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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: