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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.’

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.