and

copper is molten out of the stone,’ and he speaks of lithic writing

(xix. 24), ‘graven with an iron style and lead in the rock for ever.’

But commentators are not agreed about the age of this author, and in

the hands of the Rabbis he seems gradually to be growing younger—more

modern—with every generation.

The Hebrews found the Iron-age wherever they went. ‘Barzil’ was among

the metals taken from the Midianites by Moses (Numb. xxxi. 22). The

‘bedstead,’ or rather divan, of Og, the King of Bashan, measuring nine

cubits of man (each = sixteen inches) in length by four broad, was of

iron (Deut. iii. 11). Joshua shows that the Canaanites owned ‘chariots

of iron’ (xvii. 16). These tribes, displaced by the Jews, seem to have

been accomplished workers in metal.[348] Traces of iron-smelting occur

on the Libanus,[349] where I found copper-stone,[350] and where, during

the present century, coal and asphalte have been mined. Many parts

of the country, as Argob in ancient Bashan, produce an abundance of

ironstone.[351] The old Phœnician Sanconiathon, a name which may denote

a history or its historian, tells us through the Greek translator Philo

of Byblus, that the people were famous for their Technites, artisans

and blacksmiths. The warlike Hittites, as will appear, were also

iron-workers.

From Egypt the use of iron would spread through Asia Minor[352]

eastward to Naharayn,[353] the two-river-land, Mesopotamia. But the

date is disputed. The excavations of the late Mr. George Smith yielded

no iron articles older than B.C. 1000–800. Mr. Day remarks that ‘whilst

Mesopotamia has not, up to the present time, produced any solid

evidence in the form of material iron relics belonging to the oldest

monarchies; nevertheless, the monuments of those earliest times are

numerous, and they yield abundance of testimony to the acquaintance of

the contemporary people with iron.’ In later ages he alludes to the

rings and bangles of iron in the British Museum, which were possibly

chain-links; and particularly to the ‘ombos of a shield,’ as the most

exquisite piece of their hammered iron-work he has met with: he doubts

if it can in some respects be surpassed by the productions of to-day.

The cuneiforms speak of iron fetters, and the people of the great

Interamnian plain knew the art of casting bronze over iron,[354] only

lately introduced into our metallurgy.

[Heading: _IRON IN ASSYRIA._]

According to Mr. G. Smith there is no pure Assyrian word for

‘iron.’[355] Its cuneiform symbol is [Cuneiform], but the phonetic

value or pronunciation has not yet been determined. ‘It must have been

in use 2000 B.C.,’ and it is found in inscriptions of all ages. The

word is supposed to belong to the ancient Turanian or Proto-Babylonian

race (Akkadian[356] or Sumirian) that held the river-plains, and

it has been grafted into the more recent Assyrian language. In the

inscriptions, each god has his sign, and the symbol above given,

accompanies, as his attribute, one of the deities of war and hunting:

thus it is a parallel to that found in the cartouche of the Egyptian

‘Iron King.’

Canon Rawlinson,[357] on the other hand, assigns to the symbol the

phonetic value of _Hurud_, which thus became the Chaldæan equivalent

for ‘iron.’ In concert with his distinguished brother, he came to the

conclusion: ‘There are two signs for metals in Assyria, with respect

to which there is a doubt which is iron and which is brass (or bronze

rather). These are [Cuneiform] and [Cuneiform]. Sir Henry Rawlinson, on

the whole, inclines to regard the first as bronze and the second as

iron, although the former is nowhere rendered phonetically. The latter

is rendered in a syllabary as equivalent to _Hurud_ in Akkadian and

_Eru_ in Assyrian. Mr. George Smith reverses the meanings of the two

signs. The point is a very doubtful one.’

After the decay of the Proto-Babylonian or Chaldæan empire (B.C.

2300–1500), when the seat of Interamnian rule moved to the

Tigris-Euphrates basin, and the three Assyrian periods flourished (B.C.

1500–555),[358] iron was largely used. It was produced, according

to Layard (_loc. cit._) in the Tiyari mountains, and it is still

found in quantities on the slopes, three or four days’ journey from

Mosul. The north-western palace of Nimrúd (Kalah) showed, amongst

the rubbish-heaps, much rusty iron and a perfect helmet like that

represented in the bas-reliefs. There were Swords and daggers, shields

and shield-handles, rods, and the points of spears and arrows, which

fell to pieces on exposure. Amongst the few specimens preserved were

the head of a trident-like weapon, some Sword-handles, a large blunt

spear-pile, the point of a pick, several objects resembling the heads

of sledge-hammers, and a double-handed saw of iron or steel (?), about

three feet eight inches long by four inches and five-eighths broad,

for cross-cutting timber. The British Museum owns a fine collection

of Assyrian sheet or plate iron-work; pieces of unfinished forgings;

a rude triangular lump through which a round hole has been driven

(by a heated punch?); several cylindrical bars, straight and curved;

wall-cramps, nails, and door-hinges; a ladle; rings of sizes (one being

three inches in diameter); a signet-ring containing a silver bezel or

seal; and, lastly, a portion of what seems to have been a double-sided

comb. In much later days the Assyrians of Xerxes’ army carried,

according to Herodotus, shields, spears, daggers, and wooden clubs

spiked with iron.

The Greeks learned their metallurgy, as they did all their arts, from

Egypt; and, following in the footsteps of the Phœnicians, diffused

them throughout the Western World. In Theseus’ time, according to

Wilkinson—that is, B.C. 1235—‘iron is conjectured not to have been

known, as he was found buried with a brass (copper, bronze?) Sword and

spear.’ They did not use iron weapons, and probably had no iron during

their first foreign campaign—the Trojan war. The Parian (Arundelian)

Chronicle (dating its notices from Cecrops, B.C. 1582) and the Rhodian

myths refer to a conflagration in the Cretan mountains which taught

metallurgy to the Idæan Daktyls (Δάκτυλοι Ἰδαῖοι):[359] this would,

however, be a comparatively late date when we regard Egypt.[360]

With respect to the metal in the Hissarlik remains, Dr. Schliemann

remarks (i. 31): ‘The only objects of iron which I found were a key

of curious shape and a few arrows and nails close to the surface.’ It

is no proof that it was used because Homer some centuries afterwards

spoke of the κύανος (_cyanus_), steel tempered blue, a word which even

in antiquity was translated by χάλυψ (_chalybs_, steel). The explorer

remarks: ‘Articles of steel may have existed: I believe positively that

they did exist; but they have vanished without leaving a trace of their

existence; for, as we know, iron and steel become decomposed much more

readily than copper.’ Yet, so contradictory is the whole book, and so

uncertain are its conclusions, we find,[361] ‘No. 4. Drillings of one

of the Trojan sling-bullets, externally covered with verdigris, and

internally the colour of iron’; while the assay shows that it consisted

chiefly of copper and sulphur. Among the contemporary (?) finds of

Mycenæ, which not a few authorities have pronounced to be Byzantine,

and another observer Keltic,[362] Dr. Schliemann met with iron in

the shape of knives and keys; but he holds these articles to be of

comparatively late date, not older than the fifth century B.C.[363] At

that time iron must have been general throughout Greece. In the fourth

century, Aristotle (‘Meteorologica’) treats at length upon iron and its

modifications. One passage runs: ‘Wrought iron may be so cast as to be

made liquid and to reharden; and thus it is they are wont to make steel

(τὸ στόμωμα); for the scoria of iron subsides and is purged off by the

bottom, and when it is often defæcated and cleansed, this is steel.

But this they do not often, because of the great waste, and because it

loses much weight in refining; but iron is so much the more excellent

the more recrement it has.’ Daimachus, Aristotle’s contemporary, says

of steels (τῶν στομωμάτων), ‘There is the Chalybdic,[364] the Synopic,

the Lydian, and the Lacedæmonian. The Chalybdic is best for carpenters’

tools; the Lacedæmonian for files, drills, gravers, and stone-chisels;

the Lydian also is suited for files, and for knives, razors, and

rasps.’ Avicenna (Abu Ali Siná), in his fifth book, ‘De Anima,’

according to Roger Bacon, has three species of the metal: (1) Iron,

good for hammers and anvils, but not for cutting tools; (2) Steel,[365]

which is purer and has more heat in it; it is therefore less

malleable, but better able to take an edge; and (3) Andena, ductile and

malleable under a low degree of heat, and intermediate between iron and

steel. Apparently the latter is the Hindiah or Hindiyáneh, the Ferrum

Indicum and the Ondanique of Marco Polo (i. 17).

[Heading: _ROMAN IRON._]

The Romans, a more cosmopolitan people than the Greeks, paid great

attention to the mineral wealth of their conquests, and were careful to

choose the best _acies_[366] for their weapons. Diodorus Siculus[367]

describes the process by which the Celtiberians prepared their iron for

Swords. Pliny, who was Procurator of Spain under Vespasian, may have

studied iron-mining and ore-working in the country which still produces

the Toledo blade. He characterises the metal generally as being

universally used and occurring in every part of the world—especially

in Ilva, now Elba, where there are mines of oligiste, specular iron

or iron glance. His process of steel-making is that of the Greeks.

‘Fornacum maxima differentia est; in eis equidem nucleus ferri’

(the σίδηρος ἐργασμένος or worked iron of Aristotle) ‘excoquitur ad

indurandum; aliter alioque modo ad densandas incudes, malleorumve

rostra’ (xxxiv. 41). Hence it appears that the Romans had one way

to make steel, and another to harden and temper tools, picks, and

anvils. ‘Possibly,’ says Dr. Martin Lister, ‘the latter were boiled in

“sow-metal,” as the term _densare_ seems to suggest.’

Roman mining-operations were often conducted on a large scale. The

Forest of Dean and the Wealds of Kent and Sussex, not to mention

other parts of England, show heaps of old slag containing classical

pottery and coins of Nero, Vespasian, and Diocletian. They obtained

the regulus[368] by the direct process, and used charcoal in rude

Catalan furnaces; the work was imperfect, and the scoriæ contain a

large percentage of metal. Ancient adits and shafts in Shropshire[369]

and elsewhere have preserved the rude implements with which they made

the natives labour in _corvée_. The hill-sides of Carthagena on the

seaboard of Murcia (South-Eastern Spain) had been explored for lead and

silver by the earliest Carthaginian colonists; and the industry was at

its height when Nova Carthago, under Roman rule, became (B.C. 200) a

flourishing municipium, the centre of a large population. At this time

as many as forty thousand hands were regularly employed. In our seventh

century the Arab invasion ruined the mines, not only of this district,

but of every province occupied by the ‘Moors.’ About the mid-fifteenth

century a revival was attempted; but this was checked at the beginning

of the sixteenth, when the mines of Spanish America were opened:

the Emperor Charles V. also would not see the soil of his European

dominions disturbed by digging. The miners emigrated in mass, and New

Carthage was forgotten till within the last half-century. According to

M. Alfred Massart,[370] the ancient masses of plumbiferous scoriæ were

large enough to pay for re-working. A superficial area of eight square

leagues yielded some eight hundred thousand tons of iron-ore, of which

two-thirds were ferro-manganese, and twenty thousand to twenty-five

thousand tons of lead containing thirty thousand kilogrammes of silver.

As regards the use of iron for many purposes by the ancient Britons

before the Roman conquest, we may fairly, without attaching importance

to the legend of ‘Milesius,’ believe that the industry may also have

migrated northwards from a Spanish centre. Hence, Mr. Hutton, the local

historian of Birmingham, believes that Sword-blades were made there

before the landing of Julius Cæsar.

[Heading: _IRON IN INDIA._]

From Assyria the use of iron would extend through Persia to India, to

Indo-China, and to China and Japan. Professor Max Müller, as Mr. Day

justly observes, differs with himself when he states in one place[371]

that ‘iron was not known previously to the breaking up of the Aryan

family’; and in another passage,[372] where we are told, ‘Before the

separation of the Aryan race ... there can be no doubt that iron was

known and its value appreciated.’ Here, evidently, the Sanskritist had

changed his first opinion, because he had noticed that ‘Ayas’ may also

mean copper or bronze. The Rig Veda mentions mail-coats, hatchets, and

weapons of iron; but so far from assigning to this work the age of B.C.

1300, we may fairly hold that its present shape was assumed in the

early centuries following Christianity. We have trustworthy notices of

the metal in India only at the beginning of authentic history, when

the acumen of the Greeks was applied to the gross absurdities of Hindu

fable.[373] The Malli and Oxydracæ presented to Alexander a hundred

talents’ weight of Indian steel (_ferrum candidum_) in wrought bars,

just as Homer’s Achilles (‘Il.’ xxiii. 826), nearly a thousand years

before, offered at the funeral games of Patroclus, ‘a rudely-molten

mass of iron’ (σόλον αὐτοχόωνον, self-melted?), which had been used

for hurling at the foe by Eëtion, and which would supply the farm with

metal for five years. The ‘bright iron’ of Ezekiel, named amongst the

wares of Tyre (xxvii. 19) with cassia and calamus, was probably the

same material. The Periplus mentions sideros indikos and stómoma

(steel) as imports to the Abyssinian harbours. Daimachus and Pliny

specify, amongst the dearest kinds of steel, the ferrum Indicum and the

ferrum Sericum; and Salmasius refers to a Greek chemical treatise ‘On

the Tempering (περὶ βαφῆς) of Indian Steel.’

The great iron-working age of India seems to have been in the fourth

and fifth centuries of our era, when the blacksmiths must have been

skilful and commanded an unlimited supply of the best metal. The Lát or

iron-pillar of Delhi, to mention no other, is a solid shaft, showing

that the people were unable to make a core. This simple piece of

wrought metal, calculated to weigh seventeen tons and to contain eighty

cubic feet of metal, measures in diameter 16·4 inches tapering to

12·05. The height above ground is twenty-two feet, and excavations of

twenty-six feet did not reach the base: the known length therefore is

upwards of forty-eight feet.[374] The sundry inscriptions punched upon

it are of very various dates: Prinsep[375] assigns our third or fourth

century to the Nagari character in which Rajah Dhava thus ‘renowned

it’:—

‘By him who, learning the warlike preparations and entrenchments of

his enemies with their good soldiers and allies, a monument of fame

engraved by his Sword on their limbs, who as master of the seven

advantages,[376] crossing over (the Indus?), so subdued the Vahlikas of

Sindhu [N.B.: they can hardly be the ‘people of Balkh’] that even at

this day his disciplined force and defences on the south (of the river)

are sacredly respected by them,’ &c. &c.

Metallurgists dispute as to the way in which this huge iron rod was

wrought. One writer,[377] however, seems to have hit upon the solution

of the problem: ‘The column may have been forged standing, by welding

on, one over another, thin iron plates or dires, the fire being built

round the column as it grew; and the ground raised in a mound to keep

the top of the column on a level with the workplace.’ Pyramid-building

has been explained in the same way—a causeway.

But the Lát is not the only marvel of Hindu metallurgy. Mr. James

Fergusson found in the Temple of Kanaruc, or Black Pagoda of the Madras

Presidency, beams of wrought iron about twenty-one feet in length and

eight inches section, to strengthen the roof, which the Hindus, in

their distrust of the arch, formed after their usual bracket-fashion.

In the fane of Mahavellipore he discovered sockets for similar

supports. He assigns to the Black Pagoda a date between A.D. 1236 and

1241; and to Mahavellipore any time between our tenth and fourteenth

centuries.[378] Colonel Pearse, R.A. presented to the trustees of the

British Museum a unique collection of archaic tools, iron and steel,

gouges, spatulæ, ladles, and similar articles, dug out of tumuli at

Wari Gaon, near Kampti. But there are no grounds whatever for dating

them ‘about B.C. 1500, or the time of Moses.’

[Heading: _WOOTZ._]

The _ferrum Indicum_[379] of the Classics may still be represented by

the famous Wootz or Wutz,[380] the ‘natural Indian steel,’ still so

much prized for Sword-blades in Persia and Afghanistan. The specimens

first sent in 1795 to the Royal Society of London were analysed by Mr.

Josiah M. Heath with the results given below.[381]

Colonel Yule remarks that the Wootz was, in part at least, the famous

Indian steel, the σίδηρος Ἰνδικὸς καὶ στόμωμα of the ‘Periplus,’ the

Hunduwání of the mediæval Persian traders; the Andanicum or Ondanique

of Marco Polo and the Alkinde of the old Spanish. In the sixteenth

century the exportation was chiefly from Baticala in Canara. The King

of Portugal complains (in A.D. 1591) of the large quantities shipped

from Chaul to be sold in the Red Sea to the Turks and on the African

coast about Melinde.[382] And I would note that this industry by no

means argues civilisation in India or elsewhere:[383] as Dr. Percy

remarks, ‘The primitive method of extracting good malleable iron

direct from the ore, which is still practised in India and in Africa,

requires a degree of skill very inferior to that which is implied in

the manufacture of bronze.’

The system of Wootz-making, especially at Salem and in parts of Mysore,

has been described by many writers. About a pound weight of malleable

iron, made from magnetic ore, is placed, minutely broken and moistened,

in a crucible of refractory clay, together with finely chopped pieces

of wood (_Cassia auriculata_). It is packed without flux. The open pots

are then covered with the green leaves of the _Asclepias gigantea_

or the _Convolvulus lanifolius_, and the tops are coated over with

wet clay, which is sun-dried to hardness. ‘Charcoal will not do as a

substitute for the green twigs.’ Some two dozen of these cupels[384] or

crucibles are disposed archways at the bottom of a furnace, whose blast

is managed with bellows of bullock’s hide. The fuel is composed mostly

of charcoal and of sun-dried _brattis_ or cow-chips. After two or three

hours’ smelting the cooled crucibles are broken up, when the regulus

appears in the shape and size of half an egg. According to Tavernier,

the best buttons from about Golconda were as large as a halfpenny roll,

and sufficed to make two Sword-blades (?). These ‘cops’ are converted

into bars by exposure for several hours to a charcoal fire not hot

enough to melt them: they are then turned over before the blast, and

thus the too highly carburised steel is oxidised.[385]

According to Professor Oldham,[386] ‘Wootz’ is also worked in the

Damudah Valley, at Birbhúm, Dyucha, Narayanpúr, Damrah, and Goanpúr.

In 1852 some thirty furnaces at Dyucha reduced the ore to _kachhá_ or

pig-iron, small blooms from Catalan forges; as many more converted it

to _pakká_ (crude steel), prepared in furnaces of different kind. The

work was done by different castes; the Hindís (Moslems) laboured at the

rude metal, and the Hindús preferred the refining work. I have read

that anciently a large quantity of Wootz found its way westward _viâ_

Pesháwar.

When last visiting (April 19, 1876) the Mahabaleshwar Hills near

Bombay, I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Joyner, C.E., and with

his assistance made personal inquiries into the process. The

whole of the Sayhádri range (Western Ghats), and especially the

‘great-Might-of-Shiva’ mountains, had for many ages supplied Persia

with the best steel. Our Government, since 1866, forbade the industry,

as it threatened the highlands with disforesting. The ore was worked

by the Hill-tribes, of whom the principal are the Dhánwars, Dravidians

now speaking Hindustani.[387] Only the brickwork of their many raised

furnaces remained. For fuel they preferred the Jumbul-wood, and

the Anjan or iron-wood. They packed the iron and fourteen pounds of

charcoal in layers; and, after two hours of bellows-working, the metal

flowed into the forms. The ‘Kurs’ (bloom), five inches in diameter

by two and a half deep, was then beaten into Táwás or plates. The

matrix resembled the Brazilian, a poor yellow-brown limonite striping

the mud-coloured clay; and actual testing disproved the common idea

that the ‘watering’ of the surface is found in the metal. The Jauhar

(‘jewel’ or ribboning) of the so-called ‘Damascus’ blade was produced

artificially, mostly by drawing out the steel into thin ribbons which

were piled and welded by the hammer. My friend afterwards sent me from

India an inkstand of Mahabaleshwar iron.[388]

I could not learn from Hindus that they bury iron in the earth till the

‘core’ is reached. But they are well acquainted with tempering by cold

immersion, as noticed by Salmasius (‘Exercit. Plin.’ 763): they still

believe with Pliny, Justin, and a host of others, in ‘a Sword, the

icebrook’s temper,’ and all hold that the hardening of metal depends

much upon the quality of the water. They quench delicate articles in

oil, a method also alluded to by Pliny, but they ignore his statement

(xxviii. 41) that rust produced by goat’s blood gives a better edge

to iron than the file. I am not aware that they have ever used for

quenching purposes quicksilver, the best conductor of heat.

In Burmah, as in India, the chief peculiarity of iron-smelting is

the use of green-wood fuel.[389] Throughout the mighty ‘Hollander’

Archipelago of the Farther East, this metal, known in former days

only by importation, is now everywhere common. Java received the

Egyptian arts from India, which colonised her about the beginning of

the Christian era: the now untravelled Hindú was then a voyager and an

explorer. Dr. Percy describes the iron-smelting of Borneo,[390] which

produces the Parangilang, a peculiar Sword-like weapon equally fit for

felling trees and men.[391] At Tahiti (Otaheiti), on the other hand,

Captain Cook was unable to make the natives appreciate the use of metal

till his armourer wrought an iron adze in shape like the native.

[Heading: _IRON IN CHINA._]

The oldest, and indeed the only, Chinese word for iron is 鐵—_tie_,

formerly pronounced _tit_. It is first mentioned among the

tribute-articles of Yu in the Yu-Kung section of the Shoo-King,[392]

and the latter has been estimated to date from B.C. 2200–2000. If this

be fact, hieroglyphic tablet-writing flourished amongst the ‘Bak’ some

five hundred years before the age popularly attributed to the Hebrew

Scriptures, and when the Greeks had not begun to form a nation.[393]

Either then the Sinologues, like the Sanskritists, have been deluded

by the artful native into admitting the preposterous claims to

antiquity of culture always advanced by semi-barbarous peoples; or,

what is hardly likely, China formed a centre of Turanian civilisation

wholly independent of Egypt and Chaldæa. Indeed, there appears to

have been some contact of ideas in the matter of writing. The Kemite

denoted ‘man’ and ‘eye’ by copying nature; and probably the Chinese did

the same. But the Turanian symbols have lost, by the law of pictorial

evanescence, the original forms: ‘man’ has become 人 = jin (No. 9),[394]

a pair of legs; and ‘eye’ 目 = mŭh (No. 109), looks as if copied from

a cat. The picture-origin of the Assyrian syllabary has also been

satisfactorily established by the Rev. W. Haughton, but the later forms

are as degraded as in the hieratic and demotic Egyptian.[395]

The passage above alluded to enumerates the articles of tribute as

‘musical gems-stones,’ iron, silver, steel, stones for arrow-heads, and

sounding stones, with the skins of bears, great bears, foxes, jackals,

and articles woven with their hair.’ Dr. Legge adds in a note: ‘By 鐵 =

_Tie_, we are to understand “soft iron,” and by 鏤 = _Low_ or _Lowe_,

“hard iron” or “steel.” At the time of the Han dynasty, “iron-masters”

(鐵宧) were appointed in the several districts of the old Leangchou, to

superintend the iron-works. Tsa’e refers to two individuals mentioned

in the “Historical Records”; one of the surname Ch’o, (卓氏), and the

other of the surname Ch’ing (程), both of this part of the empire, who

became so wealthy by their smelting that they were deemed equal to

princes.’ According to the Rev. Dr. Edkins, ‘with the exception of this

passage there is probably no distinct allusion to iron in writings

older than B.C. 1000;’ and his statement seems to establish the date of

Chinese technology and civilisation.

About B.C. 400 the celebrated author and philosopher Leih-Tze

mentions steel, and describes the process of tempering it. In the

‘K’ang-hi-tse-tien’ (康熙字典), better known as ‘Kanghi’s Dictionary,’

published about A.D. 1710, the author represents the Serican

contemporary of Aristotle as saying that ‘a red blade will cut Hu

(jade or nephrite) as it would cut mud.’ Mr. Day makes this to mean a

‘reddish-coloured blade,’ red being one of the many tints which a clean

surface of steel acquires in the process of tempering. It certainly

cannot refer to red-hot steel, which would make no impression upon

pietra dura. The description of steel-making in B.C. 400 is so far

complete that it names and describes the several kinds. The first

treatment produces ‘Twan-Kang’ or ball-steel, so called from the

rounded bloom,[396] or ‘Kwan-Kang’ (sprinkled steel), because treated

with cold affusion. There is also ‘Wei-Tie’ or false steel. The writer

says: ‘When I was sent on official business to Tse-Chow and visited the

foundries there, I understood this for the first time. Iron has steel

within it, as meal contains vermicelli. Let it be subjected to fire a

hundred times or more; it becomes lighter each time. If the firing be

continued until the weight does not diminish, it is pure steel.’[397]

About the beginning of the Christian era a tax was levied upon iron by

the State exchequer, showing that the manufacture had become important.

According to the Pi-tan or Pencil-Talk, written probably under the

Ming dynasty[398] (A.D. 1366–1644), steel is thus made: ‘Wrought iron

is bent or twisted up; unwrought iron (i.e. iron-ore or cast-iron) is

thrown into it; it is covered up with mud and subjected to the action

of fire, and afterwards to the hammer.’ This is the old and well-known

process of steeling practised by the Greeks. Wrought iron was either

immersed into molten cast-iron as into a bath, or it was heated with

iron-ore and layers of charcoal-fuel covered with alternate strata of

clay to exclude atmospheric influence, a treatment somewhat similar to

what is still called ‘cementation.’[399] The ore was thus deoxidised by

contact with excess of carbon; and a molten carburet was the result.

It is not a little curious, as Mr. Day observes, to find Aristotle

and Lieh-Tze describing the same process about the same time. But

I hesitate to conclude with that able writer that the fact has any

bearing upon ‘the old doctrine of the original unity of the human

race; each section of mankind carrying off with them that common stock

of knowledge which the entire family possessed before separation.’

Mr. Day, I have said, systematically opposes the ‘High Antiquity

Theory’ (p. 208); and, though he holds to Revelation and to Biblical

chronology, he has a curious tendency towards the mystical etymology of

the Jacob Bryant school, and the obsolete Phallic theories revived by

the learned and able work of the late Dr. Inman.[400]

The Pent Saow, also attributed to the days of the Mings, speaks of

three kinds of steel used for knives and Swords, a division which again

reminds us of Daimachus. The first is made by adding unwrought to

wrought iron, while the mass is subjected to the action of fire. The

second is simply the result of repeated firings as practised in Africa.

The third is native steel produced in the south-west at Hai-shan: ‘In

appearance it resembles the stone called “Tsze-shih-ying” (purple stone

efflorescence).’ It is understood that the process of manufacture is

kept secret. The ‘Hankow-steel,’ which comes to Tien-tsin from the

upper Yang-tse, is most prized; and commands much higher prices than

the best imported English and Swedish; the Chinese, like the ‘Caffirs,’

look upon these as ‘rotten iron.’

China also had her ‘literary blacksmith,’ like Wieland Smith, the

northern Dædalus. We read that Hoang-ta-tie of T’ancheu, who lived

under the Sung, followed the craft of an ironsmith. Whenever he was

at his work he used to call without intermission on the name of Amita

Buddha. One day he handed to his neighbours the following verses of his

own composing to be spread about:—

Ding-dong! the hammer-strokes fall long and fast,

Until the iron turns to steel at last!

Now shall the long long Day of Rest begin,

The Land of Bliss Eternal calls me in.

Thereupon he died. But his verses spread all over Honan, and many

learned to call upon Buddha.

The oldest Chinese iron-works were at Shansi and Chilili in the Ho

districts, where there are inexhaustible deposits of ore and coal, and

where the metal is worked to the present day. In 1875 Commissioner

Li-hung-Chang, raised from the Government-General of Chilili to be

Minister of the young King, sent Mr. James Henderson to England with

orders to bring out the most modern appliances and apparatus for

metal-working. It was proposed to build the new works at Tsze-Chow,

a town two hundred miles south-west of Tien-tsin, the head-quarters

of the Governor-General. Mr. Henderson had visited (1874) the

establishment near Yang-Ching, Shansi, which had before been described

by Baron von Richtofen and Dr. Williamson.[401] The iron ore bought

at Ping-ding-Chow was found at the Royal School of Mines, London, to

contain fifty per cent. of iron, loose hæmatite with little or no

sulphur.

M. Sévoz, an engineer of mines long resident in Japan, studied

iron-working in the province of Ykouno.[402] He found the people

using an imperfect Catalan method, but able to treat at once sixteen

thousand kilogrammes of ore, and to produce blooms weighing one

thousand three hundred kilogrammes. These huge rods were broken up

under a hammer constructed in the style of a pile-driving ram, to which

motion was given by a walking-wheel 11·5 mètres in diameter, mounted by

men. The description does not promise much; but Japan, though holding

to her ancient methods in districts unknown to Europeans, produces iron

cheaper than the English. Of her marvellous Swords I shall treat in

Part II.

The people of Madagascar worked iron,[403] but their name of the

metal is Malayan; hence Mr. Crawford traced the art back to Malacca.

Yet the Malay did not extend it far eastwards: according to Mr. E.

B. Tylor,[404] ‘In New Zealand, where there is good iron-ore, there

was no knowledge of iron previously to the arrival of Europeans.’

Passing over to the American continent, we find an immense industry

of copper, but so little iron that, till late years, the indigenes

were supposed not to have worked it. Ynka mines, however, have been

discovered near Lake Titicaca; while excavations in the tumuli of

the mysterious ‘Mound-builders,’ who may have attempted to reproduce

the Egyptian Pyramid, yielded axes described to be of ‘hæmatite

iron-ore,’ one of the easiest metals to smelt, and for that reason

probably one of the first worked. Mr. Day, who figures one of these

tool-weapons with the hammer-marks (p. 218), supposes it to have been

‘metallic iron,’ pronouncing hæmatite ‘extremely brittle and absolutely

unforgeable.’[405] He quotes Mr. Charles C. Abbott,[406] who procured

other specimens of aboriginal manufacture from the mounds. One hatchet

was four and a half inches long by two broad, and nearly uniform in

thickness, three-sixteenths of an inch; it had a well-defined edge,

which from its slightly wavy outline and varied breadth, appeared to be

hammered, not ground. According to Major Hotchkiss, who owned two other

similar specimens, a series of four was found under an uprooted tree on

an Indian trail in West Virginia.

Fragments of unworked hæmatite, small and irregular, were used instead

of flint for arrow-heads.[407] Mr. Abbott also notices ‘a curious form

of “relic,” known as a “plummet,” occasionally occurring and made of

iron ore: one specimen[408] “is made of iron ore ground down until it

is almost as smooth as glass.” As such “plummets” are found in the

Western Mounds, as well as on the surface of the ground throughout

the Atlantic coast States, and are always polished, it seems fair

to presume that a cutting instrument of such hard material would

undoubtedly be polished and ground, if at the time of its manufacture

grinding was known or practised among the aborigines in fashioning

their various weapons and instruments.’

[Heading: _IRON IN AFRICA._]

But if the savages and barbarians of Oceania and the New World rarely

worked iron, the contrary was the case with the equally uncivilised

African races, negroid and negro, who, however, had the advantage of

dwelling within importing and imitating distance of Egypt. I have

elsewhere noticed the excellent assegai-blades of the Bantu (Kafirs);

nor is this art confined to the southern regions.[409] Dr. Percy

justly makes wrought iron the original form, which we see retained

in the obscurer parts of Asia and Africa. The people always worked

by the ‘direct process,’ the oldest style; which, however, is not

wholly extinct in Europe. The art, quasi-stationary among wild men,

treats small quantities at a time: the ‘voracious iron-works’ of which

Evelyn first speaks, are beyond its wants. Moreover it can utilise

only rich ores, unlike the ‘indirect process’ of producing cast-iron

by the blast-furnace.[410] When the ore is nearly pure, a small

addition of carbon would convert it into steel;[411] and the latter

is so easily made, that the wild Hill-peoples of Africa and India

produce, and have produced from time immemorial, an excellent article

in the most primitive way. The proportion of charcoal is considerably

increased, and the blast is applied more slowly than when wrought iron

is required. The only apparatus wanted for the manufacture is a small

clay furnace, four feet high by one to two broad, like that used by the

South Africans; charcoal for fuel, and a skin with a pipe or twyers

of refractory clay for the blast.[412] For the anvil a stone-slab

suffices, and for the hammer a cube of stone with sides grooved for

fibre-cords.

The ‘Dark Continent’ is emphatically an iron-land, and all explorers

have noticed its abundance of ore. Mungo Park[413] mentions the surface

ironstone of dull red tint with greyish spots used by his ‘Mandingos’:

Barth confirms his assertion by describing magnetic metal about Kuka

of the Mandengas, and at Jinninau in the Kel-owi or Tawareh country:

Durham and Clapperton, when near Murzuk, found kidney-shaped lumps

upon the surface; and about Bilma, capital of the Tibbús, nodules

of iron-ore puddinged in the red sandstones—could this have been

laterite or volcanic mud? It was the only metal seen in the hills

of Mandara; but the Bornuese prefer to import their supply from the

neighbouring Sudan. Mr. Warren Edwards, who had temporary charge of a

Niger expedition, observed the natives supporting their cooking-pots

over the fire with fragments of surface ironstone; and it often struck

him (as it does most men) that by some such means the smelting-process

suggested itself. The metal is abundant in the Gaboon country, where

the Mpangwe or Fans,[414] the western outliers of the great race,

mostly cannibal, holding the heart of Africa, are able workers. They

have a kind of ‘fleam-money,’ small iron bars shaped somewhat like

a large lancet. I came upon the metal everywhere in Unyamwezi,

the ‘Mountains of the Moon,’ and to this universal presence of

ironstone—not to damp and heat—the Portuguese attribute the marvellous

displays of electricity throughout Central Africa. A whole night will

pass during which the thunder is never silent; and the lightning

enables one to read small print, like an electric light. Captain

Grant, in his ‘Walk across Africa,’ tells us that the people pick up

walnut-sized nuggets of iron covered with dusty rust, and in a short

time produce a spear-head that glistens like steel. My fellow-traveller

to the Gold Coast, Captain Cameron, when crossing Africa, in most

places found iron and iron-smelting.[415] In Kordofan, Mr. Petherick

saw a rich surface oxide containing from fifty-five to sixty per cent.

of pure metal. Livingstone remarked iron in the eastern regions of

Angola,[416] and traced it up the Zambeze-line from east to west. Mr.

C. T. Anderson describes it as occurring in large quantities, either

of ironstone or pure in a crystallised state. Finally, good old Kolben

mentions large iron-flakes on the surface near The Cape.

[Illustration: FIG. 104.—IRON SMELTING FURNACE AMONGST THE MARÁVE

PEOPLE.]

But, as Colonel A. Lane Fox remarks:[417] ‘Simple heating is not

sufficient for working iron: a continuous air-blast is required to

keep the temperature at a certain height.’ It is interesting to see

the means adopted by barbarians for procuring this necessary; and,

having carefully studied it in various parts of Africa, I devote to it

the remainder of this chapter. As Pliny repeats from Aristotle, ‘Libya

always produces something new.’

According to Strabo, Anacharsis[418] the Scythian, who flourished in

the days of Solon (B.C. 592), invented not only the anchor[419] and

the potter’s wheel, but also the bellows. In Egypt, however, we find

that these discoveries were already a thousand years old at least. The

earliest appearance of the latter is the forge and bellows (in Egyptian

‘H’ati’), depicted on the walls of a tomb in the days of Thut-mes III.,

about B.C. 1500. The workman stands on two bags of skin, such as are

still used to hold water, alternately weighing upon one and upon the

other; he inflates them in turns by pulling up a cord which opens a

valve, and then he closes the hole with his heel. The bellows have

twyers, and the illustrations[420] show a crucible and a heap of ore:

while the material of the H’ati is indicated by its determinative, a

hide with a tail. This rude contrivance was adopted by the Greeks and

Romans: hence the ‘taurini folles’ of Plautus: and Virgil’s—

... Alii ventosis follibus auras

Accipiunt redduntque.—_Æn._ viii. 449.

The wind-bag[421] would be made of ox-hide, of goat-skin, or

of the spoils of smaller animals, according to the volume of draught

required. And thus, also, would originate the bagpipe, an instrument

common to almost all original peoples.

But in the Dark Continent we find still in use an older form than that

known to Thut-mes, and the earliest of the four several varieties.

The late Mr. Petherick describes this rude contrivance in Kordofan:

‘The blast is supplied by skin bags worked by hand; these bags are

made of skins, which are flayed by two incisions from the tail down

to the hocks; the skin, being drawn over the body, is cut off at the

neck, which makes the mouth of the bag. After tanning, the hind legs

are cut off, and each side of the skin sewn on to a straight piece of

stick; loops are placed on the outside for the fingers of the operator

to pass through. It can be opened and closed at pleasure; the neck is

secured to a tube of baked clay, and four men or boys seated round the

cupola, each with a bellows of this primitive description, produce a

blast by opening the bags when drawing them towards them, and closing

them quickly, push them forward; by which means the compressed bags

discharge the air through the tubes into the furnace, quick alternate

movements of the arms of the operator producing a blast, which throws

out a flame about a foot high from the top of the furnace; and the

slag with the metal is allowed to collect in a hole beneath it.’

Casalis similarly describes the Basuto bellows, and Mungo Park that of

Mandenga-land; Browne saw it in Dár-For,[422] and Clapperton in Kuka

and in the Highlands of Mandara, where the anvil was a coarse bloom of

iron, and the hammers two lumps weighing about two pounds each. This

is the bellows of Kathiawád[423] and of Kolapor in the Deccan, where

Captain Graham notices that the _mús_ or tubes for the blast are clay

mixed with burnt and powdered flint. Mr. E. B. Tylor found it used by a

travelling tinker at Pæstum.

The second and improved variety of African bellows was described by

myself during a visit to Yoruban Abeokuta. It deserves attention

because it is a notable step in progress, leading to a further

development; the troughs are a rudimentary cylinder, and the handles

form an incipient piston.[424] ‘The two bags of goat-skin are made fast

in a frame cut out of a single piece of wood; the upper part of each

_follis_ has, by way of handle, a stick two feet long, so that it can

be worked by one man either standing or sitting. The handles are raised

alternately by the blower, so that when one receives the air, the other

ejects it; the form is like that used on the Gold Coast; and there is

a perpendicular screen of dried clay through which the nozzle of the

bellows passes, supplying a regular blast.’

Evidently in this stage of the bellows, the lower halves of the

leather bags are useless: the result would be the same if only the

upper part of the wooden troughs were covered with skin, air-tight

but loose enough to make play. This third step has been taken by the

Djour (Júr) tribes of the Upper Nile, in north latitude 20°, and it is

thus described by Mr. Petherick: ‘The blast-pipes are made as usual of

burnt clay, and are attached to earthen vessels about eighteen inches

in diameter and six inches in height, covered with a loose, dressed

goat-skin, tied tightly round them and perforated with a few holes, in

the centre of which is a loop to contain the fingers of the operator.

A lad, sitting between two of these vessels, by a rapid alternate

vertical motion drives a continuous current of air into the furnace.’

[Heading: _THE BELLOWS IN AFRICA._]

[Illustration: FIG. 105.—PORTABLE AFRICAN BELLOWS.]

This brings us to the fourth and last stage of African

blast-improvement (fig. 105). Here the rudely-hewn wooden tube becomes

a double-barrelled forcing-pump. The two air-vessels with their loose

skin-coverings are attached to each base of the two central pipes that

join into one. Such is the shape used in Madagascar, the cylinders

being of bamboo, five feet long by two inches in diameter, and the

piston a stick ending in a bunch of feathers.

The bellows described by Dampier in Mindanao and elsewhere in the Malay

Archipelago, is evidently borrowed from the Madagascar type; and into

Borneo, Siam, and New Guinea a hollowed trunk takes the place of the

bamboos. The sculptures in the Sukuh-temple of Java, attributed to

the fifteenth century, represent smiths making Kríses (Creases), the

bellows being worked by another man, who holds a piston upright in each

hand. Colonel A. Lane Fox is of opinion that the sculptures ‘possibly

point to a Hindu origin for this particular contrivance.’ I agree with

him, but I would also trace the Asiatic article back to its old home in

Africa—Egypt.

The nature of fuel was determined by the supply of the country. That

of Egypt probably consisted of cattle-chips, a material still used by

the Fellahs. A later allusion to this article is found in the legend

of ‘Wieland Smith’: he mixes iron-filings with the meal eaten by his

geese, carefully collects the droppings, and out of them forges a blade

which cuts a wool-flock or cleaves a man to the belt without turning

edge.

I conclude this chapter with the following table,[425] printed by Mr.

Day at the end of his ‘High Antiquity of Iron and Steel.’ It gives

at one view the languages, the characters, the phonetic values, the

English equivalents, and the oldest known dates of the metals to which

he refers. I differ from him in sundry points, and these I have taken

the liberty to point out in italics.

GENERAL TABLE OF TERMS.

+--------------------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+

| LANGUAGE | | | | |

+------------+-------------+ CHARACTERS | PHONETIC VALUE | ENGLISH | OLDEST KNOWN |

| NAME | FAMILY | | | EQUIVALENT | DATE OF |

+------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+

| | |[Hieroglyphs]| Ba. | Earth, | |

| | | | | Metal. | |

| | | | | | 2200 |

| | Hamitic, |[Hieroglyphs]| Ba. | Iron. | to |

| Egyptian | with | | | | 2300 |

|Hieroglyphs.| Semitic |[Hieroglyphs]| Ba’a. | Iron, | B.C. |

| | Infusion. | | | Earth. | |

| | | | | | |

| | |[Hieroglyphs]| Ba’aenpe. | Iron. | |

| | | | | | (_B.C. 4500?_) |

| | |[Hieroglyphs]| Bet. | Iron. | |

+------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+

| Akkadian. | | [Cuneiform] | Hurud. | Iron. |{Oldest Monuments,|

+------------+ +-------------+----------------+---------------+{ at least |

| | | | | |{ 2000 B.C. |

| Assyrian. | | [Cuneiform] | Eru. | Iron. |{ (_B.C. 4000?_) |

+------------+ Semitic. +-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+

| | | נחושה | n’ghōshāh | Steel. | From |

| | | ברזל | barzel | Iron. | 1500 |

| Hebrew. | | ברזל עשות | barzel yāshūth | Bright Iron. | B.C. |

| | | ברזל מוצק | barzel mūtzāq | Cast Iron. | downwards. |

+------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+

| | Sporadic | 鏤 | Low, Lowe. | Steel. | |

|Chinese. | or | 鐵 |Tie (pronounced | Iron. | |

| [426] |llophyllian | | Tit). | | 2000 |

| |(_Turanian_).| 金 | Kin. | Metal. | B.C. |

| | | 鐵宧 | -- | Iron-masters. | |

+------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+

| | | | | | Oldest Sanskrit. |

| Sanskrit. | | आर | Ára. | Iron. | Probably |

| | | अयस् | Ayas. | Iron. | B.C. 1500. |

| | | | | | (_B.C. 400?_) |

+------------+ Aryan. +-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+

| | | χάλυψ | Khalyps. | Steel. | Homeric |

| | | σίδηρος | Sideros. | Iron. | Age. |

| Greek. | | | |{Blue Metal, | |

| | | κύανος | Cyanos. |{prob. tempered| -- |

| | | | |{Steel. | |

| | | ἀδάμας | Adamas. | Steel. | Hesiod. |

+------------+-------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+------------------+