R. j.FORllRS METALLURGY IN ANTIQUITY , I I METALLURGY IN ANTIQUITY COIJ';&'" J9}O b, E.. f. B,;/I. LLiJm, N"h,,14~J, All ';ghts lh. 'ighl la I,,,,,S/"" la "f'odM(t ,.,~,.,·d./ lo;o~. dMJing Of /0'''' ,hi, 0' ,.,,, in Ib,,~oJ .~, A NOTEBOOK FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND TECHNOLOGISTS BY J. R. FORBES W'ITH ')N 1111'''TRi\ r IO:\,:, LElDEN 1950 CONTENTS Chapter 1. A note to the reader . 1 Chapter II. Synopsis of early metallurgy 4 Chapter Ill. Short historical survey of early mining . 40 Chapter IV. The evolution of the smith, his social and sacred status . 62 Chapter V. Tools and methods of early metallurgy . 105 Chapter VI. Gold in the Ancient Near East. 140 Chapter VII. Silver and Lead in Antiquity . 169 Chapter VIII. Tin, Antimony, and Arsenic in Antiquity . 231 • Chapter IX. Zinc and Brass in Antiquity . 272 Chapter X. Copper ~n the Ancient Near East . 290 Chapter XI. The early story of Iron . 378 Chapter XII. Old Methods and New Tools. 474 Index 481 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT AAA: AnnaiJ of Archaeology and Anthropology (Liverpool) AfO: Arch;t' fih' Orientforschul1g AJSL: Amer;can Journal of SemitIc Languages and Literatmes Ant. J.! Antiq!la"ieJ Journal (London) AO: Der Alte Orient (Leipzic) APAW: Abhand/fmgen del' PI't!tlSSis.-iJen Akademie det' Wissen schaften AR: J. H. BREASTED, Aucient Records of Egypt (Chicago, Third Imp. 1927) ARL: D. D. LUCKENBILL, Ancient Rewrtls of A.r.ryria and Baby/olliu (Chicago, 1926) BA: Bei/raf,e AHyriologie ;:'111' B.A. report: Repor: of /he Bntirh Academy (London) BK: see KB Bab. Miz.: F. H. WEISZBACH, Baby/ollifche Miszellen CAH: Camblidge Ancient His/OI')' eT: CU/leiform texts from Babylonim1 tablets, etc. ill the Entirch Muselllll DP: Delegation en Per.re. edit. J. DE MORGAN FA LKENSTEIN : A. rALKENSTEIN, Archaisch~ 7'cxte am Ur (Leipzig, 1936) HWB: ERMAN.GRAPOW, HdlldworteJiJllc/.J del' uegyptllrhen Sprache ILN: Il/tNl'ated London News lIT: fill en/aire der tab/ell de T ello JEA: Journal of E[!,yptian Archue%KY (London) JEOL: faarbericht Ex Orlente Lux (Leyden) KAH: Kerl.lchrifttexte a"J A rS1l1' hi,rtol'llchm ["/)u/lf KAR: Keilrchrifllexte allJ A.rJllr ,.ej,,~joJen lllhal/l KAVI: Keilrchrifttexte allJ AJ.l1I1' l'errchledenen [Ilha/IJ KB: H. H. FIGULLA·E. F. WEIDNER, Keiltmch,iften affS Bo[!,hazkoi OI.Z: Omnfalirche Lite/alu/, ZeittllZg (Ltipzic) PW: PAlJLy·WrssowA, Re,;/·Ellc),dopddll? del' k/aJslJ(hen A/ tcrtlI1l1JU'/JJenschajt, RA: Revue d'Assyriologie (Paris) SL: DEIMEL, SumerischeJ Lexikoll (Rome) SETHE, Urk.: Urkunden des agyptirchen Alterl1J11lJ, edit. K. SETHE VAB: Vorderasiatische Blbilothek (Leipzic) YOS: Yale Odenta! Sems, Baby/omc/I1 textJ. CHAPTER ONE A NOTE TO THE READER "Whate'er my craft can promise, whatso'er Is wrought with iron, copper or lead, Fanned with the blast, or molten in the bed, Thine be it all." (VIRGll, Aen'eid VIII, 471-475) This will be a book of 'facts and fancies, The facts are about ores, metals and their properties, how they were won and worked in Antiq uity in the Near East. But the facts which can be gathered from archreological, historical, philological and technical documents and books are not sufficient to form a continuous story. Therefore, let the facts be the warp and fancy the woof of this story. For the facts, though far from complete, are abundant. They can be found in magical and religious texts, the economic documents of Antiquity abound with them, historical and geographical hand books contain theme and even ancient scientific and technological texts of some import~ce can be found. And just as maps shall supplement the dryasdust lists of ancient deposits of ores, so the texts shall be given in full to show the metallurgical facts in the context i:l which the ancients saw them. "Let the texts speak!" should and shall be our motto, for only too often the story of metallurgy, that important factor in ancient material civilisation. has been neg lected. Which of our large handbooks either archreological or tech nical contains more than generalities on this subject, and only too often wrong facts that are taken over from one handbook into another? How few are the books on ancient history whose table of contents contains references to metals or metallurgical products, as jf these never played a part in political history in those times as they do now! And again, why is not the proper technical and scientific informa tion available to the archleologist and are his data not presented in the proper context to the technologist, who is usually put off with old, superannuated facts? If we will try to undo these wrongs, at least partly, we must warn the reader that repetition of certain facts was found necessary. For wrong facts are the most tenacious things to destroy and the only remedy is frappez tOlljollrJ! Then repetition was necessary too FORSES, Metallurgy 1 2\ A NOTB TO THE READElt. . to avoid those horrible "Cross-references which make the reader run through the whole of the book before he has finished one chapter. We have tried to present every chapter of the story of metallurgy as a whole in itself and to treat every aspect of a certain fact in its proper place. But the main purpose of this repetition remained bring ing out the importance of certain vital facts which dominate ancient metallurgy and which ate, alas, only too often forgotten. Our path was often difficult to find for there is a sore lack of proper information on many details. No good, up-to-date geological handbooks or maps on the Near East exist and the maps of the deposits of different ores had to be compiled from publications varying greatly in trustworthiness. There is no uniformity in the spelling of geographical and historical names and many archcwlogical publica tions lack proper indexes or do not mention metals in their table of contents and force the reader to run through the entire text! Analyt ical data on ancient metals and alloys are spread over many technical and archaeological journals and books and often published in journals which can only be obtained with the greatest difficulty. The very im portant data collected by the Sumerian Copp(r Committee and its successor, the Ancient Metal Objects Committee, have not yet been properly published in detail. Archaeologists have until now given little attention to such important metallurgical finds as furnaces, slags and ores and often their descriptions are non-committal or misleading, only too often experts should have been called in to examine and describe these and other details. Even the description of museum objects can not always be trusted a~ long as they have not yet been properly analysed. But even the registration of those points on which proper information is lacking may be helpful to future students of this subject. The reader should also be warned of the perils of chronology. The chronology of the Ancient Near East and in fact that of prehistoric Europe which is linked up with it, remains very uncertain before 1500 B.C. We have followed the chronology used by most handbooks until very recently whioh is based on a date for the reign of king IJammurabi of Babylon of 1955-1912, that is about 1900 B.C., but of late documents have been found that force us to bring this date back to 1792-1749 B.C.! This means that the whole of the earlier chronology will have to be telescoped back accordingly and even our estimate of prehistoric periods will have to be shortened considerably. The reader, therefore, should use the datrs previous to 1500 B.C. as