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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.