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ON SOME EVIDENCES
AS TO THE VERY
EARLY USE OF IRON,
AND ON CERTAIN
OLD BITS OF IRON IN PARTICULAR.
BY
ST. JOHN VINCENT DAY, C.E., F.R.S.E.,
t
'
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH SOCIETY OF ARTS, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL
ENGINEERS, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERS IN SCOTLAND, HON. LIBRARIAN
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW.
Read before the Philosophical Society of Glasgow,
April 12, 1871.
EDINBURGH:
EDMONSTON
AND
1871.
DOUGLAS.
��ON
SOME
EVIDENCES
AS TO THE VERY
EABLY USE OF IBON, ETC.
The object of this paper is to show that a considerably remoter
archaeology can be claimed for the employment by man of iron than
has hitherto been generally accepted. That iron was amongst the
very earliest, if not in fact the earliest, of the metals with which
man was acquainted, we have abundant literary evidence. Until
lately, however, that has stood alone, unconfirmed by any cotem
porary testimony. Now, however, we are in a position to shew,
from two kinds of cotemporary proof, that iron was well known to
man, in some parts of this earth at least, during the very remotest
ages which it is possible with any degree of certainty to reach.
The two kinds of evidence to which I allude are—
1st. That of the hieroglyphs.
2nd. Certain material specimens.
These two evidences appear now not only to confirm each other,
but what is more important still, establish the solid truth of that
literary testimony which in these latter days has come to be
doubted; and although not yet complete, a further confirmation of
the extremely ancient uses of iron may confidently be expected
ere long as one result, of researches into traditions and the com
parison of myths,—the inquirers therein engaged having already
so well succeeded in evoking little grains of truth out of whole
mountains of myth.
When examining the works of those authors who have writtenon
the history of iron, I have frequently noticed the scantiness of their
attempts to indicate what is until now absolutely ascertained, as dis
tinct from that which is handed down as tradition concerning the use
of that metal in pre-historic ages; and I am disposed to believe such
defect merely as a result of the trust which those authors appear to
have placed in the teachings of a certain modern school, which, going
dead against all literary testimony, declares for, and only for, the ex
tremely high antiquity of copper and its alloys. When, too, certain
researchers into the “Antiquity of Man”—supposing him to have
been evolved by successive spontaneous efforts from an extremely
low type of organic existence—claim that the appearance of iron
�4
Iron Used by Egyptians before Persian Invasion.
on the scene marks so decided a step on the road to a higher
civilization, it is strange, indeed, that their inquiries into the
remotest limit of time, when man became an iron-using animal, bear
no stamp upon them indicative of having been directed into the
earliest ages of which, and in countries where, we have positive
cotemporary testimony—actual cotemporary fact to rest upon—
rather than that a continued trust should be vouchsafed to the very
uncertain records and theories as concerning other countries and
still later ages, but founded only on mere probabilities.
Writers on what has hitherto been defined as the early history of
iron we have had in abundance, since the time when Layard de
posited in our British Museum the metallurgical trophies of his
excavations in that Interamnian plain where once stood the As
syrian Nineveh and Babylon; or since Rhind, after exploring the
tomb of Sebau, wherein he is reported to have discovered, “on the
massive doors of the inner repositories, hasps and nails, still as
lustrous and as pliant as on the day they left the forge,”* contended
that iron was extensively used in Greece between the epoch of the
Homeric poems (from 900 B.c. to 1000 B.c.) and the full historic
period of Greece, and that within about the same interval, if not pro
bably with an earlier commencement, the same metal was more or
less completely displacing bronze in Egypt. It is inferred by
Rhind—at least so I gather from Dr Percy’s remarks—that Sebau
was born about b.c. 68, and died B.c. 9 ; but we shall hereafter see
that iron was known to and used by the Egyptians many centuries
earlier, also that, before the time of the Persian invasion under
Cambyses, there was enough iron in the country, as Belzoni has
pointed out, to make instruments of agriculture with. Plate
I. is a full-sized picture of a sickle + found by Belzoni under
* Metallurgy: Iron and Steel. By John Percy, F.R.S. London. 1864.
i* Extract from Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the
Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, etc., etc. By
G. Belzoni, a.d. 1821. Published by Murray.
“ Two other articles were found in this excavation, of which one is a tomb
stone, and the other an iron sickle” (p. 162)...................
‘ ‘ But the iron sickle, to which I would call the attention, was found under
the feet of one of the sphinxes on its removal. I was present; one of the men
took it up and gave it to me. It was broken into three pieces, and so decayed
that the rust had eaten even to the centre. It was rather thicker than the
sickles of the present time, but exactly of the common shape and size of ours.
It is now in the possession of Mr. Salt. The question is, At what time were
these statues placed there ? They could not have been deposited subsequently
to the age of the Ptolemies ; for it appears that since the time of Cambyses, who
�Philological Conclusions in Error.
5
the feet of one of the sphinxes at Karnak,—a sufficient proof
that, at about B.c. 600, the blacksmith’s art was well understood
and practised in Upper Egypt; so that whilst the testimony I hope
to adduce may be no refutation of Rhind’s view in regard to
iron displacing bronze at the particular time he mentions—for
it is quite within the limits of probability that when alloys were
discovered iron may have for a time fallen into disuse—yet the
evidence to be hereafter dealt with will, I venture to believe, shew
that to Egypt, and not Greece, must our attention be addressed for the
solution of all problems bearing on the most ancient metallurgy.
By the distinguished leader in another branch of modern investi
gation the true history of iron has had a thick veil cast over it. I
allude to what Professor Max Müller, who, reasoning on a purely
philological basis, has propounded; but on examining his great work,
the Science of Language, it is easy to see that he has been largely
influenced by M. Morlot’s conclusions, for he quotes M. Morlot
extensively; and from the use of certain words in the Odyssey,
concludes that the Greek language was spoken before the discovery
of iron, and that iron certainly was not known previous to the
breaking up of the Aryan family. But Professor Max Müller has
overlooked apparently what may be gathered as to the early use of
iron from another great branch of the human family—-namely, the
Semitic—to which branch both modern Coptic and ancient Egyptian
belong, as indeed he himself has pointed out.
*
The testimony
of the ancient Egyptian language, as well as modern Coptic, have
of late thrown a flood of light on the subject of this inquiry.
Yet, before passing on from Professor Max Müller, I wish to
bring to your notice—for I should fail in my duty were I to
omit doing so—another still more remarkable error into which he
has fallen, by trusting it would seem, too exclusively to language
science. This error occurs in the following sentence :—“ In the
Homeric poems, knives, spear-points, and armour were still made
destroyed the gods of Egypt, the country has never been invaded, so as to
compel the people to conceal their idols; and it is evident that these statues
had been hidden in a hurry, from the irregular and confused manner in which
they lie. Now, as the sickle was found under the statue above mentioned, I
think it a sufficient proof that there was iron in the country long before the
invasion of the Persians, since the Egyptians had enough to make instruments of
agriculture with. Sickles of the same form are to be seen in many agricultural
representations in the tombs,” etc., etc. (p. 163).
* Lectures on the Science of Language (p. 316). London, 1866. First Series.
Longmans.
�6
Stone, Bronze and Iron Dogma-
of copper; and we can hardly doubt that the ancients knew a
process of hardening that pliant metal, most likely by repeated smelting
and immersion in water.”*
Now, what exactly the phrase “repeated smelting” may mean, as
used in this connection, it is difficult to assert; but as smelting
involves heating, I conclude that the phrase should rather be “ re
peated heating.” But whether I am correct or not in that inference
is of no consequence ; for, as a pure matter of certainty, it is well
known that, unlike iron, copper is not hardened by immersion or
cooling in water, but', on the contrary, it is softened thereby;
indeed, it is the constant practice of coppersmiths and other
craftsmen, when desiring to soften that metal or its alloys, to
heat it and cool it in water, whilst it is hardened by rolling,
beating, or pressing ; and one of these latter operations was
doubtless not unknown to the Greek makers of knives and spear
heads in copper.
The paucity of researches bearing on the knowledge and use of
iron in pre-historic ages can, as I have already hinted at, be scarcely
any other than the direct outcome of that dogma propounded
by the Danish and Swedish antiquaries—Nillson, Steenstrup,
Forchammer, Worsaâe, and others—which teaches that men began
to use tools of stone, then bronze, and lastly iron.
As to the beginnings of man, in some parts of the world
at least, to do his work with stones, it is no business of
ours just now to enter upon, nor, indeed, does there seem
occasion to do so, for the conclusions in that connection appear,
so far as an incomplete testimony can go, well founded. But
concerning the further question, as to whether bronze and iron
came universally to be employed in the order of succession assigned
to them by the progressive developists, amongst each of the sections
of mankind now grouped according to the character of their
language into the Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian families, we have,
I believe, sufficient grounds to question.
It is asserted, as I have already mentioned, that the appearance
of iron on the scene is an index to certain guides of our own
times, that a higher civilization prevailed than where bronze is
present, as may be gathered from the following passage of Sir
Charles Lyell’s writings, when quoting M. Morlot,+ he says:—“The
next stage of improvement that is manifested by the substitution of
* Lectures on the Science of Language (p. 230). London, 1868, Second
Series. Longmans.
t Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles, tom. vi., p. 292.
�Proto-Egyptian Evidence.
7
iron for bronze indicates another stride in the progress of the art.
Iron never presents itself except in meteorites in a native state; so
that to recognize its ores, and then to separate the metal from the
matrix, demands no small exercise of the power of observation and
invention.”* To the metallurgist, however, who is conversant with
the art and science of extracting metals from the ores, and of com
pounding them together as alloys, the picture at once presents a
different view; and it is indeed some satisfaction to know that the
bronze and iron order of succession does not receive the assent of
our leading living metallurgist, Dr. Percy.
That school, however, which claims the higher antiquity for the
alloy bronze seems to infer that because no iron specimens are pointed
out so old by centuries, perhaps by thousands of years, as this spear
head, that chisel, this bowl, or that hatchet (and I am not aware
that any one has yet proved that an iron specimen has been found
in the whole world which could be pronounced even so old, not to
mention older, than any one of the many bronze relics of which such
a legion exist; indeed, when we reflect upon a certain peculiarity
inherent to the metal iron, and, for our present considerations,
practically absent from the alloy bronze, it does appear scarcely
possible that a specimen of metallic iron should be found belonging
to nearly so early an age as that to which even tolerably late bronze
specimens belong; for we need only to be reminded that iron, when
exposed to the action of the air or moisture, even in a very few
years, becomes converted into an oxide, and so entirely, that it is
often not possible to recognize whether it had previously been
reduced to the metallic condition or not), iron could not have been
previously used.
The Proto-Egyptian remains, monuments, etc., in Lower Egypt
are allowed by all men of all creeds to be the oldest extant
relics of the works of the human race, (some of them not only the
most stupendous, but the most perfect in mechanical excellence
that we can ascertain to have at any time been erected on this
earth, and but for which inherent quality they would long since
have passed out of the reach of our eye-witness—as many others
of a lower order of mechanical construction, and of far later date,
have passed away, even so that their place can nowhere now be
found), and confronting these primeval structures with the bronze
and iron succession dogma, as educed more especially from Scandi
navian philosophy—how does the dogma fit the facts before us
* The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, &c., by Sir Charles Lyell,
Bart., F.R.S. London, 1863.
�8
Malleable Iron from the Great Pyramid.
in respect of Proto-Egyptian testimony. Methinks I hear the sup
porters of that dogma re-echo, “Exactly;” “for bronze, it has been
said, was compounded of such proportions of the two metals that
the resulting alloy was so hard that it would cut stone just as well
as the steel chisels and jumpers of to-day; and therefore it must
have been used in those extremely early erections.” This is, how
ever, I am disposed to believe, rather a begging of the question,
and specially illogical. For we may surely in all fairness ask,
that since bronze is so slowly oxidizable, if it really was used in
Lower Egypt, on these the very earliest works of man on the earth,
should we not find some specimens of it in or about these said
monuments? Yet, so far as I have been able to ascertain, not a
single bronze relic has been found throughout the whole Nile valley
which can with certainty be pronounced so old as either the material or
hieroglyphic testimony which we now possess regarding iron.
Biit, to turn again to the question of the priority of iron,
how does the investigation result? Not, as we should expect,
from the bronze and iron succession doctrine, but precisely the
reverse of that; for not only are iron instruments depicted in
the tomb pictures of the 4th dynasty at Memphis, but at
Memphis itself: among the monuments there metallic iron has
been found, and is now in this country of ours. Not only is metallic
iron found in that very locality to-day, but remarkably so, it has
been found in the very oldest building of all there—by universal
accord the very oldest building in the whole earth; not in that
particular building either, in such a way as to have been placed
there by accident or intention, at a time subsequent to the
erection, but in such a way that it could have been placed there
when and only when the structure was in course of erection. Now,
it may perhaps appear startling to be told that, after a lump of
malleable iron was removed by blasting it out from the solid masonry
of the Great Pyramid by Col. Howard Vyse, thirty-five years ago, and
which has been ever since deposited in the British Museum, I have
altogether failed to meet with an allusion to it by any writer on
the history of metallurgy. This piece of iron to which I refer was
not dug up amongst any rubbish or concreted mass of matter at
the foundations of the Pyramid which have there accumulated,
but near the top of the building, as the following passage and
certificates, quoted from Howard Vyse’s Pyramids of Gizeh
testify.
“ Mr. Hill discovered a piece of iron in an inner joint, near the
mouth of the southern air-channel, which is probably the oldest
�Malleable Iron from the Great Pyramid.
9
piece of wrought iron known.
*
It has been sent to the British
Museum, with the following certificates:”—
“This is to certify, that the piece of iron found by me near the mouth of the
air-passage in the southern side of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, on Friday, May
26th, was taken out by me from an inner joint, after having removed, by blasting,
the two outer tiers of the stones of the present surface of the Pyramid ; and that
no joint or opening of any sort was connected with the above-mentioned joint, by
which the iron could have been placed in it after the original building
of the Pyramid. I also shewed the exact spot to Mr. Perring on Saturday,
June 24th.
“J. R. HILL.
“Cairo, June 25th, 1837.”
“To the above certificate of Mr. Hill I can add, that since I saw the spot at
the commencement of the blasting, there have been two tiers of stones removed,
and that if the piece of iron was found in the joint pointed out to me by Mr.
Hill, and which was covered by a large stone, partly remaining, it is impossible
it could have been placed there since the building of the Pyramid.
“J. S. PEPPING, C.E.
“Cairo, June21th. 1837.”
“We hereby certify that we examined the place whence the iron in question
was taken by Mr. Hill, and we are of opinion that the iron must have been left
in the joint during the building of the Pyramid, and that it could not have been
inserted afterwards.
“ED. S. ANDREWS.
JAMES MASH, C.E.”
“ The mouth of this air-channel had not been forced—it measured
8§ inches wide by 9| inches high—and had been effectually screened
from the sands of the desert by a projecting stone above it.”
Since then, the Great Pyramid is absolutely the oldest building
on every testimony, both that of Herodotus, the hieroglyphs, and
astronomy, as proven by the researches of Lepsius, Wilkinson,
Fergusson, Herschel, and Smyth; and whereas iron is found there
and bronze is not; and whereas it is doubtful whether any bronze
relics found near Jeezeh are so old as the Pyramid, I think the
proof is clear to the most obstinate, that for iron we must claim
an antiquity far higher than that hitherto assigned to it. Yet
some will doubtless object to such a conclusion, seeing that it is
only a single specimen which, so far, has been found. It must not,
however, be forgotten that had not this specimen been in the
* Lord Prudhoe is said to have brought from Egypt an ancient iron instru
ment ; and I thought that I had perceived the remains of an iron fastening in
the chamber containing the sideboard or shelf in the great temple at Abou
SimbaL In fact, stone could not have been quarried without metal, which must,
therefore, have been in use in the earliest times. The smelting of metals seems
to have been an antediluvian art.
�10
Nile, Mud Excavations.
position which the certificates I have read to you point out. that
is, walled in, removed from contact with the corroding action of
the atmosphere and moisture, but in an exposed position, even it
could not have come down to our day; so that if, as doubtless
there may have been, numerous tools of iron, or perhaps, nay,
almost certainly steel, left in that locality by the Pyramid builders,
it is beyond doubt that unless enclosed, as the specimen under notice
was, not one of them would have lasted until now, even in that
driest of climates—Egypt.
Before, however, we do, from the evidence afforded by this
particular specimen of iron from the Great Pyramid, commit our
selves to certaiiily assigning it to be of cotemporary date with that
monument’s erection, we have, in order to act fairly towards all
parties, to ask ourselves whether it is not probable that it may
have been surreptitiously dropped into the place by some wily
Arab worker, just after the stones surrounding its site were
blasted away—for some persons will doubtless be found sceptical
on that head—when remembering the cunning with which modern
Arabs are reported to drop fragments of pottery and burnt brick
into Nile mud excavations, on purpose to find them afterwards, so
as to entitle them to baksheesh from the exploring parties. If this
Pyramid piece of iron had been found so recently as the times when
the Nile mud excavations were carried on, wherein Arab sagacity
was evoked to practical wrong-doing in the prospect of reward, I for
one should be disposed to place little trust indeed in its testimony;
but whereas it was removed from the Pyramid some twenty years
before the time when Hekekyan Bey and Mr. Leonard Horner
began sinking pits and boring in the Delta, and in whose day it
would appear that the Arab trick was developed; and whereas the
finding of metallic specimens in the Pyramid was no part of Howard
Vyse’s inquiry, as the finding of pottery specimens in the Delta
was of the later investigators,—it does not look in any way
reasonable to suppose that the iron found its way there so
surreptitiously; and as a positive argument against the validity
of that suggestion, the very condition of the piece of iron itself
may be noticed, as shewn by figs. 1 and 2, Plate II. —namely,
*
* This Plate, as well as Plate I., show the iron specimens full size, and have
been copied from photographs specially prepared to illustrate this paper.
My friend, W. Petrie, has been kind enough to spend much time, at my
request, in the examination of this piece of iron from the Great Pyramid; and
in writing me lately regarding it, he says,—“Thickness originally, probably
| inch. In some parts it is now L including the scale of rust, and in other
parts it thins off to nothing. The side^having the label upon it is much
�Iron Reduced without Fusion.
11
the fact of its having pieces of nummulite limestone—indeed, the
trace of a nummulite itself—of which very stone the Pyramid is built,
still adhering to it; and this condition of the piece of iron
certainly looks like valid evidence of its having been built into the
Pyramid, and therefore cotemporary with the erection of that
monument. Yet we still require evidence from other sources to
ratify our conclusions, and which is happily forthcoming. But,
before speaking of that further evidence, I wish to consider another
matter.
It is asserted by many persons now-a-days, who, it would appear,
are but little versed in metallurgic science, that iron indicates a
further acquaintance with metallurgic art than bronze indicates.
This, I believe, is a conclusion not only erroneous, but one which
no practical metallurgist would assent to. Looking broadly at the
face of metallurgic science, it is scarcely possible to point out a simpler
and more readily occurring result, than the reduction of iron ores to
the metallic condition, in the manner wherein that was effected prior
to the modern invention of cast iron. We must remember that
there is not a tissue of evidence that cast iron was known to the
ancients, although certain writers, and amongst them a well known
member of this Society, Mr. James Napier, has written, that the
reduction of iron ore is performed by mixing the oxide of the
metal “with coal or other carbonaceous matters, and subjecting
them to a heat of sufficient intensity to fuse them!
*
Now, it is
well ascertained, as the result of a very long experience, that iron
may be reduced from the oxides to the metallic state without
fusion; indeed, in the most perfect blast furnace operations, the
iron is reduced by carbonic oxide before the charge reaches that
portion of the furnace where fusion takes place (the smelting zone
of Scheerer). When fusion does take place, we get from the
rougher than the other side; and on this side is a trace of a nummulite, in
lighter colour than the iron, concreted on it; and there is also a nodule of stone,
A inch diameter, projecting from the surface, and sinking into the rusty mass.
Judging from general appearances and weight, not more than half of what now
remains of it consists of rust, the remainder is probably yet metallic. The
colour of the rust is the usual dark-brown or blackish, not reddish ; and it is a
very hard and solid kind of rust, like the magnetic iron ore. It has evidently
been flexible, tough wrought-iron. ”
* Ancient Workers and Artificers in Metal. By James Napier, F.C.S., &c.
London, 1856. P. 132.
And Sir Charles Lyell, as if borrowing his information from Mr. Napier, goes
somewhat farther, when he writes—“To fuse the ore requires an intense heat,
not to be obtained without artificial appliances, such as pipes inflated by the
human breath, or bellows, or some other suitable machinery.”
�12
Iron at least Coeval with Bronze.
furnace either cast iron or crude steel, the iron being combined
with a portion of the carbon of the charge. From what we know
of the most ancient methods of reduction, the fusion of the metal
was by them impossible. Hence the attempts in modern times to
extol the difficulty of iron-making, by supposing its fusion to have
been necessary, and therefore raising it high above the state of
knowledge requisite for the more complex operations of forming an
alloy out of two dissimilar metals, are not only incorrect but
extremely misleading. The same author, to whom I have already
referred, even goes so far as to say that “ the smelting and manu
facture of iron is surrounded with so many difficulties, and needs so
many requirements and such skill, that we would expect it to have
been amongst the last of the metals that were brought into use.”
Now, from what has been said, and from what follows, it will,
I believe, be admitted. that not only is iron the very first metal
which we should expect to find brought into use, merely on account
of the simplicity by which it is reduced from its ores—namely, by
heating the oxides in contact with carbon, and maintaining that
contact for a length of time sufficient to allow the carbon, by a
process analogous to that of cementation, to attack the oxygen to
the innermost parts of the lumps of ore, resulting finally in a mass
of malleable iron or a crude steel, ready to be re-heated and
hammered into any shape desired. Whilst I have been thus led
to point out the tendency towards erroneous conclusions to which
Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Napier have helped us, yet I must, in
due courtesy, acknowledge that the latter gentleman upsets his
own conclusions by showing, from literary and monumental proof,
that the use of iron was at least coeval with bronze, if not anterior to
it; and in so far he has helped much those who reason from the
metallurgist’s point of view; for, quoting Sir Gardner Wilkinson,
Mr. Napier says‘‘Iron and copper mines are found in the
Egyptian desert, which were worked in old times; and the monu
ments of Thebes, and some of the towns about Memphis, dating
more than 4,000 years ago, represent butchers sharpening their
knives on a round bar of metal attached to their aprons, which,
from its blue colour, can only be steel.”*
Sir Gardner Wilkinson himself, too, as late as 1847, when the third
edition of his famous five volume work-j- was published, has written—
“ The most remote point to which we can see opens with a nation
* “ The Ancient Workers in Metal ” (p. 133). London, 1856.
+ “ The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,” p. viii., Preface.
London, 1847.
�Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Mr. Basil H. Cooper.
13
possessing all the arts of civilized life already matured.” Which pas
sage contrasts strikingly with another in the same volume (p. 59),—
“ It was about the same period, b.c. 1406, that some suppose the
use of iron to have been first discovered in Greece; but whether it
*
was already known in Egypt or no, is a question hitherto unanswered.
We are surprised at the execution of hieroglyphics cut in hard
granite and basaltic stone, to the depth of two inches, and naturally
enquire, what means were employed—what tools were used? If the
art of tempering steel was unknown to them, how much more must
our wonder increase? and the difficulty of imagining any mode of
applying copper to this purpose adds to our perplexity.” It is singu
lar that so faithful and fair-dealing an author as Sir Gardner Wil
kinson, one, too, so pre-eminently versed, after his long residence in
Egypt, as to the facts relating to its history, and writing, too, so
many years after the deposit of the Great Pyramid iron specimen in
the British Museum, and being in general so exact a scholar in the
hieroglyphs, should assert that “ whether iron was already known
in Egypt or no, is a question hitherto unanswered.” Since, however,
Wilkinson, Lyell, Morlot, and certain Swedes and Danes have
published their views to the world, Egyptological research has not
stood still; on the contrary, it has been prosecuted with continued
energy, resulting, in so far as our present purpose is concerned, with
some striking corroborations of the use of iron, not only so early as
the Great Pyramid age, but much earlier still; for we find, as it has
been so learnedly set forth by Mr. Basil H. Cooper,f that there is
well ascertained hieroglyphic evidence of iron being known in
Egypt even so early as the sixth or seventh monarch of the first
dynasty.
Mr. Cooper says,—li It must, I think, be conceded . . . that
supposing iron to have been known to the Egyptians ... its
employment in the construction of those Titanic erections, the
Pyramids, ... is far more probable than the hypothesis that
none but bronze tools were used. And this, I venture to think, can
be satisfactorily demonstrated.
“ The proof is based on the extremely significant Coptic word for
iron, as illustrated and explained by the mode in which it is written
* “Hesiod fin his Opera et Dies) makes the use of iron a much later dis
covery. In Theseus’ time, who ascended the throne of Athens in 1235 b. c., iron is
conjectured not to have been known, as he was found buried with a brass sword
and spear. Homer generally speaks of brass arms, though he mentions iron.”
Trans. Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature,
and Arts. 1868.
�14
Hieroglyphic Testimony.
in the hieroglypliical inscriptions, and on the occurrence of that
word as a component element in the name of an Egyptian Pharaoh
belonging to the first dynasty. The modern Egyptian word for
iron is, in the Sahidic dialect, which is considered to be the purest
Benipi, or, with a slight change in the final vowel, Benipe. In the
hieroglyphical form of the language it is the same. . . . Its first
element is BA or BE (in the Coptic BO), meaning ‘ hard-wood,’ or
‘ stone;’ and the two letters which spell the word are often accom
panied in the hieroglyphical inscriptions by a picture of the squared
stone, such as those of which the pyramids were built. At other
times, as if to remind us that the word originally meant ‘ hard-wood,’
and that it was only in process of time that it came to denote 1 hard
ware’ in general, including such stone hardware as was going in
very early times, the picture illustrating the spelt word was a
branch or sprig. The middle syllable in the word Benipe consists
of the letters NI, with a very short vowel. It is a preposition,
answering to the English ‘ of.’ The last element in the composite
word is the syllable PE, which is the Coptic word for heaven, or the
sky. And that this is really its signification here is proved incontrovertibly by the pictures with which this syllable is wont to be
accompanied in the hieroglyphical orthography of the word Benipe ;
for it is the picture invariably used to denote the heaven, or the
sky, and is employed for no other purpose. Properly, it represents
the ceiling of a temple, which was regarded as itself a representation
of the sky, the true ceiling of the true and original temple; and the
picture is accordingly wont to be emblazoned with stars. Hence,”
says Mr. Cooper, “ the signification of the entire word Benipe, . . .
although it could not for some time be conceived why the Egyptians
should have called iron by so singular a name as ‘ stone of heaven,’
‘ stone of the sky,’ ‘ sky-stone.’ ”
“ Some time afterwards, however, it occurred to me that this was
the very name which would naturally be given to the only iron
with which men were likely to meet in a natural state. There is
but one exception to the rule that iron is never found native, like
gold and some other of the metals; that exception is in the instance
of meteoric iron, which might surely be called with propriety “ the
stone of heaven, or of the sky.” “ Moreover—and I have to thank
my friend Mr. Pengelly for reminding me of the fact, and so
materially helping me to shape out my crude speculation—meteoric
iron needs no preparatory process, as does that procured from ores,
to render it workable. In short, we may be sure, especially with
the light thrown on the matter by this invaluable Egyptian word,
�Hieroglyphic and Material Testimony Congruous.
15
bright with the radiance of that heaven which enters into its com
position, that with this wondrous matter from another sphere than
our own the working of iron began.”
Whether Mr. Basil Cooper be right or not in his final conclusion,
that meteoric iron was the first used, I think we scarcely have suffi
cient evidence to convince us, although it looks extremely probable ;
but that the hieroglyphic testimony is at one with all the other
evidence, no one, I should suppose, would now dispute , and espe
cially when we find that in Lower Egypt, in the very earliest times,
the inhabitants worked so perfectly in granite, diorite, and others
of the very hardest stones, for which copper or bronze tools would
be useless, the result of all the testimony which I have adduced
is to add another link to the completion of that chain of evidence
which in Lower Egypt pre-eminently proves the extremely high
intellectuality of man in the earliest ages which we are able,
with certainty, to fathom.
In conclusion, I have to record my obligations to the Directors
of the British Museum; and especially to the keeper there of the
Oriental Antiquities, the learned Dr. Birch, for affording me the
opportunity of having photographed, under Dr. Birch’s super
intendence, the specimens of iron referred to in this communication ;
and to my friend W. Petrie I am much indebted for frequent
visits to the British Museum, and for personally applying to the
Directors, and procuring their permission to photograph the iron
relics.
BELL AND BAIN, PRINTERS, 41 MITCHELL STREET, GLASGOW.
����PLATE II-
Showing one side with
the descriptive label
m 0 ol. Howar d Vy s e* s
han dwnt l n g.
TECE of IKON removed by blasting from the solid masonry of the Great pyramid
Copied, from a Photograph ■
FIG. 2.
�
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On some evidences as to the very early uses of iron, and old bits of iron in particular
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Day, John Vincent
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Conway Tracts
Industrial Archaeology
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ON THE ESTIMATION OF SMALL QUANTITIES OF PHOS
PHORUS IN IRON AND STEEL BY THE SPECTRUM
ANALYSIS.
By Sir JOHN G. N. ALLEYNE, Bart., Butterley.
INTRODUCTION.
This is not the first time that the subject of the spectrum analysis
has been brought before the Iron and Steel Institute. At th®
London meeting of the Institute, in March, 1871, Professor Roscoe
read a paper on the subject; that paper is included in the Pro
ceedings, and will be found in Vol. II, 1871, of the Journal. The
Professor, after very fully describing the spectroscope itself, and
exhibiting and experimenting with sundry apparatus, in speaking
of the spectrum of the Bessemer flame, says, “ Why do we not see
the spectrum of phosphorus ? I think the analysis of the slag will
tell us why we do not see phosphorus in the flame, for the
good reason that it is not there. A very small quantity of it is
contained in the pig, and this we know quite well does not come
out, though many people here wish it would, but it remains in the
iron, so that I think it rather hard upon us to be told you cannot
do us any good at all, because you cannot tell us anything about
silicon or anything about phosphorus. In spite, however, of these
shortcomings, I hope what I have said will show you that spectrum
analysis is not wholly without its use, and that we may really
believe it will, in time to come, be much more largely employed
than it is at present, so that we may succeed, in the end, in doing
what we originally intended to tell you: when to stop your blow,
so as to have finished steel in your converters, without having
added any spiegel at alb”
Following at a very humble distance the great discoverers in
Solar physics, Augstrom and Kirchhoff, in Germany, Huggins and
�2
ESTIMATION OF SMALL QUANTITIES OF PHOSPHORUS
Lockyer, in our own country, the author has long been of 'opinion
that, if they, by means of the spectroscope, can analyse the sun—if
they can, by means of the cross prism or prism of comparison,
prove to demonstration that most of, or all, the metallic elements
and the various constituents of which this earth is formed, are
found in a state of incandescence in the sun; if Dr. Huggins, by
the displacement of the hydrogen line, can calculate whether a
star is approaching to or receding from the earth,—we should be
able to apply this system to our manufacturing operations. In
bringing the subject again before the Institute, the author wishes
to acknowledge the great advantage he has derived from the
study of the published investigations of the gentlemen before
mentioned, Dr. Huggins, Professors Augstrom and Kirchhoff, and
Mr. Lockyer. He would especially point out to the Institute that,
as practical manufacturers and engineers, it is their special business
to apply, and apply rightly, the powers of nature to operations
of the manufactory, it is the very basis of all improvement, the
very charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers, of which the
author and many of the members of the Iron and Steel Institute
have the honour of being members. To quote the words of the
late Mr. Thos. Tredgold, “ A society for the general advancement
of mechanical science, and more particularly for promoting the
acquisition of that species of knowledge which constitutes the
profession of a civil engineer, being the art of directing the great
sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.” It
is on this principle that the author invites the co-operation of the
Institute, as well as that of, as it were, the parent society, the
Institution of Civil Engineers, by whose kindness we are this day
assembled in these rooms. The subject is very large, the field of
enquiry and investigation which it opens is enormous—light, heat,
and electricity. It is impossible to say into what ramifications
a discussion may lead, bringing forward questions which in all
probability the author would be unable to answer; and which
are infinitely beyond the reasonable range of a single paper. It
is with this view that it is proposed to confine the subject
of the present paper to the estimation of phosphorus, by
means of electricity of high tension, the power of absorption of
hydrogen gas, and the spectroscope. The science of spectrum
�IN IRON AND STEEL BY THE SPECTRUM ANALYSIS,
3
analysis is a new one, one which will, if successful, be of the greatest
advantage in our blast furnace, forge, and steel manufacturing
operations, indeed to all manufactories where a qualitative or
quantitative analysis of the materials is required. If the subject
is brought before the Institute in too crude a state, the author
would plead, as his excuse, that it was his ambition that the
Institute should work it out for themselves, that a quantitative
analysis should emanate from one of themselves, and that they
should not wait until some of the great discoverers, before alluded
to, had time to turn their attention to terrestrial investigations,
and show us that the same law which applied to the absorption lines
of the sun’s atmosphere, and the effect of his rays passing through
the atmosphere of the earth, could be applied to the quantitative
analysis of the iron and steel as it passes from one process
of manufacture to another. The author does not presume
to come before the Institute and state that he has made a complete
quantitative analysis of iron by Spectrum Analysis, but hopes
that he will be able to show that he has made some progress
towards that result. Taking up the subject, then, where Professor
Roscoe left it in March, 1871, the author had first to get aspectrum
of iron, and to find the requisite apparatus. Mr. Alfred Apps, of
the Strand, furnished a powerful Grove’s Battery, an induction coil
capable of giving a spark of 12 inches between the secondary poles,
and a Leyden Battery of 4 one gallon jars. The coil was of very much
the same construction as that which he has now lent to further
illustrate this paper, and which he has kindly offered to set to work,if
the members wish to see it in operation. This offer the Council has
accepted. A spectroscope, by Mr. John Browning, with a battery
of 4 prisms of dense flint glass formed the first batch of apparatus.
The author certainly has, after a great number of experiments and
much study, formed an opinion of his own, but his wish and inten
tion is to describe a number of those experiments, showing the results
to which they lead, and leaving the members to form their own
conclusions, inviting, nevertheless, their co-operation and assist
ance. Professors Augstrom and Thalen state that there are 460
lines in the spectrum of iron. Dr. Watts, in his index of spectrum,
gives—Kirchkoff 71, Thaldn 148, Huggins 101; but there are also
present the atmospheric lines, which, in his index of spectra, give—
�4
ESTIMATION OF SMALL QUANTITIES OF PHOSPHORUS
Huggins, 32 for oxygen, and nitrogen 78. The question first to be
decided was, which of all that multitude of lines are atmospheric
lines, which sulphur, calcium, manganese, phosphorus, &c., &c. It
was very soon obvious that the spectra obtained from Geissler’s
vacuum tubes, although most beautifully made and contrived, gave
the spectra under totally different conditions from those in which
they exist in our iron. The curve recommended by Dr. Watts
was tried, but the author found that the construction of the
spectroscope was such that he could not work with certainty and
accuracy. After many trials and experiments, with the details of
which it is needless to trouble the Institute, he determined to work
wholly by spectra of comparison. But considerable difficulty arose
with silica, alumina, and sulphur, as well as phosphorus. First, as to
the means of holding them as electrodes ; secondly, they are very
bad conductors. A piece of fire brick, held in the nippers, will give
no spectrum, the spark jumps over it in the most clever way, and
gives nothing but the spectrum of the nippers, be they brass or
steel. Some of the small tubes, samples of which are on the table,
were made—they are shown at No. 7 in the drawing. The object
here was to bury the electrode in the pounded fire brick, and force
the current to pass through it. These are obviously a modifica
tion of Geissler’s tubes. The lines of silica and alumina shine out
with splendour, but they do not last long, the glass gets coated
with the material which is decomposed by the spark, and forms a
conductor, the spark only passing in fitful flashes as at X, and
giving but very little light; on the whole, the best way of charging
the tube is, as shown at the drawing No. 8, letting the platinum
electrode come through the throat of the tube, and burying the
lower electrode in the powder under examination; this has the
further advantage that the spectrum of the glass itself does not
intrude, the lines of the platinum must, of course, be noted, and
not confused with those of the powder. The spectra of iron ores
come out very well by this method. The nozzles A B are for letting
in gas. This being the most difficult spectrum with which the
author has had to deal, he has thought it better to explain it
before proceeding to phosphorus, which forms the main subject of the
paper. The phosphorus lines were got in this way—a small hole was
drilled into a piece of carbon and filled up with phosphorus, the
�IN IRON AND STEEL BY THE SPECTRUM ANALYSIS.
5
phosphorus worked over the carbon like the head of a rivet, so that
the spark could not get from one carbon electrode to the other without
volatilizing the phosphorus; but it is quite obvious that this .method
•would not do in atmospheric air, the spectrum must be taken in a
gas with which the phosphorus could not enter into combustion,
orkit would simply light in the spark, combine with the oxygen,
and fill the cylinder with phosphoric acid. Carbonic acid, hydrogen,
nr the common coal gas, all do very well for this. A special appara
tus, however, had to be fitted up, which is on the table, and is
shown on the drawing at No. 2. The lines of phosphorus on a
carbon point, taken in this way in coal gas, are shown on the
spectrum on the drawing at No. 9. It will be seen at once that
the characteristic features of phosphorus are seven broad bands in
the green, there are also three very peculiar lines in the red, like a
wicket with the middle stump thinner than the other two. There
is also the same kind of group in sulphur, but in a different position
in the red, by no means coincident. The lines of both sulphur
and phosphorus are got by comparison, that is, one pair of electrodes
were prepared with a phosphorus point, as before described, and
another pair, from exactly the same carbon, were prepared without
phosphorus; each pair was fitted into one of the glass cylinders,
the cylinders were filled with coal gas, each with a separate
branch pipe, and the gas lit, the pair of plain carbon electrodes
were arranged in front of the slit of the collimator of the spectro
scope, and the phosphorus pair were arranged opposite the cross
prism, or prism of comparison. The two spectra are seen—the
phosphorus above, and the carbon below, in the usual way. The
lines which coincide are those.of carbon and coal gas, a beautiful
spectrum well worthy of study, but one with which for the
present we have nothing to do.
The lines which do not
-coincide are those of phosphorus and anything the phosphorus
may contain; the readings on the dividing plate must be
-carefully noted.
We have now to look for phosphorus in
•our iron. The plain carbon points must be removed—the nippers
replaced with a clean pair, the cylinder covers cleaned, and the
iron electrodes, to be examined; put in. The iron is now in air,
•the phosphorus in coal gas, the lines which coincide are produced
<by phosphorus in the iron which is decomposed by the spark, taking
�6
ESTIMATION OF SMALL QUANTITIES OF PHOSPHORUS
care to note which were the readings taken as phosphorus linesin the last experiment, for there may be silicon, sulphur, and other
impurities in the carbon—there is certainly also carbon itself, all of
which are present in the iron. There is, however, little or no risk
of any confusion on this point. All the coincident lines in ordinary
pig, puddled, or bar iron, are in the green, or very near to it. The
seven lines or bands of the phosphorus are much broader, those of
fairly good iron, very fine, sharp, and bright. The idea struck theauthor, are not those iron lines brighter than the phosphorus itself,!
because they are in an atmosphere containing oxygen ? The ques-'
tion was soon put and answered, the coal gas was let into the iron
cylinder, and the lines vanished entirely; but the spectrum of coal,
gas does not do very well for this purpose. It has numerous lines of
its own, which have to be eliminated, the; part of the spectrum—the
green—where the characteristic lines of phosphorus occur, is ruled
all over by the most extraordinary number of dark absorption lines,,
through the intervals of which the brighter parts of the continuous
spectrum of the spark are seen. It is most difficult to determine
whether these are, as supposed, bright spaces of a superimposed
spectrum, or lines. Hydrogen gas is much better as an absorber,,
or as a gas in which, oxygen being absent, no combustion can take
place. It is needless to point out here that, in using hydrogen, the
greatest care must be taken to avoid explosions. The practice in
these experiments has been to fill all the cylinders and pipes withcoal gas, light it, and to displace this gas with hydrogen. It is found
that, when there are twelve cubic inches of hydrogen, as measured
by the graduated bottle hereafter to be described, the carbon
rulings (if that can be accepted as a proper term) disappear. The
lines of the spectrum, which in air are bright, and which coincide
with those of phosphorus and sulphur, are completely blotted out
or absorbed. The conclusion which the author has come to is that,
when small quantities of phosphorus or other matters are present
in the electrodes, they require oxygen in some form to bring them
out as bright lines. He is confirmed in this view by other writers.
In Schellen’s Spectrum Analysis, page 162, after describing
Professor Tyndall’s discovery of another line in Lithium, in the
intense heat of the Voltaic arc, he says : “ If a few grains of common
salt be dropped into the flame of a Bunsen burner, there is emitted.
�IN IRON AND STEEL BY THE SPECTRUM ANALYSIS.
7
an intense light of one colour, producing the spectrum of a
single yellow line. If the temperature of the flame be raised
by a further supply of oxygen, the brilliancy of this line is
immediately augmented, and the number of coloured lines so much
increased, as to approach somewhat to a continuous spectrum.” It
may be that the lines are only obscured by the spectrum of
hydrogen as a screen, or as a piece of coloured glass. If this should
prove the correct explanation, it can, just as well as the first
supposition, which the author has accepted as the true one, be used
as a means of measuring the quantity present in the spark, and
arriving at a correct estimation of that quantity by the spectrum
analysis. By the first supposition, we calculate the quantity
inversely, as the quantity of oxygen, or a compound of oxygen used;
by the second, we alter the character and condition of the screen,
it becomes less dense by admixture with the oxygen compound,
until the line is able to penetrate. If a large quantity of
phosphorus is undergoing deflagration at the electrodes, it will
penetrate a screen of considerable density. If a small quantity only
is undergoing decomposition, the density of the screen must be
reduced, until the line can penetrate it; in either case the quantity
can be estimated inversely, as the quantity of oxygen that has been
used, or on same ratio as represented by the curve on the drawing,
No. 1. In comparing a phosphide of iron with phosphorus, or a
sulphide of iron with sulphur, the quantity of sulphur and phos
phorus has power to penetrate the gas, but some of the lines at the
red end of the spectrum are missing. To return, then, to the main
subject of the paper. At No. 9 on the drawings, is shown by the
characteristic lines of phosphorus, the lines were taken as before
described on carbon electrodes tipped with phosphorus—some lines
which are exceedingly fine have been omitted as doubtful. In.
this spectrum we have 21 lines; Dr. Watt’s gives 47, as found by
Plucker, but as to how the spectrum was taken, whether as a vapour
at atmospheric pressure, or in a vacuum tube, he gives no informa
tion. The principle, which the author has introduced to the Insti
tute, of course requires further investigation; but the fact does
seem to him to be confirmed by such experiments as he has been
able to apply, which is this, that an atmosphere of hydrogen gas, or
a gas composed of the ordinary coal gas from the gas works, with
�8
ESTIMATION OF SMALL QUANTITIES OF PHOSPHORUS
an admixture of hydrogen, has power to absorb completely the
phosphorus lines in iron, even when there is as much as 3-334 per
cent, of phosphorus present—that no sign of phosphorus is seen in
the spectrum in an atmosphere of this gas—that on the admission
of a very small amount of oxygen, the line does appear—that when
very small quantities of phosphorus are present, a very much larger
quantity of oxygen must be admitted, to make the line shine out
as a bright line. The experiments which have led to this result
have spread over many months, and have absorbed almost all the
author’s leisure time; they will, however, be explained in a few
minutes. They extend over several samples of iron, from which a
selection has been made, ranging from ‘550 of phosphorus to 021.
From these samples, the curve shown at No. 1 on the drawings
has been constructed; it will be observed that they do not
proceed in a direct ratio, but in the form of a curve. If,
as the author hopes, the- principle is right—but on this
he wishes to speak with great diffidence—he has lived to see
many splendid inventions of the patent office and lecture room
blown into thin air, when they get into the practical operations of
the laboratory and the workshop, that he would use due caution.
In the present state of his knowledge on the subject he would
proceed to an analysis of iron, with the apparatus now on the table,
and set forth on the drawings, in this way :—We propose, in this
case, to deal with materials suitable for the Siemens steel furnace,
either by Dr. Siemens’ open-hearth furnace or by the SiemensMartin process. For the quality we propose to make we will
assume that we must not have more than ’050 of phosphorus. A
few pieces are chipped from the pig iron to be used, from these a
pair of electrodes are filled up, they are placed in the nippers, and
put into the glass cylinder shown at No. 2. We should place the
phosphorus electrodes themselves in the cylinder shown at No. 3,
let coal gas into No. 3, and turn on the current; when the spectro
scope is adjusted, we should see that there are seven broad lines in
the green, that the band marked 181° 6j' in the green has a decided
unmistakeable coincident in iron. The current must not be kept
on long, as the iron is in air it will be very rapidly coated with
oxide, except to satisfy the observer that it is coincident, it is better
not to turn on the current when the iron is in air, because the
�IN IRON AND STEEL BY THE SPECTRUM ANALYSIS.
9
oxide will be decomposed, and upset the subsequent calculations.
Coal gas is next let into the cylinder and pipes, and lit at such
portion of the pipes, and at the cylinder, as will ensure that all the
atmospheric air has been driven out. The hydrogen gas holder is
now connected, and the gas turned on. At No. 4 of the drawings
the graduated bottle is shown; this bottle is drawn 3|f in.
Riameter, so as to get 12 in. area. The bottle actually used
in the experiments is an old barley sugar bottle, and can be
graduated accurately to whatever its diameter may be, by
weighing twelve cubic inches, marking the space on the bottle,
and graduating it accordingly.
This bottle forms a very
important part of the apparatus. It is fitted with a syphon
pipe, shown at No. 5. When the cock at the long leg is opened,
and all the cocks to the cylinder and gas holder are also
opened, the water runs out of the bottle into the bucket shown at
pSTo. 6. The coal gas in the cylinder, No. 2, flows out and takes its
place, and the hydrogen from the gas holder follows and takes the
place of the coal gas, or mixes with it. The practice in these
experiments has been to let in, in this way, 12 cubic inches of gas
as measured by the bottle, and to examine the spectrum for air
lines; the practised eye will detect these in a moment. If the air
lines are in the spectrum, this gas is not pure, oxygen is present,
the hydrogen is unfit for use, or the pipes have not been properly
cleared of air. With 12 inches of hydrogen which has been care
fully prepared, the line, the reading of which on this particular
instrument is 181 6-J/ is completely blotted out, a continuous
hazy-looking spectrum with indications of lines at various parts,
but the line 181° 6|' has completely vanished. We have next
to ascertain what quantity of oxygen will be required to make
181° 6j' come out as a bright line. The hydrogen must be
disconnected, and carbonic acid connected, taking care, of
course, to exclude the air, 36 cubic inches are required to
bring out a bright line. This iron may with confidence be
passed and used, it drops on to the curve just at 36, showing
that it has ‘021 per cent. Supposing that we are working the
Siemens-Martin process—the next sample submitted to the
spectrum analysis we will suppose to be puddled iron, it is tried
with hydrogen and there is no line, the carbonic acid is let in as
�10
ESTIMATION OF SMALL QUANTITIES OF PHOSPHORUS
before, at short intervals, and in quantities as measured by | on
the graduated scale, which is equal to 3 cubic inches, with the
second admission of 3 inches, making in all, 6 cubic inches, the line
is bright, the iron is very bad, it contains '550 of phosphorus, and
may, with great confidence, be rejected. The curve was obtained
by only 4 samples, containing—of phosphorus
’550 H.
•301 F.
•050 I.
•021 G.
Should this system come into general use, it is very probable
that some such form of apparatus, as shown at No. 12 on the
drawings, will be found the best, because greater quantities of the
material under examination can be brought under the action of
the spark. Iron, in the form of filings, gives a very fine spectrum
in this way. Wishing to try on samples of iron containing larger
quantities of phosphorus, the author asked Mr. Edward Riley to
send him some of those from which he had made analyses—that
gentleman kindly sent him five samples—ranging from 3’334 per
cent, to '027, a sample containing ’081 was tried and fell into its
place in the curve in a very satisfactory way. The sample con
taining 3'334 was also examined, and it was found, that when such
large quantities are present, other lines must be taken into account
—the line 181'6| is wholly absorbed by the hydrogen, with six
cubic inches of carbonic acid; it came out as a great broad band,
nearly as broad as that of the phosphorus. Other lines came out
which do not appear in iron, containing *550; these lines are
nearer the blue. The special part of the apparatus for the
examination of such materials as cannot be made into electrodes
is also shown on the drawings. Samples of them are on the table.
Figure 10 is a modification of Bequerell tube, which is used
generally for the examination of solutions. A great objection has
been found to using them as open tubes, with a fluid, quantities of it
are scattered by the action of the spark, to the great injury of the
slit of the spectroscope and the eyes of the operator. The same
objection holds good with a powder. A plain glass, as shown at
No. 12, would probably be a better form of apparatus than any before
mentioned. It would be better to pass the platinum electrode
�IN IRON AND STEEL BY THE SPECTRUM ANALYSIS.
11
through a glass tube so as to insulate it from the stopper, because
the deflagration from either a fluid or a powder so coats the glass
and the face of the stopper that the current passes that way;
the glass rod, should it also become coated, is easily cleaned
by drawing it up through the cork and wiping the coating from it,
and ensuring that the circuit can be made only by passing from the
platinum electrode to the fluid or the powder. The subject of such
large quantities as 2,3, or more per cent., requires further experiment.
The time of the Institute is valuable, and must not be taken up in
dealing with suppositions. The author wishes to adhere to the
subject of the paper—the estimation of small quantities of phos
phorus in iron and steel by the spectrum analysis. As time goes on,
should he be so fortunate as to gain more knowledge and
experience, he will have great pleasure in bringing this matter
forward again, hoping that other members who have taken
up this most important subject, or who may be induced by
this introduction of it to do so, will do the same.
�»
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On the estimation of small quantities of phosphorus in iron and steel by the spectrum analysis
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Text
ON THE
HIGH ANTIQUITY
OF
IRON AND STEEL.
BY
ST. JOHN V. DAY, Assoc. Inst., C.E., F.E.S.E.,
FBLLOW OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH SOCIETY OF ARTS, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL
ENGINEERS, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERS IN SCOTLAND, HON. LIBRARIAN
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW.
Read before the Philosophical Society of Glasgow,
April 28, 1875.
LONDON:
W. H. GUEST, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1875.
��ON THE
HIGH ANTIQUITY OF IRON AND STEEL.
[Read before the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, April 28, 1875.]
In some previous communications to this Society * dealing with
questions bearing upon the extremely archaic use of Iron and
Steel, I ventured to bring together and discussed a variety of
evidence in proof of the claims for Iron to be considered amongst
the earliest, if not the very earliest of materials used by the
human race, and that not in more or less recent periods merely, but
notably that Iron was largely used in the most distant ages which
we can with certainty fathom. Those claims, the evidence when
candidly sifted, clearly asserts to be much stronger than what
the archaeologists had previously held; so strong, indeed, as to
negative the popular and too hastily drawn conclusion, that man
did not commence to use Iron until after whole millenniums of
dealing with Bone, Stone, and Bronze.
The conclusions which I formerly gave expression to as having
reached, from a re-sifting of the evidence, and also from having had
further and more direct evidence to discuss, than, so far as I can
gather, came under review of any of my predecessors in this
particular field of research, although directly opposed to the
views up to that time generally accepted, are now admitted by
Egyptologists and those metallurgists who, having a safe founda
tion in the principles of a more or less exact science, have, of
all persons who have approached questions bearing on the
metallurgy of the ancients, and not bowing down to any particular
theory, alone been able to deal with it in the spirit of a thorough
understanding of certain essential conditions involved, and by
correlating which is it alone possible that the Truth can be
reached.
It would take far more time than we have now at our disposal
to consider this subject in that complete manner which it so well
* Vide Proceedings, vol. vii., p. 476-488, and vol. viii., p. 235-268.
�4
General Result of the Evidence.
deserves, still more would it take to discuss all that other
evidence which has with such surprising rapidity grown together,
plainly indicating that in the East—whether it be among Semitic,
Aryan, Hamitic, Sporadic, or Allophyllian races—the further back
we reach, by so much do we receive proofs in the most ancient
times of people endowed with a high practical acquaintance with the
use of metals, and Iron, in particular, in its various forms of Malleable
metal, Cast Iron, and Steel, prevailing and holding rule; we find, in
fact, not a progressive rise in the qualities of materials used by man—
that is to say, from those which are more or less soft and yielding,
upwards to those which are necessarily harder and unyielding, still
less fora time do we find a progressive retrogression; but what
we in strict reality do reach as the ultimate outcome of our inquiry
is an age in which a high civilisation, not a civilisation produced by
culture, indeed, so much as a civilisation due to natural, innate
Insight, rules—in which, to return once again to our. immediate
subject, all the metals, both noble as well as ignoble, precious stones
and woods, are all together not only in full employment by the
men of the time, but the very names for which are common words
in all the oldest forms of language, whether in Egypt, Babylonia,
Assyria, India, or even China. (See Table at the end.) The
theory of a gradual transition by man in the use of substances
progressively ascending from those which are comparatively soft
and requiring but little skill to fashion to his necessities, up to
those which are hard and unyielding and apparently needing a
high er skill to utilise them, has in fact no foundation in those
countries which were admittedly the earliest peopled; it is, in short,
a conclusion which has been evoked in North-West Europe from
researches for the most part dealing with evidence belonging to the
Christian Era; and by virtue of those belonging to so comparatively
recent an age, the inferences drawn are necessarily from a partial
testimony, and therefore cannot be considered reliable.
But as is always the case in the pursuit of any subject outside
the pale of pure mathematics, our first formed conclusions subse
quently undergo modification, especially if founded upon what we
had supposed at the time to be a complete array of facts, but which
has later on received additions and perhaps correction; so in the pre
sent case, I am desirous to acknowledge and to correct some instances,
not so much perhaps of actually wrong conclusions, but such as were
fore-shortened and imperfect, at the same time to adduce further
evidence which I have since collected, and which clenches as with an
unyielding grasp, the arguments I formerly ventured to propound.
�Proto-Egypt tan Iron.
5
Yet before saying more, and in order to compress what I have now
to add into the least space, and to make it as easily applicable to the
former papers as possible, I shall follow, so far as practicable, the
order in which the subject was treated of in them, by dealing
with the earliest populated countries first, and then following the
peopling wave as it spread in other countries, so far as our know
ledge thereof will permit.
We will first, then, go back to Egypt.
EGYPT.
The difficulties in the way of deciding whether Iron was known
to the Proto-Egyptians—to the men who erected in that country
the earliest and most stupendous edifices of any age, and which
they continued to erect, but always in a retrograding order, so far
as dimensions and excellence of workmanship are concerned, from
the Delta southwards, for about 1600 years—were insuperable,
until in the first place Colonel Howard Vyse’s Engineers removed
by blasting from the oldest and largest building there, nay, in
the entire world rather, the piece of Iron now in the British
Museum, and which is illustrated by a plate in the seventh
volume of this Society’s Proceedings ; and in the second place, the
reading of the hieroglyphs became so far advanced, that it en
abled £he mention of that metal to be detected in some inscriptions
belonging to the third dynasty of Memphis, to which I shall pre
sently refer. Since the occasion, when, nearly four years ago, I
directed the attention of this Society to the existence of this very
unique specimen of some primeval Oriental smith’s handiwork,
there have not been wanting those who have raised certain doubts
respecting it, and these based partly on the difficulty of accounting
for a sufficiently actual Egyptian source of Iron ore to produce the
metal in the quantity in which it must have been required, if it is
once granted that the early Egyptians knew of Iron or even used
it at all. I had certainly from the first held this difficulty in full
view, and never felt satisfied regarding it until ascertaining the
*
existence of Iron in the Egyptian limestone, and the manner in
which it accumulates in fissures, as set forth in my second paper.
(Vide Proceedings, vol. viii., Dec. 4, 1872.) Yet that answer to
the difficulty, whilst deemed satisfactory at the time, sinks into
insignificance when placed against the immensely extended and
incontrovertible proof since brought to light by Mr. Hartland.
* From information kindly furnished by the Astronomer-I’oyal for Scotland.
B
�G
Later Discoveries in Egypt.
It is many years since Mr. Francis Galton found a black-looking
slag in some exceedingly ancient Sinaitic remains, conjectured to be
anterior to the time of Moses; but it is only quite tlie other day
*
that the import of this first step in a discovery received its due
weight, and was consummated by the further finding of vast Iron
works by Mr. Hartland, in the neighbourhood of that part of the
Sinaitic peninsula which was held in subjugation by the kings of the
third and fourth dynasties of the old empire reigning at Memphis,
as proven by the monumental tablets in the Wady Meghara.
To this discovery I shall presently recur; but before dwelling
upon it, it is important to shew that the prior discoveries of the
mention of Iron in some of the earliest hieroglyphic tablets left it
more or less probable that such allusions or references as are found
in these lithic writings might at some future time be corroborated
by the discovery of relics of the actual Egyptian Iron manufacture;
and on the other hand, the finding of such remains is proof again
that the hieroglyphic readings, even with the halos of uncertainty
which in respect of the metals have until quite lately surrounded
them, and which have been so fully acknowledged by Lepsius, f
are, if not precisely so, at least very approximately correct.
At page 487, vol. vii. of the Proceedings, I mentioned that the
oldest known Egyptian word for Iron in one of the dialects was
Benipe; in another dialect the initial B is commuted to P, and the
word becomes Penipe, as I have been since informed by Lepsius.
On turning to the Dictionary of Hieroglyphs we find, without
an explanation, however, being given, by which an intelligible
view of the position may be gathered, all the annexed hieroglyphs,
with the phonetic values marked for this one substance, in the order
in which they are here set down. (See Table on next page.)
Evidently, then, assuming for the moment that the phonetic values
are correct as given by Dr. Birch, it may be said that Ba is a constant
in those phonetic values which have been assigned to hieroglyphs
translated as Iron; but this is a point leading into the most subtle
intricacies of the science of language when truly and genuinely fol
lowed, the Egyptian ba corresponding, I am strongly inclined to
believe, to what we find in the
of Homer, to which an exact
value is frequently given by the coupling of an adjective, such as
red ;
black, &c.
* Percy’s Metallurgy, 1st edition, page 874.
f Die Metalle in den jEgyptischen Insclicrften, Von C. R. Lepsius, aus den
Abliandlungen der Konigl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. 1872.
�Testimony of the IHercnjlijphs.
TABLE.
Hieroglyphs.
Phonetic Value.
Translation.
Ba.
•
•
• o
0
IBS
,D
Earth, Metal.
Ba.
I ron.
Baá.
Iron, Earth.
Baáenepe.
r.
Iron.
Bet.
Iron.
Indeed, this view has been strengthened from a recent conversa
tion with Dr. Birch, in which he informed me that, agreeing with
Lepsius, the rendering or phonetic value of the hieroglyphic symbols
for Iron is still very uncertain. On November 6th, 1874, when at
the British Museum, Dr. Birch expressed to me his belief that the
first syllable Ba was a general term, signifying metal, and a parti
cular metal was denoted by the use of prefixes signifying its
qualities, such as white, black, yellow, &c.
Whilst, then, in the Sahiclic dialect, which is said to be the oldest,
we have the word Renipe, and in another Egyptian dialect T’enipe
stands for Iron, or the initial B and P are commutable; this change
corresponds to what we find in the Hebraic and Chaldee tongues,
where in the former we have Rarzel, in the latter Parzel.
Again, with further reference to the old Egyptian word for “ Iron,”
it appears to have been proved, according to another statement by
the Rev. Basil II. Cooper, that the sixth successor of Menes, or
*
the seventh king of Egypt, bore in the royal oval or cartouche
containing Ins name the very word “ Benipe. His name was
“ Mibampes.”
“Nine years ago,” says the Rev. Mr. Cooper, “the name of this
monarch was onlv known from Manetho and Eratosthenes, in both of
whose lists of kings it appears in a more or less corrupted form.
* Antiquity of the Use of Metals, especially Iron, among the Egyptians, page
18. Reprinted from the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the
Advancement of Science, &c., 1868.
�8
Egypt's Early “ Iron King.
The royal oval or cartouche of this king does not appear in the
tablet of Karnak, nor on the old tablet of Abydos, nor has it been
detected on any isolated monument; but towards the end of 1864,
■when the tablets of Saqquara near ancient Memphis, and the new
tablet of Abydos were published—the former having been discovered
by Mariette Bey, and the latter by Herr Dummichen—this 1 Iron
King’ s’ name was brought to light.”
“ On the tablet of Saqquara, or Memphis, which, like the old tablet
of Abydos, belongs to the reign of Barneses the Great, say about the
thirteenth century before the Christian era, the Iron King is actually
the first of the fifty-six ancestors of Sesostris, whom the tablet
originally comprised, and nearly all of whose escutcheons are still
very well preserved. In the new Abydos tablet he stands sixth,
one king being omitted in the interval, as we learn from the in
valuable Hieratic Canon of the Pharaohs preserved in the Turin
Museum, in which priceless document the discovery of the new
tablets at once enabled Egyptologists easily to spell out the name,
which had previously been undecipherable. In all the three hiero
glyphical records the name reads distinctly, ‘Lover of Iron’—of
course meaning, ‘ Lover of the Sword’
thus attesting not only
the extreme antiquity of the use of Iron, but unfortunately also of
that most dreadful evil of all which are the scourges of humanity,
war.”
But the evidence on behalf of early Iron-working in Egypt does
not terminate with the mention thereof in the Inscriptions.
We will now consider the important discoveries of Mr. Hartland,
already alluded to. In the early part of 1873 Mr. Hartland de
scribed to the Society of Antiquaries his visit to Ayun Musa (the
Wells of Moses), by the Red Sea, the Wilderness of Sin, the lonely
march of three days across the parched desert to the palm-tree
groves of Wady Gherundel, and the defiles leading to Sinai. Mr.
Hartland has built a house, in order to carry on his researches, near
the junction of the Wady Kemeh, the Wady Mukattab, or the
Written Valley and the Wady Meghara, and having taken some of
* This may possibly be one and a true rendering of the title, “Lover of Iron,”
but that it is the whole meaning involved under it, I think, may be seriously
questioned, for we must remember that all art, and especially architecture, or
the expression in material form or by sculptured symbol of all that was highest
and deepest in man, could not receive such expression in well dressed and
accurately finished stone, until the material for furnishing instruments for act
ing thereon was acquired; so that it is clear King Mibampes may well have
been a “ Lover of Iron,” without necessarily being a warrior. - St. J. V. D.
�Ancient Ironworks in Egypt.
9
the friendly tribes into his pay, has succeeded in discovering the
old turquoise mines of the ancient Egyptians, the rocks that they
worked for these stones, and it is said the very tools they used,
also the places where they ground and polished these stones. This,
however, is incidental, and but leading up to the other discovery,
which is of so much importance to the subject of this paper; for,
whilst investigating in other directions, Mr. Hartland has come
upon the remains of Ironworks. These works stand adjacent to
the mines on some hills, at a place called Surabit-el-Kliadur, and
were constructed on the Catalan system, in the opinion of then
*
discoverer. The ore was very imperfectly extracted—slag brought
over to this country, from the immense heaps that like mountains
are piled around, contains as much as fifty-three per cent, of Iron.
These works were commenced in very early times; each Pharaoh,
as he continued them, added a large engraved stone, not unlike our
tombstones, to state his work.
*
“ It is to be hoped,” remarks the
author of the paper describing this unique discovery, “that rubbings
of these stones may be sent to some of our skilled readers of hiero
glyphs, since much valuable historical information respecting the
Egyptian metallurgy may have been by them preserved for our
enlightenment, and to shew how little the mind of civilised man has
developed during 3000 years.”
It is further explained by the writer from whom we have quoted
the preceding passage, that the district where this unique discovery
has been made “ has remained unexplored, probably on account of
its being off the beaten track; and in an unknown country there is
no temptation to stray, particularly as the guides and dragomen
discourage any explorations which may add to the risk of the
journey.”
Besides the ruins of these works and the enormous slag heaps
near them, there also exist the ruins of a temple and barracks for
soldiers to protect them.
Yet what is more remarkable still, as opposing the modern North
European theory of the succession of Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages,
is the solid fact that in this temple at the Sinaitic Ironworks, Mr.
Hartland found Flint Arrow-heads, which he has presented to the
Society of Antiquaries, and which he describes as being the earliest
known specimens in the world. It is, of course, possible that the
discovery of Flint Arrow-heads side by side with Iron is a mere
coincidence, and that the two may be of a different age; but if a
mere coincidence, it is not possible, under the circumstances of their
* Vide Proceedings, Sue. Autig., Vol. v., 2nd Series, June, 1873.
�10
Dr. Schliemann's Trojan Researches.
being found not buried deep down in the earth, but in or among
the very ruins of the barracks, that they are older than the barracks
or Ironworks themselves : they may be coeval therewith, but it is
not impossible, nay, it is extremely probable that they are relics
belonging to some long subsequent age (in which, as we know to be
the fact, the Egyptians had retrograded from their lofty initial stan
dard of excellence in mechanical art), or that they may belong to some
inferior foreign race who settled in or swept over the peninsula in a
later period. The latter view has a strong probability of being true;
for, as we learn from Dr. Schliemann’s researches into the mound of
*
Hissarlik, whether that be the veritable site of the Ilion of Homer
or not, the fact is undoubted, that whatever the ruins there covered
may be, he finds four cities successively buried and built on one
another, and in all of them Flint and Stone implements side by side
with Copper, Bronze, and oxidised Iron in abundance; and notably
in the fourth uppermost or most recent stratum, where the Flint
implements are most abundant, they are there associated with
what his Euglish editor describes as primitive wooden buildings,
not found in the lower ruins, where everything, and especially
architecture, teems with excellence. With respect to Iron in the
Hissarlik remains, Schliemann rather significantly remarks—“ The
only objects of Iron which I found,” excepting the sling bullets in the
lower stratum, which have been analysed by M. Damour, “ were
a key of curious shape, and a few arrows and nails close to the
surface. From Homer, we know that the Trojans also possessed
Iron as well as the metal which he calls xtiam, and which, even in
antiquity, was translated by
(Steel).” Steel, however, he
does not appear to have found; yet Dr. Schliemann adds, “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 ”—in respect of all which the editor of the
English translation, Philip Smith, with a salutary and gratifying
warning, adds — “Such facts as these furnish a caution against
the too hasty application of the theory of the ages of Stone, Bronze,
and Iron ;” and whilst I have made mention of the Hissarlik finds
as representing almost, if not quite, a parallel to the association of
Flint knives with the Sinaitic Ironworks, I have done so with the
view of fairly interrogating every side of the question, so that
others may discuss it at once from each point of view; yet I think
that the weight of evidence will be allowed as decidedly in favour
* Troy and its Remains. By Dr. Henry Schliemann.
London, 1875.
�Flint Implements in Egypt.
11
of the conclusion expressed by Mr. Hartland, that the Flint imple
ments of the Sinaitic Ironworks are the oldest relics of the kind yet
found; and in the light of all circumstances involved, the probability
is, that they are as old as the Ironworks also, so that in any view
of the case we have Ironworks at least as ancient as the Flint
Arrowheads, and probably much more ancient. In this connexion,
I may further remind you that the Abbé Richard has pointed out the
discovery of Flint implements in Egypt, Mount Sinai, Galgala, and
in the tomb of Joshua at Timnath-Serah in Mount Ephraim,
*
from which it would seem almost certain that the Hebrew race,
both when in their wanderings in these lands, and after crossing the
Jordan, who we know were familiar with the use of Iron, also used
implements of Flint; therefore, as the Sinaitic Ironworks now dis
covered lay right in their track, the Flint Arrowheads brought home
* Paper read before the British Association in Edinburgh, 1871, and in
respect of which it may prove useful to quote the following from a recent French
work, La Terre, by M. Pozzy: —
“‘Ce fut au pied du Sinaï biblique, dit-il, que je trouvai le plus grand des
ateliers de silex que j’aie encore vu, avec les spécimens les plus remarquables et
surtout des pointes de flèches extrêmement fines. La plus jolie a été trouvée
dans l’Ouadi Pérou, au centre même des montagnes sinaïtiques.
“ ‘ Vinrent ensuite plusieurs instruments trouvés en Palestine, à Elbireb, à
Tibériade; et entre le mont Thabor et le lac de Tibériade, sur un plateau élevé
de plus de 250 mètres au-dessus du Jourdain, dans un champ cultivé, une hache
semblable, quant à la nature du silex et à sa forme, à celles de la Somme.
“ ‘ Mais les instruments qui méritent, je pense, la plus grande attention sont
ceux que j’ai trouvés sur le bord du Jourdain, à Galgal, lieu où, d’après la Bible,
Josué reçut l’ordre de Dieu de circoncire le peuple d’Israël, et dans le tombeau
que la science archéologique regarde aujourd’hui comme le tombeau de Josué.
J’ai trouvé ces instruments soit dans le tombeau même de Josué, dans la
chambre sépulcrale intérieure, soit dans le vestibule, mêlés à des débris de
poteries, â de la terre, etc.
“‘J’en ai trouvé aussi dans le champ qui est devant le tombeau et jusque
sous un grand chêne vert éloigné de la tombe de Josué d’environ 70 à 80 mètres;
ils avaient été ainsi disséminés, quand on a fouillé et violé le tombeau.
“ ‘ C’est la forme communément appelée couteaux, qui domine dans ces instru
ments; quelques-uns, comme on peut s’en convaincre, sont encore très-tranchants.
II y a cependent des scies, des pièces plates et arrondies, etc. La plupart sont
du silex ; il y en a aussi en calcaire blanchâtre qui semble avoir passé au feu.
“ ‘J’ai l’espoir, continue M. l’abbé Richard, que ces instruments du tombeau
de Josué et ceux dont j’ai parlé d’abord intéresseront les amateurs si nombreux
et si éclairés de l’archéologie humaine que l’Association compte dans son sein;
et en les soumettant à votre appréciation, je viens vous apporter non pas des
idées préconçues, non pas des théories, mais des faits, de simples faits histor
iques et archéologiques.
“ ‘ C’est un fait historique que la fabrication de couteaux de pierre pour la
circoncision des enfants d’Israël â Galgal, non loin du Jourdain. C’est un fait
historique que le tombeau de Josué, élevé non loin de Sicliem, longtemps oublié
�12
4 (je of the Egyptian Elints.
by Mi’. Hartland, it is pretty nearly certain that if they belong to a
later date than the works themselves, are relics of the forty years
wanderings of the chosen race.
To return. Far, indeed, is it from my wish to influence an over
estimate of the importance of this the latest of Egyptian “finds;”
but it seems to me very necessary, indeed, to point out that the
discoverer, and those who have already written on the discovery,
place the age of these Ironworks at too low a date, and for this
reason, that they happen to be in the actual neighbourhood in
which have been found monuments at least contemporary with
and by some computed to be older than the oldest of the pyramids
— certainly as old as the fourth, if not the third dynasty of Memphis,
ou perdu, a été retrouvé, et que ses restes ont été vus et décrits par MM. de
Saulcy, Guérin, etc. C’est un fait historique attesté par la version authentique
des Septante qu’un certain nombre de couteaux de pierre de Galgal out été pro
jetés dans le tombeau de Josué, au moment de sa sépulture.
“ ‘ M. de Saulcy, dans son Voycu/e en Palestine, n’avait pas hésité à dire, dans
sa confiance absolue au récit des Livres saints, que ces couteaux de pierre
devaient exister encore dans le tombeau retrouvé de Josué. Mais l’abbé Moigno,
mon illustre ami, dans son journal Zes Mondes, avait rappelé l’affirmation de M.
de Saulcy, et m’avait vivement pressé d'aller, pendant que j’étais eu Palestine
chercher ces silex. J’y suis allé et je les ai trouvés.
“ ‘Quant aux conclusions que l’on peut tirer de mes instruments, aux argu
ments qu’ils peuvent a]«porter ou aux objections qu’ils fourniront contre les
théories mises en avant par les diverses écoles anthropologiques ou biologiques
modernes, je les laisse de côté.
“ ‘Si mes silex historiques ressemblent à s’y méprendre, par leur nature et
leur forme, aux silex que l’on veut être essentiellement préhistoriques, je pourrai
le regretter, au point de vue des illusions que cette coïncidence peut faire
évanouir, mais la vraie science doit accepter les faits, et reconnaître l’identité
des silex préhistoriques et des silex historiques.'
“Le 29 du même mois, M. l’abbé Richard présentait ses silex à l’Académie
des sciences de Paris, et dans un compte rendu de cette séance paru au Moniteur
universel les mêmes faits ci-dessus relatés étaient reproduits.
“De ces faits il résulte, comme nous le disions tantôt, queles âyes delà pierre,
du bronze et du fer n'ont pas toujours été successifs, mais quelquefois simultanés. Il
n’est pas douteux par exemple qu’ à l’epoque où l’officine de silex taillés était en
grande activité, au pied du Sinaï, l’usage du fer était depuis longtemps connu en
Egypte. Quand, au pied de ce Sinaï, Dieu menace les enfants d'Israël, en dis
tant: ‘Si vous ne m’écoutez point, je ferai que le ciel sera pour vous comme de
fer, et votre terre comme d’airain ’ (Lév. xxvi. 19), qui peut douter que l’usage
du fer et de l’airain ne fût connu des Israélites? Quand, après une victorie sur
les Madianites, Moïse dit que ‘l’or, l’argent, l’airain, le fer, l’étain, le plomb
. . , soint purifiés par le feu’ (Nomb. xxxi. 22); quand le livre de Josué
parle des chariots de fer des Cananéens (Josué xvii. 16), n’est-il pas évident
qu’on connaiséait alors tous ces métaux? Quand, vers la même époque, Job
nous dit ‘ que le fer se tire de la terre’ (Job xxviii. 2); quand il s’écrie: ‘Plût
à Dieu que mes discours fussent gravés avec une touche de fer et avec du plomb,
et qu’ils fussent taillés sur une pierre de roche à perpétuité!’ (Job xix. 24) ne
sommes-nous pas autorisé à tirer la même conclusion?”
�Source of Egyptian Iron and Steel.
13
I allude to the celebrated Wady Meghara tablets of the third
*
and fourth dynasties ; whence it may be inferred as most probable
that we are not far off from, if not actually at, the Very source of
the Iron and Steel from which the tools were formed to hew and
dress the mighty stones of old Egypt’s mightiest and oldest monu
ments. Nay, and until some one shall prove to the contrary, that
we have reached the actual forge whereat some primeval smith
wrought that one alone known relic of pre-historic Iron-working
which has descended to us—itself happily preserved in the treasure
chest of the Anglo-Saxon nation, the British Museum, and amongst
all the contents of which there is nothing else which, when followed
out a fond is capable of teaching a lesson so real, so contrasting—
shall we say there is nothing else so ironically vocal from the ages
of the old world 1
There are, moreover, other facts which seem to render it certain
that the foregoing inferences represent the true state of the case,
and to which I now direct attention.
No fact is better known than that oft-repeated one, that the
oldest architectural monuments in the world are the pyramids
and tombs of Ghizeli. Another fact is equally well known, that
the question as to how or by what instruments the not only large
but intensely hard stones of some of these works were quarried,
cut, and dressed into shape, with the exquisite finish we find them
possessing in many cases, even now, has never been solved. There
are no remains of Ironworks in the neighbourhood of Memphis or
Gliizeh, nor in any part of Egypt, nor in the Sinaitic peninsula as
yet discovered, other than those we have already alluded to in the
neighbourhood of the Wady Meghara. From the tablets in this
remarkable valley, we find undoubted evidence of a king of the
third dynasty of Memphis at war with and subduing the inhabi
tants in the Eastern frontier of Egypt. His name was Scphuris,
and in the lists of Manetho he is the eighth king of the third
dynasty, and the very earliest monarch respecting whom we possess
contemporary evidence. His name, Fig. 1, occurs in an inscription
* The cartouches of the same kings are found in the rock tablets of Wady
Meghara, as well as in the chambers of construction discovered by Colonel
Howard Vyse in the Great Pyramid namely,
Shofo, and
nu’Shofo and this fact is strong evidence of their contcmporancousncss.
�14
Evidence from the Wady Meghara.
over the doorway of a tomb at Ghizeli, which, the inscription tells us,
is that of his own son, whose death occurred in the lifetime of his
father. This same name occurs again on a rock tablet in
the Wady Meghara, as shewn at Fig. 2, which is a copy
from Lepsius. Sephuris is here accompanied, says
Osburn, “by his standard or title, z’.e., the great Horus
(ylroeris), lord of justice.” . . . . “ It seems to
have been a war flag. The rock-inscribed tablet whence
we have extracted it represents Sephuris holding a
foreigner by the hair, and in the act of smiting him
with a club or mace. He is called ‘Sephuris, the
great god, the subduer, conqueror of countries.’ Like
many of his followers, Sephuris was called upon to
defend the Eastern frontier of Egypt against foreign
aggression. He first recorded his successes on the rocks
of this desolate valley, and they have followed his example.” *
Let us observe, that, as belonging to the time before which
Sephuris had vanquished his Eastern foes, Egypt has not yielded
a certain trace of a single contemporary monument of any kind;
that before his time all is traditional and absolutely devoid of col
lateral support, although we believe that it has been thought by
some that the mention of Aches, the seventh king of the third
dynasty, in a tomb at Abooseer, and which Rosellini also found in
another tomb at Saqquara, render it probable that these may be a
little older than the reign of Sephuris ; but even allowing this full
weight, it is trifling and unimportant in comparison with what we
find occurring at Memphis after the conquests of Sephuris in
countries to the east of Egypt.
The oldest inscriptions are those in the Wady Megliara, in the
very neighbourhood where the ruins of vast Ironworks have now
been discovered by Mr. Hartland; and is it surprising, then, or
rather is it not exactly what we should expect on A priori grounds,
that there are no inscriptions nor monuments to be found until we
come to the very time in which and the site whereat the gravers,
the chisels, and other instruments necessary to the inscribing and
otherwise working in stone were manufactured, these being even
depicted on the very oldest tablets (see Figs. 2 and 4 especially),
and that so soon, immediately, in fact, that we find a source for
such tools, then we find the rock inscriptions and built monuments
produced by their aid in abundance, extending thence through all
the active period of Egyptian history ?
* Monumental History of Egypt, Vol. i., 254 5.
�i
.
Sephuris at Wady Meghara (Oldest Bock Tablets).
Third Dynasty.
Wady Meghara.
15
�16
Evidence from the Wady Meghara.
We have to remember, too, that the early colonists of Egypt
came thither from Mesopotamia, a vast plain of sand, mud, and
clay, where the buildings were erected of sun-dried bricks, and the
necessity for Iron was on that account extremely limited as com
pared to that of another region wherein nature had provided the
obdurate rock to be dealt with; also, that foi' the first two, and
probably up to the seventh king of the third dynasty, the Mizraites
confined themselves more or less closely to the banks of the Nile, at
and about the Delta, which is also of a Mesopotamian character, so
*
that, as in their fatherland, these Mizraites during that period, and
until they began to penetrate the country or were attacked by war
like neighbours, were not likely to feel the want of instruments or
weapons of Iron, but in all probability continued to construct such
temples or houses as were raised above the ground-level, of bricks
dried in the sun and formed of the clayey mud of the Nile, as their
forefathers had taught them in Shinar.
After the death of Sephuris the countries to the east of Egypt
were still maintained under the yoke of the kings of Memphis.
Accordingly, we find in the Wady Meghara a succession of rock-cut
tablets, with the names of their successive Memphite kings, and the
kings themselves depicted in the act of keeping the people in sub
jugation. Reference is now made to Fig. 3, respecting which we
read—“ Like his predecessor Sephuris, Soris had also to defend his
north eastern frontier against the desert rangers of Sinai.” The
subjoined tablet, Fig. 3, is inscribed on the barren crags of the
Wady Meghara. It reads—11 [HORUS], the hawk divine and
great, the mace in all the lands of Monthra,f the subduer of all
lands.” The personage here discoursed of is the prince who holds
his enemy by the hair, and smites him with the mace. This portion
of the tablet refers to some military achievement accomplished in this
neighbourhood by Soris when a prince. The rest of the tablet com
memorates Soris as a king. It reads—“The lord of the festivals,
King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Soris, ever-living.” The two
figures below represent Soris as King of Lower and Upper Egypt—
* It is, indeed, yet unproved that there were any actual buildings in Egypt
constructed by native Egyptians until after the first Hyksos Invasion (commonly
called the Shepherds), when that Shemitic community erected, or rather pre
vailed upon the monarch Shufu to erect, under their leader’s superintendence,
at the apex of the Delta the oldest building of all—the Great Pyramid. There
was, however, plenty of excavation in the living rock, but nothing of architec
ture proper that we have yet ascertained.
+ The God of War.
�Fig. 3. Soris and the Canaanites at Wady Meghara (Oldest Rock Tablets).
Fourth Dynasty.
Ji\tdy Megliara.
17
�18
Evidence fremì the Wady Megliara.
i. e. of both banks of the Nile, in token of which dignities he wears
the red and white portions of the shent. Immediately in front of
him on a standard is the jackal, the symbol of vigilance. Above
him are the starry heavens, supported by two sceptres, with the
head of the Hoopoe, the symbol of purity.
That Soris reigned twenty-nine years, and that he was the
first of a dynasty of Memphite kings, are the only particulars
regarding him preserved in the lists.
Soris was succeeded by Suphis; and Fig. 4, also a rock tablet
from Wady Meghara, represents him holding his enemy by the hair,
and about to fell him with the weapon which he holds raised in the
other hand.
Until the reign of Suphis there is no architectural monument to
record—we mean in the sense of a built edifice; but in his reign and
the co-regent reign of himself and his brother Nu-Shufu, we find
ourselves suddenly confronted with the Great and Second Pyramids
of Ghizeh; and whilst the existence of these, apart from any evidence
of their actual growth from smaller and more imperfect preceding
examples, has always been as great a puzzle to the inquirer as the
solution of the question—By what means or tools the work of their
construction,was effected? I hope, at least, to have helped to clear
the path of difficulty by having traced out almost to a certainty that
Iron tools were supplied from the neighbourhood of Wady Meghara,
which was held by the Memphite kings at the time the oldest
monuments were erected ; and the additional circumstance that they
were held by force of conquest is not only testified by the Meghara
tablets themselves, but also by the existence of the ruins of a vast
fortress in the neighbourhood of the Ironworks.
Since the evidence in favour of an extremely remote use for Iron
in Egypt has come to light, and bearing in mind that the Greeks
were acquainted with the manufacture of Steel, as described by
Aristotle, some persons have even ventured so far as to suppose that
the find of Col. Howard Vyse’s Engineers may probably be Steel
also. I must confess that when at first, at the recent Congress of
Orientalists, held last year in London, this was suggested to me by
Dr. Lepsius, I paid but little heed to it; but when he especially
directed my attention to the shape of the relic and its appearance,
pointing out its being somewhat thick along the middle and tapering
off as if to an edge on either side, after the manner of a scraper, for
finishing and finally levelling the outer faces of dressed stone, I be
came impressed with the force of that great Egyptologist’s suggestion.
A familiarity with the accepted methods of testing metals
�■
�20
Examination of Egyptian Iron.
naturally suggested to me that the question as to whether the relic
was of Iron or Steel might, with a close approximation to certainty,
be tested, by attempting to drill a hole in it, the relic, although much
oxidised, being still for the most part in the metallic state. The
conclusions to be drawn from such a test are, that if the drill easily
and quickly penetrated the metal, then it must be Iron; that if, on
the other hand, it resisted the action of the drill altogether, it was
hard Steel; or if the drill penetrated but slowly then it was probably
softer Steel. The writer having explained the proof which such a
test would afford in ascertaining the character. of the relic to Mr.
Bonomi and Dr. Lepsius, they prevailed on Dr. Birch to consent
to the writer drilling a hole in it, and in the presence of those
interested the test was made on the 18th of September 1874, at
the British Museum.
Having scraped off a little of the oxide near the thicker part of
the fragment, the author commenced drilling, and finding that with
a few rotations the drill easily penetrated the metal, he was at once
convinced that it was soft Iron; the drilling was continued, but at
the request of Dr. Birch the hole was not put through the Iron.
The surfaces of the hole were examined, and had all the appearance
of brightness and whiteness characteristic of newly-cut malleable
Iron. To record the examination which has now been described,
the following memorandum was drawn up by Dr. Birch, and signed
by those who witnessed the test :—
“ British Museum, ISth September, 1874.
“ An examination by drilling of the fragment found near the
channel of one of the air passages of the Great Pyramid, in the
excavations undertaken by Colonel Howard Vyse.
“ It was found that the fragment was of Iron, the drilling having
penetrated it.
(Signed)
S. Birch.
St. John V. Day.
- R. Lepsius.
Chas. Seagar.
J. Bonomi.”
As the conclusive value, however, of a mechanical test may be
called in question, it seemed desirable, that it should be confirmed
or negatived by chemical evidence, and it was mentioned to Dr.
�Babylonian and Assyrian Iron.
Birch, that a chemical analysis should also be made. On Dr.
Birch’s suggestion, I have represented to the Trustees of the
British Museum the importance of knowing the chemical con
stitution of the relic, and that body has responded to my repre
sentation by instructing Dr. Flight to analyse it. As yet I have
not received a report of the analysis, but when I do so I shall hope
to communicate it to the Society.
*
MESOPOTAMIA.
In the second paper on this subject read to this Society, I dwelt
as far as was then possible on the use of Iron by the earliest
inhabitants of that Interamnian plain, watered on one side by
the Tigris, and on the other side by the Euphrates. Since then
Mr. George Smith has carried out his excavations into the mounds
there, and these have been productive in bringing to light several
specimens of ancient Iron; none of them, however, are older than
from 800 to 1000 b.c., yet I may be permitted to mention them,
and in particular to refer to the Ombos of a shield as the most
exquisite piece of ancient Ironwork I have met with—as a specimen
of thin hammered Ironwork, I doubt if it can, in some respects, be
surpassed by the productions of to-day.
Yet 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.
I am informed by Mr. George Smith that the cuneiform Symbol
for Iron is
but that its phonetic value or
pronunciation is not yet determined. It is found in inscriptions
of all ages, and Mr. Smith says “ must have been in use 2000 B.c.”
This, however, he informs me is not an Assyrian word, but one
distinctly belonging to the ancient Babylonian or Proto-Chaldean
people who inhabited the lower parts of the plain. There is, in
fact, no pure Assyrian word for Iron, but this older one appears to
have been grafted into the more recent Assyrian language.
In the inscriptions Mr. Smith further informs me that each god
is mentioned with his sign, and this word
jp, V
j- V__
is the sign of one of the gods of war and hunting, a symbol of his
particular god-like attributes, a parallel indeed to the symbols we
* Vide Appendix, page 34, which has been received since the reading of
this paper.
�99
Akkadian and Assyrian Language Testimony.
have found in the cartouche of the Iron King of Egypt, in the third
dynasty of Memphis. Whilst on the one hand, then, Mr. Smith
denies the discovery as yet of the phonetic value of this Proto
Chaldean symbol, on the other hand it should be mentioned that
Professor George Rawlinson, of Oxford, has many years since pub
lished the word “Hurud”* as the Chaldean equivalent for Iron, but
whethei’ he gave this as the phonetic value for
I have until recently been in doubt. Uncertainty on that question
is however now removed by the following statement in regard to
the cuneiform signs, with which I have within the last week been
favoured by the Rev. George Rawlinson, who, writing from Canter
bury, says:—
“ I delayed answering your letter until I could consult my
brother on the subject, as I was not quite certain with regard to
one or two points. I am now able to give you the benefit of his
superior knowledge.
“ There are two signs of metals in Assyrian with respect to which
there is a doubt, which is Iron and which is Brass (or Bronze rather).
y".
These are 3
as Bronze and
the whole inclines to regard
> <
Y as Iron.
My brothei' on
The former
rendered phonetically, but the
is nowhere
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.”
CHINA.
Let us now then turn from those regions of the Old World, which
are comparatively near, to those which are easternmost and vastly
further removed from our ability to investigate. In a former
paper f I drew attention to the extreme scantiness of our
information respecting the state of the mechanical arts in China
in very ancient times, but the labours of the Tsinologues in un* Vide Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World.
Rawlinson. London, 1871, vol. i., p. G2.
f Vide Proceedings, vol. viii., p. 24-7.
By Professor
�Testimony of the Chinese Language.
23
ravelling to the European mind the riches of that store of highly
archaic literature which China possesses—a secular literature cer
tainly as old, in all probability very much older than what is to
be met with in any other country, asserted indeed to be at least
500 years older than the Hebrew Scriptures—have at last dispelled
all doubt on the question, whether in China the use of Iron was
known in pre-historic times. But this is not all, for in the most
ancient Chinese writings mention is made of Steel, and Leih-Tze, an
author who flourished about 400 B.c., describes the process by which
it was made.
The oldest, and indeed the only Chinese word for Iron is
— tie : old sound tit.
It is mentioned in the list of articles of tribute—in the Yu Kung
section of the Shoo King, Book I., the tribute of Yu.
*
The following is the passage in which it occurs.
“ The articles of tribute were musical gem stones, Iron, silver,
Steel, stones for arrowheads, and sounding stones, with the skins of
bears, great bears, foxes, and jackals, and articles woven with their
hair.”
In a note Mr. Legge adds, “ by ¡TÜII = tie, we are to
understand ‘ soft Iron,’ and by
lowe, 1 hard Iron ’
or ‘ Steel.’ The latter article is often used for 1 to cut ’ and
‘ engrave,’ with reference to the hardness of the tools necessary
for such a purpose. In the time of the Han dynasty, ‘ Iron
masters ’
were appointed in several districts of the
old Leang-chov, to superintend the Ironworks. Ts’ae refers to two
individuals mentioned in the ‘ Historical Records,’ one of the
surname Ch‘o
Æ ft)-
and the other of the surname Chflng
by their smelting that they were deemed equal to princes,
is the white metal or silver.”
* See Legge’s Chinese Classics, vol. iii., pt. i., p. 121. Trulmer, London 1865.
�24
Ancient Chinese Testimony.
I am informed by the Rev. Dr. Edkins of Pekin, that with
the exception of this passage there is probably no distinct allusion
to Iron in writings older than 1000 B.c. The Book of the Shoo
King is estimated as having been compiled about 2000 B.c., or at
a time when in Egypt hieroglyphic tablet-writing flourished, and
centuries before a Greek nation had begun to sensibly exist.
The place where the Chinese worked Iron in these most ancient
times was at Shansi and Chilili, in the Ho district, where there
are inexhaustible deposits of both Iron ore and coal, where too
they have continued to work Iron to the present day; indeed
at the present moment * a Commissioner of Li-hung-chang, the
Governor-General of Chilili, and now the first minister of the newly
appointed young King of China, is at present in this country com
missioned to take out new appliances and apparatus for establishing
in China Ironworks on the modern systems of operation. Tsze-cliou
is the town in or near which these works are to be established, and
it is 200 miles south-west of Tien-tsin, where the Governoi'-General
resides.
How many ages have rolled by since the Chinese were separated
from those other families of the human race who spread westwards,
and therefore away from them in their emigrations from the highlands
of Asia, it may be impossible to determine; but now that we are
able to decipher the Chinese literary records, the fact is proven,
that about 400 b.c. their celebrated author and philosopher Leih-Tze,
was acquainted with the native process for making Steel, and indeed
with the property of tempering it. In the
* Vide Appendix, p. 29 et seq., kindly supplied by the Commissioner, Mr.
.Tames Henderson.
�Ancient Chinese Testimony.
25
or Danglin's Dictionary, published about a.d. 1710, the author,
quoting from the writings of Leih-Tze, reports him as saying in
regard to Steel, that “ a red blade ” (by which I take it is meant
a reddish coloured blade, red being one of the great variety of tints
which a clean surface of Steel acquires in the process of being tem
pered) “ will cut jade as it would cut mud.” That it is the colour
of tempering and not the redness of highly heated Steel to which
Leih-Tze alludes, is evident from the manner in which he mentions
it in that connexion as capable of cutting jade, a stone of great
hardness, upon which it is almost unnecessary to add that red hot
Steel could make no impression.
Reflecting, then, for a moment upon the long continued isolation
and stand-still character of the Chinese race, by virtue of which
they have not up to this time, like other nations, undergone phases
of either retrogression or progression, but have remained unmoved
with an almost if not a quite constant stock of knowledge, tradition,
and superstition from the earliest times of their settlement, it is
natural to conclude that if we should find in comparatively later
times a record of a process for making Steel there practised, to
thereupon infer that the Steel referred to in the book of the Shoo
King and in the writings of Leih-Tze, was produced by the same or by
a very similar process. Accordingly, in the <£ Pi-tan or“ Pencil Talk
it is said that Steel is made in the following manner : “ Wrought Iron
is bent or twisted up, unwrought Iron (z'.e., which may mean either
Cast Iron or Iron ore) is thrown into it. It is covered up with mud
and subjected to the action of fire, and afterwards to the hammer.
Making due allowance for the quaintness of the expressions used,
and perhaps the difficulty which a mind untrained in the techni
calities of Iron and Steel manufacture, must of necessity encounter
in conveying to us fully the exact idea of what the account was
meant by its writer to express, it is surprising how remarkably
near to a well-known process for making Steel the above translation
approaches, namely, that of immersing Wrought Iron either into
molten Cast Iron, or heating it with Iron ore and fuel, covered ovei
*
with layers of mud or clay, to exclude as much as possible the
oxidising influence of the external atmosphere, thereby deoxidising
the Iron ore by contact with excess of carbon, and producing a
molten carburet, in which the Wrought Iron eventually becomes
immersed as in a bath.
I have previously pointed out that Aristotle describes the Greeks
*
to have practised this identical process about 400 B.c. We have
• Vide Proceedings, vol. viii., p. 244.
�26
Iron and Steel in Ancient China.
then the fact of two celebrated authors and philosophers, one in
China, the other in Greece, who flourished simultaneously but
utterly unknown to each other, describing a similar 'method of
making Steel practised at the same time in each country,—these
countries separated by vast mountain ranges and impassable deserts,
into the far East and West from the cradle centre of the human
race, which fact, indeed, seems to me as one of great weight in the
chain of evidence now being collected, to prove from authentic data
the original unity of mankind. I have previously pointed out that
the Greeks obtained their metallurgical knowledge, like almost
every other knowledge they had, from the Egyptians; but it is
not easy to mark out the channel by which this old Steel process
was conveyed to the Allophyllian races of China from either the
Semitic or Aryan nations located near the shores of the Mediter
ranean ; indeed, the only way of accounting for the fact is by return
ing once again to the old doctrine of the original unity of the human
race, and allowing to each section of mankind the carrying off with
them that common stock of knowledge which the entire family
possessed before separation, and of which there is abundant evidence
on every side that working in the metals, and Iron in particular,
formed a very important element.
The Chinese account of Steel-making at this remote epoch is,
however, extraordinarily complete in that it describes and names
the different kinds of Steel which are produced. The Steel produced
by the first treatment, the Iron-workers call Ball-Steel—twdn Kang
(from its rounded form), or Sprinkled Steel, Kwan Kang (from the
pouring of water). There is what is called “ False Steel,” zvei tee,
and the account goes on to say, “ 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, 100 times or more, it be
comes lighter each time. If the firing be continued until the weight
does not diminish it is Pure Steel.”
In the Pent Saow * it is said “ there are three kinds of Steel,—
“ ls£. That which is produced by the adding of unwrought to
Wrought Iron, while the mass is subject to the action of fire.
“ 2nd. Pure Iron many times subjected to fire produces Steel.
“ 3rd. Native Steel produced in the south-west at Hai-sliau, and
which is like in appearance to the stone called Tsze-shih-ying, purple
stone efflorescence.
* A work of the Ming Dynasty, and Dr. Edkins informs me that the Pi-tan,
already quoted, is probably also of that period.
�The Iron Leiht at Delhi.
27
il Steel is used for manufacturing swords and knives.”
It is well known that Steel is still manufactured in China, and I
have endeavoured to ascertain the process now used. This is, how
ever, kept secret, and Mr. Henderson, to whom I have previously
referred as Li-hung-Chang’s Commissioner, at present in this
country, explains to me “ that the Steel which comes to Tien-tsin
from the upper Yangstee is highly prized, and bears much higher
prices than the Swedish Steel imported into China.”
That the manufacture of Iron in early times must have reached
considerable proportions is clear from another Chinese work coeval
with the beginning of the Christian era, the name of which Dr.
Edkins has promised to furnish me. It states that at that time a
tax was levied upon Iron to contribute to the State Exchequer.
Now it is clear that unless the manufacture had been a somewhat
extensive one, it would not have been worth while to levy a tax
upon it, for otherwise it could not have produced a revenue.
INDIA.
With regard to Indian iron manufacture I have, in the first place,
to correct an error I formerly made * as to the date and place of the
Iron Laht at Delhi. From all that I could then gather it seemed
to belong to a period ranging from the first to the fourth century
of the present era; but since that time Lieutenant Cole’s magnificent
workt on ancient Delhi, of the existence of which I was not then
aware, indeed it does not appear to have been published at the
time my paper, which especially referred to the Laht, was written
—has come under my notice.
The Iron column instead of being situated where I formerly
stated, is, I now find, in the axis of the colonnade of the Masjid-iKutb-ul-Islam.
M. Garcin de Tassy | has translated the Persian account of the
column written by Syud Ahmed, and has supplemented it with some
weighty remarks, from which it appears to have been set up by an
otherwise unknown king, Kajah Dliava, alias Midhava, and whilst it
now seems that the forging was made in the 9th century b.c., or from
1100 to 1200 years earlier than I had formerly stated, yet the inscrip* Vide Proceedings, Vol. viii., p. 251, et seq.
+ The Architecture of Ancient Delhi, especially the Buildings around the
Kutb Minor. By Henry Hardy Cole, Lieutenant K.E., late Superintendent of
the Archaeological Survey of the North-Western Provinces of India. London:
Published by the Arundel Society, 1872.
+ Les Monuments d'Architecture de Delhi.—Journal Asiatiques, July, I860.
�28
Conclusion.
tion upon it is of much later date, M. de Tassy concluding the
inscription to be possibly as late as the third or fourth century of
the present era, and inscribed therefore by a king long subsequent to
its originator, who, indeed, we learn from Indian history, died in the
course of its construction. I have also to add that a cast of this
remarkable column is now on view at the South Kensington
Museum ; also, that a piece of the metal has been cut from the pillar,
and this piece has been both forged and analysed by Dr. Percy, who
has pronounced it as soft Wrought Iron.
Whilst speaking of India, I cannot, however, pass over that
unique collection of archaic Iron and Steel tools which Colonel
Pearse, K.A., found in excavating some tumuli at Wurree Gaon,
near Kamptee, in India, which tumuli are believed to date from
about 1500 B.c., or the time of Moses; and whilst we have no such
solid relics of the tools used by the Hebrew race, yet we know from
words in the Hebrew language that they were well acquainted with
Iron in all its forms (see the appended Table), and this discovery
(which, if the date assigned by Colonel Pearse be correct) shews at
least that the contemporary nations were well acquainted with Iron
and Steel; that their language, too, the Sanskrit, in its oldest forms
has corresponding words for Iron, Iron ores, &c.
Colonel Pearse has presented his “ find ” to the Trustees of the
British Museum, and I lately was fortunate in receiving from
Colonel Pearse himself a full explanation of the several implements,
which include gouges, spatulie, ladles, and a variety of other articles.
The appended Table shews, from the evidence of language, that
Iron was known amongst the most ancient nations in the very
earliest times up to which it is possible to trace their existence.
CONCLUSION.
Having thus, I fear, seemed to have traversed over too wide an
area for a single paper to discuss, yet hoping not to have wearied
you with the details into which I have found it necessary to the
due exposition of facts to enter, it will, I think, be conceded that in
my very humble efforts to peel off some of the scales, the rust with
which unyielding testimony from the oldest times has been corroded,
I have at least laid bare a concatenation of facts out of which there
is no escape from the conclusion that in all the earliest peopled
countries, whether peopled by Semitic, Hamitic, Aryan, or Allophyllian races, there is most certain proof that in the remotest ages
which we can ascertain anything about, the inhabitants were
�Steel and Iron in China.
29
familiar with the use and practical manufacture of Iron and Steel;
that in those countries there is not a tissue of evidence in favour
of a Bone or Stone age, still less of a Bronze and then an Iron
age succeeding; that from the evidence adduced, and which indeed
is being continually supplemented, it is evident the Stone, Bronze,
and Iron theory must be consigned to the limbo of false ideas and
exploded notions !
I cannot, however, close without expressing my indebtedness for
invaluable aid in the preparation of this communication to Professor
George Rawlinson of Oxford, and his brother, Sir Henry Rawlinson;
to Dr. Birch, and Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum; to the
Rev. Dr. Edkins, of Pekin; and last, though not least, to that
prince of Egyptologists, Dr. Lepsius, of Berlin, who indeed has
placed his valuable researches in my hands, and to which I may
hope to draw attention on some future occasion.
APPENDIX.
CHINESE IRON MANUFACTURE.
The day following the reading of the foregoing paper, Mr. Day
was furnished by Mr. Henderson, the Commissioner from Li-hungChang to this country, with the subjoined “Notes from his Diary”
during a ramble through Shansi in March 1874, which, containing
useful information on the subject of the foregoing paper, the Physical
Section have recommended to be published as an Appendix to Mr.
Day’s paper.
STEEL.
Mr. Henderson says : “ In formerly writing you, I mentioned
that Steel is made at or about Hankow, on the Yangstee, which
still is considered very valuable by the Chinese, and brings a much
higher price amongst them than the best English or Swedish Steel
imported. How this Hankow Steel is made, I cannot say. I saw
no Steel made, but some of the Iron is very fine; and when reheated
by wood may, no doubt, have some of the properties of Steel.”
IRON.
Regarding the native methods of making iron, Mr. Henderson
has succeeded in obtaining much more complete information, as
�30
Chinese Iron Works.
contained in the following, which, to make intelligible to Euro
peans, he has prefaced with a table of arithmetical values.
Chinese Coins
and
Weights Value.
One tael of silver is valued at .
Number of cash in a tael, is 1680,
cash
280,
cash
140,
cash
231
^¿>2,
.
.
.
.
6s.
6s.
Is.
0s.
0s.
Od.
Od.
Od.
6d.
Id.
In the calculation of silver money,
10 cash makes one condarin.
10 condarins one muci.
10 muci one tael.
In the weight of coals or other bulky goods—
100 catties is equal to 1 pecul,
1 pecul
,,
133^ lbs. avoirdupois.
1G peculs '80 catties is equal to 2240 lbs. or 1 ton.
IRONWORKS 10 TO 13 MILES FROM YANG-CHING SHANSI, CHINA.
On the northern side of the valley stand the smelting establish
ments. There seemed to be eight or ten of them, with immense
heaps of broken moulds before them.
Behind the Ironworks are the low hills, containing both the coal
and the Iron ore. Visited one of the smelting establishments; they
have been well described by Baron Richtopen and Dr. Williamson.
Saw the anthracite coal and the Iron ore. Coals cost at the hills
behind the works 20 to 25 cash (Id.) per basket of 80 catties
(107 lbs.), and never exceed 30 cash. Iron ore, inferior, cost 20
cash (Id.) per pecul, and for the very best about 50 cash (2d.) per
pecul (133 lbs.) at the mountain. By a pecul our informant meant
as much as a man could carry. In smelting, 100 peculs of Iron ore,
if very pure, yields 90 catties of Iron; if slightly inferior, 85 catties,
and if common, 80 catties. On a second smelting the Iron loses 10
per cent., some say 5 per cent., and is then made into pots and pans
of Cast Iron, but as the goods contain some of the sand, the loss in
Iron is only about 5 per cent. The third time the Iron is smelted
it is made into bars. By this time the original 90 catties has come
to be only 70 catties, or even less, if not very good. To be made into
other articles it may be smelted four, five, or six times, and in the
latter case it is fit for needles.
�Chinese Iron Warks.
31
We saw the open furnaces, in which were 66 crucibles, and which
take a day and a half to smelt. The smeltings turn out very
unequally; the 66 crucibles may turn out 8 peculs in all, if very
good ore, and if poor ore only 5 peculs. The produce of the first
smelting sells at 5 cash per catty, and the Bar Iron of the third
smelting at 16 cash, at this place.
Following the bank of the Ching-ho we came by the river side to
some smelting establishments. At this place they did not smelt
from the ore, but purchased the Iron after it was smelted at 5 cash
per catty, and from this they made their pots and pans. Here they
told us that on smelting a second time for castings, the out-turn was
only about 70 per cent, of the first smeltings.
At Zuang-yin-san the owner of the mountain carries his Iron to a
distance of 30 li (10 miles), and sells it to the manufacturers at 200
cash for 300 catties, allowing 3J cash per pecul per li for carriage.
This would give the value of the ore of the mines as being 33< cash
*
per pecul (l|d. for 133 lbs.). Kung-san. Iron is not so good, 4
taels weight (or 25 per cent.) cannot be got out of a catty.
At these places the Iron is very soft, and in appearance like coarse
grained red sandstone.
At Su-chuan there is a large smelting establishment, the smelting
being done in large pits, each holding about 25 peculs of ore. The
smelting occupies one day, and after smelting it is allowed to remain
in the pit one day to cool; it comes out in one piece, weighing
apparently about 6 peculs, and is sold in this state at 5 cash per
catty.
They could not tell us how much coal was used to smelt one of
these masses of Iron.
The workmen are paid 60 cash per day and food, food consisting
generally of small millet and a little salt, no vegetables, and may
cost about 20 cash.
This Iron is of the same description as we saw at the Chung-ho
establishment, which loses 30 per cent, on being smelted a second
time.
Visited another large establishment, where they made principally
Bar Iron; at the first smelting the ores give 25 to 30 per cent of
Iron. This was smelted a second and a third time for bars, when it
again lost 20 per cent., the proceeds of the first Iron giving only 80
per cent. This Bar Iron is said to sell at 20 cash per catty. We
�32
Chinese Iron Works.
saw at this establishment many of the little cops of Iron which
came out of the crucibles, and they differed greatly in thickness and
in weight, being from 5 to 8 catties.
Here we also saw an immense oblong stack of firewood, some
GO x 20 x 20 feet, for use in smelting where Bar Iron is to be made.
At Ping-ding chow, or 7 miles north of it, we entered the first
smelting establishment we came to.
They had here in the open furnace 128 crucibles, these crucibles
being about 4 feet high, and 6 to 7 inches in diameter. Out of these
128 crucibles they would get about 15 peculs of Iron, equal to about
40 per cent., to smelt which will take about 10 mule loads of coal—
i.e., about 20 peculs or lj tons; the produce of the first smelting
sells at 5 cash per catty.
At the second establishment we were told that out of the coarse
yellow Iron ore they could get 40 per cent., and out of the best dark
ore they could get GO per cent. They were mixing here the two
kinds of ore. It was all pounded small before being put into
crucibles. In the second smelting, if Wrought Iron is to be made
of it, wood alone is used, thus making it fine and tough; for the
third or fourth smelting coal is again used.
At a third smelting establishment they were making moulds for
pans. The first smelting here will produce about GO per cent, from
the ore, but this contains a great deal of impurity; and upon this
being smelted a second time, it will again turn out only about GO
per cent, of the first smelting. The contents of 128 crucibles of
the first smelting are put into G3 crucibles, and these turn out on a
second smelting enough Tron to make about 50 pans.
Time required for the first smelting, 2 days; for the second
smelting, 1 day.
The Chinese idea of percentage of Iron from the ore is evidently
a purely imaginary one, for they never weigh the ore. With coal
and Iron ore both so plentiful and cheap, the Iron is so much per
donkey load, as much as the animal can carry.
Some Iron ore we purchased at Ping-ding Chow, shewed, at the
Royal School of Mines, London, to contain 50 per cent, of Iron. It
is loose hematite, and contains little or no sulphur.
INDIA.
Mr. Henderson at the same time has forwarded the following
letter from Mr. Bourne, and has Mr. Bourne’s sanction to publish
the same :—
�Indian Iron and Steel.
33
G6 Mark Lane,
London, E.C., 26i7i April, 1875.
James Henderson, Esq.
My Dear Sir,
I have seen the native process of making Iron
in many parts of India, and it is substantially the same in all. A
furnace—of say 20 inches internal diameter—is built of clay, breast
high, and has the pipes of some sort of bellows entering at the bottom;
while the charcoal and the ore, broken into small pieces, are put
in at the top. After blowing for some time a hole is opened,
about half way up, in the front of the furnace, out of which a
large mass of Spongy Iron is taken, and this mass is re-lieated
and hammered into small ingots sharpened at each end, in which
state it is sold. The late Mr. Heath informed me that he has
seen furnaces in India about three times the height of the fore
going, which furnaces produced Cast Iron, the sole use of which
was to melt with Wrought Iron for the production of Steel, as is
now done in the Bessemer process. But these furnaces I never
myself came across, and they are not common. The wootz is pro
duced by melting Wrought Iron in small crucibles, into which
some twigs and a green leaf from a certain tree are introduced,
and the crucibles are then stopped with clay formed into a pyramid,
over which a dome is built, and heat is applied, when the Wrought
Iron melts and combining with the charcoal of the green twigs
forms Steel. Charcoal will not do as a substitute for the green
twigs. The Steel takes the shape of half the crucible, and is of the
shape and size of half an egg. In making the Damascus blades
each piece of wootz was drawn out into a riband of the proper
length, and a bundle of these ribands was then welded together.
This process produces the exact markings to be found on the old
Damascus blades.
Regarding the testimony touching the antiquity of Iron, I may
mention that shortly after my first visit to India I came across a
book of Egyptian hieroglyphics and drawings, where one of the objects
represented was the manufacture of Iron after precisely the same
fashion as I had seen it practised in India. If I had not been in
India I should not have known what was intended to be represented;
•but having seen the mode of procedure in India I recognised it at
once. I do not now remember what the book was in which I saw
�34
Iron from Great Pyramid Analysed.
this, or what epoch it was supposed to represent. But this, no
doubt, could be discovered by any one who knew the Indian mode
of manufacture, and who was interested in the subject.
I remain,
Yours very truly,
JOHN BOURNE.
ANALYSIS OF IRON FROM THE GREAT PYRAMID.
The following letter to Dr. Birch, Keeper of the Oriental Anti
quities at the British Museum, describing the chemical constitution
of the piece of Iron found by Colonel Howard Vyse in the Great
Pyramid, having been received since the foregoing paper was read,
is here inscribed as descriptive of the character of the oldest piece
of Iron known.
Mineral Department, British Museum,
12iA May, 1875.
Dear Dr. Birch,
The result of my examination of the fragment
of Iron (?No. 3453) from the air-passage of the Great Pyramid, goes
to shew that it is not of meteoric origin. It contains, it is true, a
trace of Nickel, but it is only a trace. It is, in fact, by no means
an uncommon occurrence for a trace of that metal to be met with
in manufactured Iron, derived from its various ores; and several
analysts have detected the presence of Nickel oxide in the ores
likewise. According to Pattison {Brit. Assoc. Bep., 1864, p. 49) the
Cleveland Ironstone contains in 1 lb. of ore 0'72 grain of Nickel and
0’12 grain of Cobalt. O. L. Erdmann {Jour. Prakt. Chern., xcvii.
120) states that he has many times found traces of Cobalt (the
alter ipse of Nickel and constant associate of Nickel in meteoric
Iron) in Iron ores, and still more frequently in samples of com
mercial Iron. It should be stated, by the way, that the presence
of a trace of Cobalt is more readily recognised than the same
amount of Nickel would be. C. O. Brann {Zeit. Annl. Chem., v. 22G)
mentions the fact that in many analyses of Iron which have been
carried out in the Wiesbaden laboratory, the presence of Nickel
�Iron from Great Pyramid Analysed.
35
and Cobalt has been recognised. G. Lippert (Zeit. Annl. Chem., ii.
41) found in the Spiegeleisen, obtained from the Spathic Iron
ore of Stahlberg, near Musen, 0’016 per cent, of Nickel and a trace
of Cobalt.
The fragment of Egyptian Iron contains combined carbon, an
occurrence of great rarity in meteoric Iron. The locksmith who
removed it from the specimen tells me that under the saw it
behaves like Wrought Iron, and I find its magnetic character to
accord with Wrought Iron rather than with Steel.
Believe me, Dear Dr. Birch,
Yours very truly,
(Signed) WALTER FLIGHT.
BELL AND BAIN, PRINTERS, GLASGOW.
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On the high antiquity of iron and steel
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Day, John Vincent
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Collation: 35 p. : ill. (figs., diags., folded chart) ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Read before the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, April 28, 1875. Inscription on front page: 'From the author, 17-9-75'. Includes bibliographical references. Printed by Bell and Bain, Glasgow.
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ON
THE PAST AND PEESENT
OF
IRON
SMELTING.
BY
ST. JOHN VINCENT DAY, C.E., F.R.S.E.,
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH SOCIETY OF ARTS, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL
ENGINEERS, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERS IN SCOTLAND, MEMBER OF THE IRON
AND STEEL INSTITUTE, HON. LIBRARIAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW.
From the “Proceedings'” of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow,
Communicated April 23, 1873.
EDINBURGH:
EDMONSTON AND
1873.
DOUGLAS.
��ON THE
PAST AND PRESENT OF IRON SMELTING.
Part I.
(a.) Preliminary Remarks.
As to the importance of the position which pig iron occupies in
the list of our manufactures, it were idle to urge anything in expla
nation to a society located in Glasgow. When we consider that
in 1871 no less than 16,859,063 tons of iron ores were smelted in
Great Britain alone, from which was produced 6,627,179 tons of
pig iron, representing a money value at the works of £16,667,947,
*
and which for the corresponding period we have just passed through,
must by reason of an unprecedented demand for the material itself,
and at unprecedented prices, be greatly increased; it will, I venture
to hope, be readily admitted that our time may be profitably spent
in considering the steps by which a manufacture, in former years
carried on very much in the dark, has at length been reduced by
the conjoint labour of many to almost a scientific exactitude. To
say that iron smelting has yet been completely reduced to a science
would be nothing other than pretence; nevertheless, that with a
given furnace, ore, fuel, flux, and blast, we can estimate within
tolerably narrow limits the quality and quantity of the product.
Yet there are numerous points in the true understanding of what
takes place in the blast furnace which are still enshrined in the
region of uncertainty.
Within the last forty years, it may be said that iron smelting has
been becoming by slow degrees to be scientifically understood, since
Mushet and Clark in our own country, as well as several French
and German physicists, have devoted their energies to the solution
of various inquiries wherewith the subject is entangled; but since
1846, when the first furnace was built at the Walker Works, by
Mineral Statistics, 1871.
�4
Preliminary Remarks.
Mr. I. Lowthian Bell, for smelting the Cleveland iron-stone, and
*
several more iron-making districts, with furnaces of colossal dimen
sions, have sprung up, the most important investigations, so far at
least as our own country is concerned, have been canned out, the
general results of which have led to improvements in practice,
whereby the fuel required for smelting has been reduced by about
30 per cent.—this being directly due to operating with a larger
bulk a,nd higher column of materials at a time; utilizing the waste
gases for heating the blast and generating steam for the blowing
engines; and to a greatly elevated blast temperature.
No argument can be necessary to shew why it is important, in
dealing with the subject of this investigation, to attack it at the
very foundation; for that must be self-evident to any one whom it
may concern to understand it, and as certain special reasons which,
I trust, will clearly appear in the sequel, seem to render it desirable
to consider briefly some information which comes to us from remote
past ages, it may not, I hope, be considered tedious nor out of
place if, at the commencement of this record, I dwell somewhat
briefly on a few features in the history of the subject.
Any attempt at elucidating the course through which the modern
gigantic operations of iron-smelting have been reached involves at
once the history of the manufacture of cast iron—and it is not too
much to say that recent investigations into that subject, if they
prove anything at all, prove, amongst other things, that the true
history of cast-iron still remains an unwritten chapter. How
ever interesting, as well as useful it might prove, to probe the
ultimate depths of that history, yet it is not proposed as a feature
of this paper to attempt what must at present be so unfathom
able a task.
Before entering into the deeper points to which the subject before
us will probably be found to reach, I may remark that, whereas by
some researches,! made a few years since, I was enabled toprove,
from a variety of consentaneous evidence, that malleable iron was
well known and used at least as far back as 4,000 years ago, and
almost certainly much earlier still, I was thereby, and of necessity,
led to doubt whether the usually accepted assertion as to cast iron
having been invented within the last three or four hundred years
only, rested on an entirely stable and reliable basis. The sequel will
shew the results of the doubt so raised in my own mind.
* Chemical Phenomena of Iron Smelting, Preface.
+ Vide Proc. Phil. Soc., Glasgow, Vol. vii., p. 476.
�The Beginning of Iron Smelting.
5
(&.) The Origin of the Blast Furnace.
Not unlike many other discoveries made at periods remote from
the present age, and which have had in varied degrees incalculable
influence upon the condition and destinies of mankind, does it at a
first view appear out of keeping with an almost constant order, that
the place and date, no less than the names, of the first makers of
cast iron are not absolutely known.
When, however, we reflect upon that which we really do know,
as being reliably ascertained concerning early methods of making
iron and steel, weigh carefully the precise nature of the conditions
involved under those methods, and seek out the results inevitably
accruing through them, as explained by the guiding light of modern
chemistry, it would appear that the blast furnace as a distinct
apparatus could scarcely at any time have consisted in a definite or
sudden departure from an existing order of things; by saying which,
I mean to explain, that in all probability, there never was in the
development of iron smelting an immediate complete change made
from the method of reducing ore at once to malleable metal (the
direct method) to that of first making pig or sow metal (or the
indirect method of the blast furnace as we practise it to-day); rather,
on the contrary, the evidence which has been collected goes to shew
that the blast furnace was ultimately reached as a definite and
distinct apparatus for reducing iron ore quickly, and producing an
easily fusible compound of iron, partly by its accidental production
occasionally when reducing easily fusible ores in the air or blast
bloomeries, or other formerly used types of low furnaces, in which
the product sought to be obtained was malleable iron or steel
This probability, indeed, appears to rest on conclusive grounds; and
the tendency of the evidence is further to shew that the blast
furnace, as an apparatus having as a distinct object the production
of cast iron, was at last arrived at through very gradual accessions
to the height of the ancient types of low furnaces.
Where we are to look for the earliest traces of the practice of
reducing iron to the form of a carburet or as cast iron, I cannot
suppose that at the present time any one would venture to assert;
*
but as the employment of steel in fashioning the stones used in the
monuments of Proto-Egypt, India, Greece, and elsewhere, has been
shewn, that almost seems to imply the acquaintance of those ancient
nations with the fusion of iron, and leads us to expect that to the
East and not the West must we look for the beginnings of the art.
In so far as our own country has yet given testimony, the oldest
�6
The Oldest British Blast Furnaces.
blast furnaces yet recorded are those of which the ruins formerly
existed, and may, for aught I know, still exist, in the Forest of
Dean, and the age of which Mr. Mushet has computed as belonging
to the commencement of the seventeenth century.
*
* In his “Papers on Iron and Steel,” Mr. Mushet supplies us with the follow
ing instructive remarksI have examined the sites of many old charcoal blast
furnaces, with a view of determining their age, by the quantity of slags with
which they were surrounded. Here, however, another difficulty has been, in
every case but one, interposed. The manufacture of black bottles has, I think,
been traced as far back as the fifteenth century. At what time the manu
facture was introduced into this country, I am uncertain; but it is not
improbable that in early times, as in the last century, the slags or cinders of
the charcoal blast furnace have entered into the composition of black bottles,
and created a consumption of that sort of waste which otherwise would have
remained in the vicinity of the furnaces. The superior quality of the Bristol
black bottles has been attributed to the immemorial use of a portion of the
slags of the charcoal furnaces from the neighbourhood of Dean Forest. The
consequence of this long-standing practice has been to carry from the furnaces
not only the old slags, but those currently made. In one instance only have
I found from this source data for calculation. Before the civil commotions of
the seventeenth century, the Kings of England were possessed of two blast
furnaces in the Forest of Dean, when the cord-wood of the Forest and the
king’s share of the mines were used for the purpose of iron-making. Soon after
the commencement of the struggle between Charles the First and his Parlia
ment, these furnaces ceased working, and at no period since have they been in
blast. About fourteen years ago, I first saw the ruins of one of these
furnaces situated below York Lodge, and surrounded by a large heap of the
slag or scoria that is produced in making pig iron. As the situation of this
furnace was remote from roads, and must at one time have been deemed
nearly inaccessible, it had all the appearance, at the time of my survey, of
having remained in the same state for nearly two centuries. There existed
no trace of any sort of machinery, which rendered it highly probable that
no part of the slags had been ground (the usual practice) and carried off, but
that the entire produce of the furnace in slags remained undisturbed.
“The quantity I computed at from 8,000 to 10,000 tons; a quantity which,
however great it may appear for the minor operations of an early period, would
yet in our times be produced from a coke furnace in less than two years. If it
is assumed that the furnace made annually 200 tons of pig iron; and further,
assuming the result which has been obtained with ores richer than the Boman
cinders, and ores used at that time in Dean Forest, that the quantity of slag run
from the furnace was equal to one-half of the quantity of iron made (in modem
times the quantity of cinder from the coke furnace is double the weight of the
iron), we shall have 100 tons annually for a period of from 80 to 100 years. If
the abandonment of this furnace took place about the year 1640, the nommenoe.
ment of its smeltings must be assigned to a period between the years 1540 and
1560.
Mushet, from this computation, assigns the mean period or 1550 as the
most probable period for the commencement of smelting operations with this
furnace. In a note, however, at the end of the paper from which the previous
�The Oldest British Blast Furnaces.
7
It is desirable, ere proceeding too far in the paths of research
which for the present occupy our attention, in order to avoid any
extract is taken, he says, “the calculation of age, which proceeded on the
assumption of a certain weight of cinder being obtained in the production of a
given weight of iron, and which with so rich ore may be correct; yet, on
further consideration of the subject, and taking into account the calcareous
nature of the iron ores of Dean Forest requiring a considerable portion of
argillaceous schist to neutralize the lime, it is more than probable that the
furnace would necessarily, from this circumstance, and from the inferior pro
duce of the ores, produce fully as much cinder as pig iron, and that in place of
only being one-half the weight, it would probably be of equal weight with the
iron. Taking the calculation in this way, we should not reach an older period
than the commencement of the 17th century for the introduction of the blast
furnace into Dean Forest.’ . . . The local history of Tintern Abbey
assigns a later period (the early years of James the First) for the erection of
that furnace. The opportunity afforded of examining both the slags and the iron
produced in that early period abundantly proves that the furnace in Dean
Forest above mentioned was one of the earliest efforts in the art of making pig
iron. Small masses or shots of iron are found enveloped in the slags, specimens
of iron in a malleable state, though rarely, more frequently rough nodules of
large grained steel, resembling blistered steel, and others of a more dense
fracture, but of a similar quality. The more fusible reguli of white, mottled
and grey iron are found' in great abundance, all of them possessing forms and
appearances of fusion more or less perfect, according to the quantities of carbon
with which they are united; and it is but justice to the memory of the fathers
of this art to add, that the specimens of grey cast iron are more abundant than
those of the other sorts.
“This furnace seems to have been erected upon the spoils of former ages of
iron-making; and probably the situation was in the first instance determined by
the numerous bloomeries that existed in the neighbourhood—the scoria of which
has in after ages been worked to so much advantage in the blast furnace; and
though, as a blast furnace, possessed of no great antiquity, yet, as the site of
the ancient bloomery, entitled to be considered as the remains of an extensive
manufactory of iron in ages more remote.
“ Upon the whole, several circumstances incline me to the opinion, that the
blast furnace must have been known in some of the then iron-making districts
of England before it was introduced into Dean Forest. The oldest casting
I have met with in Dean Forest is dated 1620.
“ The great infusibility and difficulty attending the management of calcareous
ores, such as those belonging to Dean Forest, is another circumstance that
inclines me to think that the art of making pig iron did not originate in that
quarter, and probably did not succeed entirely till the practice of increasing
their fusibility by the addition of the bloomery cinder became known and
established. These conjectures are confirmed by reference to a paper in my
possession, professing to be an account of all the blast furnaces in England
previous to the manufacture of pig iron from pit-coal—probably about the year
1720 or 1730; in which, however, the blast furnace of Tintern Abbey is omitted,
and possibly others. At that period there were in all England 59 furnaces,
�8
High Furnace not Essential to Produce Cast Iron.
necessity for raising the question hereafter, once and for all to
point out, that, it is not a consequence, because we are unable to
assign an earlier positive date for the blast furnace than that above
given, that cast iron was unknown before that period; indeed,
from what we do glean from the historical records, they assure us
that it was in considerable use at a much more remote age. And
whereas this knowledge might lead some persons to conclude that as
the blast furnace constitutes the first step taken in the manufacture
of cast iron to-day, it was necessarily the first step taken in ages long
past; still, a candid consideration of certain features of history,
coupled with a consideration of what chemistry now teaches, are
more than sufficient to convince us that the high or blast furnace
is not indispensable to the production of that carburet, however
much it is essential, under our. current knowledge at the present
period, in order to comply with modern demands for the metal at
paying prices.
To but briefly, indeed, indicate how much more ancient cast iron
may really be than, so far as I have ascertained, has been noticed
during the last quarter of a century,—a period unprecedented in
the issue from the press of a metallurgical literature of extreme
value,—I may mention a process of making steel- used by the
making annually 17,350 tons, or little more than 5 tons of pig iron a week for
each furnace.
“ Should it appear that there have been since the invention of blast furnaces
iron-making districts in England in which a greater number of furnaces have
been established than in Dean Forest, then to that quarter I should be inclined
to look for information on the history, rise, and progress of the blast furnace.
Brecon,
Glamorgan,.
Carmarthen,
Cheshire, .
Denbigh,
Derby,
.
.
.
.
.
.
2
2
1
3
2
4
Gloucester,
Hereford, .
Hampshire,
Kent, .
Monmouth,
Nottingham,
.
.
.
.
.
.
6
3
1
4
2
1
Salop, .
Stafford,
Worcester, .
Sussex,
Warwick, .
York, .
. 6
. 2
. 2
. 10
. 2
. 6
“It would appear from this account, that the counties of Sussex and Kent
alone contained, in the early part of the eighteenth century, 14 blast furnaces;
and as it is probable that the woodlands in the vicinity of the metropolis would
sooner disappear than in the more distant counties, it is equally probable that
a century before the number of blast furnaces might have been considerably
greater in that district. The only other iron-making district that will at the
time now spoken of bear a comparison with Sussex and Kent, is that of Dean
Forest, in which I include the Furnace of Tintern Abbey, in Monmouthshire,
not included in the list; Gloucestershire 6, and Herefordshire 3,—making in
all 10 blast furnaces.”
�Molten Iron known to the Greeks.
9
Greeks, and recorded in the writings of no less an authority than
Aristotle, and to which I have, on a previous occasion, directed
*
attention. Where it is stated:—
“ Wrought iron itself may be cast so as to be made liquid, and to
harden again."
Somewhat obscure as the Aristotleian account of Greek-steel
manufacture unquestionably is, nevertheless, when the terms of the
fragment are analyzed, and it is placed in juxta-position with other
accounts of steel-making appertaining to times long subsequent,
it is even sufficient to assure us that such iron, although it may not
have been specially employed in the art of making castings, but
produced for the purpose of converting bars of wrought iron into
steel, by a process of cementation in a bath of metal surcharged
with carbon, was known to and practised by the Greeks at least
as early as 400 years before our era.
Indeed, we may venture further still—for recent discoveries in
India, and the impossibility of explaining Egyptian sculpture in
granite, porphyry, diorite, &c., without the use of steel tools, hold
out much to hope for towards the increasing of our acquaintance
with the metallurgy of the ancient eastern world, by further special
researches into the storehouses of information yet waiting there
to be opened up. For, after the discovery of the Kutub Minar
Laht,t near Delhi, as well as the -huge iron beams in the Temple of
- Kanaruc,J and the coming to light of numerous other testimonies,
proving beyond doubt the extremely high acquaintance with manu
facturing art, which some persons at least possessed in the East in
ages long past, the cautious observer is compelled to pause ere risk
ing to pronounce, whether, as it even yet is generally asserted,
Western civilization has in all respects exceeded all previous civil
ization, or questioning, whether we have attained in some respects
the position in certain of the manufactures most important to
man at one time reached in the old world; for, whilst the rate of
production has increased as a necessary sequence of the growth
of population, and novel as well as wider fields of application, yet
it is notorious that in many instances high quality is not main
tained. There is much to be met with in the remains of the
Proto-Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Chinese nations to assure
us that we have not—while to Central Asia, Asia Minor, and
Persia we must look hopefully for further light in this respect.
* Vide Proc. Phil. Soc., Glasgow, vol. viii., p. 244.
+ Trans. Asiatic Soc., Bengal, 1864.
J Illust. Ancient Architecture of Hindustan, p. 28, Pl. iii., 1848.
�10
Early Accounts of Molten Iron.
With this much of digression from the immediate subject in
hand, purposely introduced too as a forewarning signal to us that at
this time we have no sufficient facts to warrant us in assigning any
approximate period even for the origin of the indirect method of
reducing iron ores (the prevalent system of this age), we may with
advantage return to the question of producing cast iron without the
blast furnace; in order to satisfy ourselves that, whilst all the very
old examples of iron which we do find are malleable, and appear
from more than one point of view to have been produced from ores
reduced without fusion; and when inquiring still further into the
most ancient practice of reduction, no country so far affords con
clusive evidence of cast iron having been an established man nfa.ctured product—in the sense we find malleable iron to have been
therein—yet the collateral evidence as to an extremely early
method of making steel, in the production of which cast iron was a
sine qua non, convinces us of the necessity for exercising extreme
caution ere drawing a conclusion.
The next early intelligible account that we have of steel-making
throws equal light over cast iron making, and this is to be found
in a work entitled “De la Pirotechniaf published at Venice in 1540,
by Vanoccio Biringuccio; and in the somewhat later, but better
known writings of Agricola—« De re Metallica ”—published about
1561. Both these authors describe a process of converting bars of
malleable iron into steel by keeping the bars immersed for a con
siderable time in molten cast iron.
The process as described by the earlier author has been translated
by Mr. Panizzi, of the British Museum; and I here quote an
*
extract from that translation, shewing how the cast iron was
produced.
“ Steel is nothing but iron well purified by means of art, and
through much liquefaction by fire brought to a more perfect ad
mixture and quality than it had before. By the attraction of some
suitable substances in the things which are added to it, its natural
aridity is mollified by somewhat of moisture, and it is made whiter
and denser, so that it seems to be almost removed from its original
nature; and at last, when its pores are well dilated and mollified
with much fire, and when the heat is driven out of them by the
extreme coldness of the water, they contract, and so the iron is
converted into a hard substance, which from its hardness becomes
brittle. This may be done with every kind of iron, and so steel
* Metallurgy, Iron and Steel. By John Percy, M.D., F.R.S., London, 1864
Murray, p. 807, et seq.
�Early Accounts of Molten Iron.
11
may be made of all kinds of iron. It is true, indeed, that it is
made better from one kind than from another, and with one sort of
charcoal than another, and it is also made better according to the
skill of the masters. The best iron to make it good is, however,
that which, being by its nature free from the corruption of any
other metal, is more easy to melt, and which is to a certain extent
harder than other kinds. With this iron is put some pounded
marble or other fusible stones, in order to melt them together.
By these it is purged, and they have, as it were, the power of
taking away its ferruginosity, of constricting its porosity, and of
making it dense and free from cleavage. Now, to conclude, when
the masters wish to do this work, they take of that iron passed
through the furnace or otherwise as much as they wish to convert
into steel, and they break it into little bits; then they prepare
before the aperture of the forge a circular receptacle, about a foot or
more in diameter, made of one-third clay and two-thirds small coal
(carbonigia), well beaten together with a hammer, well mixed, and
moistened with so much water as will make them keep together
when squeezed in the hand; and when this receptacle is thus made
in the same way as they make a hearth (ceneraccio), but deeper, the
aperture is prepared in the midst, which should have a little of the
nose turned down, so that the wind may strike in the midst of the
receptacle. Then, when all the space is filled with charcoal, they,
moreover, make round about it a circle of stones or soft rock to keep
in the broken iron and the additional charcoal which they put
upon it, and so they fill it up and make a heap of charcoal over it.
Then, when they see that the whole is on fire, and well kindled,
especially the receptacle, the masters begin to set the bellows to
work, and to put on some of that crushed iron mingled with saliup
marble and with pounded slag, or with other fusible and not earthy
stones; and so melting this composition by little and little, they
fill up the receptacle so far as they think fit; and having first
formed with the hammer three or four lumps of the same iron, each
weighing 30 or 40 lbs., they put them hot into that bath of melted
iron, which bath is called by the masters of this art the art of iron;
and they keep them thus in the midst of this melted matter with a
great fire about four or six hours, often turning them about with a
rod as cooks do victuals, and so they keep them there, turning
them again and again, in order that all that solid iron may receive
through its porosity those subtle substances which are found to be
within that melted iron, by virtue of which the gross substances
which are in the lumps are consumed and dilated, and the lumps
�12
Early Accounts of Molten Iron.
become softened, and like a paste. When they are seen thus by the
experienced masters, they judge that that subtle virtue of which
we have spoken has thoroughly penetrated; and taking out one of
the lumps which appears best from their experience in testing, and
bringing it under the hammer, they beat it out, and then throwing
it suddenly as hot as they can into the water, they temper it, and
being tempered, they break it, and look to see if the whole of it
has in every particle so changed its nature as to have no small
layer of iron within it; and finding that it has arrived at that point
of perfection which they desire, they take out the lumps with a
large pair of pincers, or by the ends left on them, and cut them
into small pieces of seven or eight each, and they return them to the
same bath to get hot again, adding to it some pounded marble and
iron for melting to refresh the bath and increase it, and also to
restore to it what the fire may have consumed, and also that that
which [is to become steel may, by being immersed in that bath, be
the better refined; and so at last, when these are well heated, they go
and take them out piece by piece with a pair of pincers, and they
carry them to the hammer to be beaten out, and they make rods of
them as you see. And when this is done, being very hot, and
almost of a white colour from the heat, they cast them all at once
into a stream of water as cold as possibly can be had, of which a
reservoir has been made, in order that the rods may be suddenly
cooled, and by this means get the hardness which the common
people call temper, and thus it is changed into a material which
hardly resembles that which it was before it was tempered. For'
then it was only like a lump of lead or wax, and by tempering it, it
is made.so very hard as almost to surpass all other hard things; and
it is also made very white, much more so than is the nature of its
iron, even almost like silver, and that which has its grain white,
and most minute and fixed, is of the best sort. Among those kinds
which I know of, that of Flanders, and in Italy that of Valcamonica,
in the territory of Brescia, are very much praised; and out of
Christendom, that of Damascus, that of Caramenia and Lazzimino (?),
as well as that of the Agiambi (?).”
The same process is described by Agricola; but it is worthy of
remark, as stated on the authority of the elder Mushet, that “ no
where does he describe a process by which cast iron was obtained
and applied to foundry purposes.” *
In India, near Trincomalee, steel (wootz) is still made in the same
manner, its manufacture being confined to a few families in that
* Papers on Iron and Steel, London, 1840, p. 380.
�Early English Gast Iron.
13
neighbourhood, and altogether unknown to the common steelmakers
of Salem, a distance of only 70 miles. The cast iron used in this case
is obtained from “ a small blast furnace, about 8 feet high, and
tapering from 18 inches diameter at the bottom to 9 inches at the
top. The iron flows out of a grey quality, but without perfect
separation, as the cinders produced contain a good deal of iron.
With regard, then, to the production of cast iron in the most
ancient low furnaces, that was practicable with ores not difficult to
fuse when in presence of large quantities of flux and a great excess of
charcoal—the former of which would preserve the metal from
oxidation, whilst it was allowed to remain a sufficient time in con
tact, to take up a maximum quantity of carbon from the latter; but
as the temperature in such furnaces was low, the slag of necessity
contained a large proportion of the iron, and, except with the most
easily fusible ores, the process was very slow; indeed, with the
more difficult fusible ores, almost impossible. With this certainty
before us, however, of the possibility of producing cast iron even
in the oldest known types of furnaces, coupled also with the
well-ascertained fact of the use of iron and steel by Greeks,
Indians, ancient Egyptians, and Assyrians, f it is impossible
to say how far back we may carry the date of the discovery of cast
iron. But it is not, as I have already pointed out, to be inferred
that the blast furnace has any claim at all to antiquity; on the
contrary, I have collected together the foregoing evidence with the
one object, amongst others, of avoiding any misapprehension on
that point.
Percy, J remarking on a quotation from Lower’s Contributions to
Literature, &c., says,—
“ The date of the discovery of cast iron has not, so far as I am
aware, been precisely ascertained, though it is a point of great
archaeological interest. Lower has published the following remark
able statement, which would lead to the conclusion that cast iron
was made and applied in England 500 years ago. A curious
specimen of the iron manufacture of the fourteenth century, and,
as far as my own observation extends, the oldest existing article
produced by our foundries, occurs in Burwash church (Sussex).
It is a cast iron slab, with an ornamental cross, and an inscription
in relief. In the opinion of several eminent antiquaries, it may be
* Papers on Iron and Steel, London, 1840, p. 673.
t Proceedings Phil. Soc., Glasgow, vol. vi., 1871; also Trans. Devon. Assocn.,
1868.
+ Percy’s Metal; Iron and Steel, p. 878.
�14
Early Dutch Cast Iron.
regarded as unique for the style and period. The inscription is
much injured by long exposure to the attrition of human feet.
The letters are Longobardic, and the legend appears, on a careful
examination, to be,—
‘ Obate P. Annema Jhone Coline, (or Colins).
‘ Pray for the soul of Joan Collins.’
Of the identity of the individual thus commemorated I have been
unable to glean any particulars. In all probability she was a
member of the ancient Sussex family of Collins, subsequently seated
at Locknersh, in the adjacent parish of Brightling, where, in com
pany with many of the neighbouring gentry, they carried on the
manufacture of iron at a place still known as Locknersh Furnace.”
M. Verlit says that cast iron was known in Holland in the
thirteenth century, and that stoves were made from it at Elass, in
1400, a.d. ; and, according to Lower, the first cannon of cast iron
*
were manufactured at Buxteed, in Sussex, by Ralphe Hogge, in 1543.
It is recorded, however, by others that the first iron guns cast in
England were made in London, in 1547, by Owen; and in 1595 the
art of iron casting was so well understood that John Johnson and
his son Thomas had by that time “ made forty-two cast pieces of great
ordnance of iron for the Earl of Cumberland, weighing 6,000 pounds,
or three tons a-piece.” Agricola, too, who died in 1494 a.d., seems
to have been acquainted with cast iron; for he Writes,—“ Iron
melted from ironstone is easily fusible, and can be tapped off; ” so
that although he does not appear to say anything as to the method
by which such cast iron was produced, it nevertheless is evident,
when we consider the large extent to which cast iron was probably
then employed for guns, and doubtless other purposes, that the
blast furnace was at that time in existence, though on a very small
scale, grown out of the Catalan, and through the Blaseofen, or
Osmund, f to the German Stiickofen, in which cast or malleable iron
* Mushet’s Papers on Iron and Steel, p. 391.
+ Percy says {Iron and Steel, pi 320),—“ Between the Luppenfeuer, or Catalan
furnace, and the Stiickofen, German metallurgists place a furnace of inter
mediate height, which they designate Blaseofen and Bauernofen. This furnace
was formerly employed in Norway, Sweden, and other parts of Europe; and
although a century may have elapsed since it became extinct in the first two
countries mentioned, yet to this day it continues in operation in Finland.”
“ Osmund” is the Swedish word for the bloom produced in this particular kind
of furnace, of which the annexed woodcuts (Figs. 1 and 2) are a plan and vertical
section, respectively, shewing the outside as consisting of a timber casing,
�The Osmund Furnace.
15
was produced as required, by varying the proportions of the materials
constituting the charge.
“ Osmund” Furnace.
Fig. 1.—Plan.
As the Stiickofen would appear to be the last stage of transition
from the low to the high furnace, into which it ultimately became
‘ ‘ Osmund ” Furnace.
Fig. 2.—Section.
merged altogether, when the discovery was made that the ore was
more completely reduced, and the variety of purposes to which
and the inner part a lining of refractory stone, the space between them being
filled with earth.
The Osmund furnace is used for reducing the hydrated sesquinoxide ores (lake
or bog iron ores) found in the lakes and rivers of some parts of Northern Europe,
and in Finland is stated at the present day to be working side by side with the
modern blast furnace.
�16
The “ Stuck ” or “ Wulf ” Oven.
the pig or sow metal could be applied increased the demand for
cast iron to such an extent as to induce the indirect ^method of
reduction to be carried out on a large scale, it will be unnecessaryin this paper, which deals with cast iron and the blast furnace
as its principal subjects, to refer further to the pre-existing low
furnaces.
Regarding the Stiickofen, then, or high bloomery furnace, it has
been correctly described by writers on metallurgy as a Catalan
or low furnace, extended upwards in the form of either a circular
or quadrangular shaft. In Germany this furnace is also known
as Wulfsofen, the reduced metallic mass resulting from the opera
tions being designated “ Stuck ” or “ Wulfhence the Stiick or
Wulf oven—Salamander furnace—for the following particulars of
*
which I am indebted to Professor Osborne’s treatise,f and who, in a
paragraph preceding the extract, significantly terms this the
“ transition furnace,” which might be used for the production of
cast iron or malleable iron at will, by varying the constituents of
the charge and the intensity of the blast.
Osborne says,—
“ This kind of furnace is at present very little in use. A few are
still in operation in Hungary and
The “Stiickofen. ’
Spain. At one time they were
very common in Europe. The
iron produced in the Stuck oven
has always been of a superior
kind favourable for the manu
facture of steel; but the manipu
lation which this oven requires
is so expensive that it has been
superseded. Fig. 3 shews a cross
section of a Stuck oven; its inside
has the form of a double crucible.
This furnace is generally from 10
to 16 feet high, 24 inches wide
at bottom and top, and measures
Fig. 3.—Section.
at its widest part about 5 feet.
• “ Salamander is the term now given to the mass of half-pure iron, which
results when the molten mass of a furnace chills before it can be regularly
tapped off into pigs. It is difficult to melt, and is sometimes largely malleable
iron. The present may have originated from the earlier use of the word as
applied to this furnace.
+ The Metallurgy of Iron and Steel, Theoretical and Practical, in all its branches,
�The “Stuck ” or “ Wulf" Oven.
17
There are generally two tuyeres [tw^-er, allied to tuyaw, a pipe],
*
a a, and at least two bellows and nozzles, both on the same side.
The breast, &, is open, but during the smelting operation it is shut
by bricks; this opening is generally 2 feet square. The furnace
must be heated before the breast is closed; after which charcoal
and ore are thrown in. The blast is then turned into the furnace.
As soon as the ore passes the tuyere, iron is deposited at the
bottom of the hearth; when the cinder rises to the tuyere, a por
tion is suffered to escape through a hole in the dam, 6. The tuyeres
are generally kept low upon the surface of the melted iron, which
thus becomes whitened. As the iron rises the tuyeres are raised.
In about 24 hours one ton of iron is deposited at the bottom of
the furnace. This may be ascertained by the ore put in the furnace.
If a quantity of ore is charged sufficient to make the necessary
amount of iron for one cast, a few dead or coal charges may then
be thrown in. The blast is then stopped, the breast wall removed,
and the iron, which is in a solid mass, in the form of a salamander
or “stuck-wulff as the Germans call it, is lifted loose from the
bottom by crowbars, taken by a pair of strong tongs, which are
fastened on chains suspended on a swing-crane, and then removed
to an anvil, where it is flattened by a tilt hammer into 4-inch thick
slabs, cut into blooms, and finally stretched into bar iron by small
hammers. Meanwhile the furnace is charged anew with ore and
coal, and the same process is renewed.
“ By this method good iron as well as steel may be furnished.
In fact, the salamander consists of a mixture of iron and steel—
of the latter, skilful workmen may save a considerable amount.
The blooms are a mixture of fibrous iron, steel, and cast iron. The
latter flows into the bottom of the forge fire, in which the blooms
are re-heated, and is then converted into bar iron by the same
method adopted to convert common pig iron. If the steel is not
sufficiently separated, it is worked along with the iron. This would
be a very desirable process, on account of the good quality of iron
which it furnishes, if the loss of ore and waste of fuel it occasions
were compensated by the price of bar iron. Poor ores, coke, or
anthracite coal, cannot be employed in this process. Charcoal
made from hardwood, and the rich magnetic, specular, and sparry
ores are almost exclusively used.”
It is obvious that the conditions necessary to the production of
edited by H. S. Osborne, LL.D., Professor of Mining and Metallurgy in Lafayette
College, Easton, Pennsylvania. Triibner & Co., London, 1869.
* One tuyere, however, is frequently used.—S. J.V.D.
�18
The, “Blauofen.
cast iron—viz., a column of materials which gradually become
increased in temperature during their descent, exposed to reducing
gases, and latterly, prolonged contact in the reduced state to carbon
izing matter, obtained in this furnace; and the result frequently
was that, when intending to produce malleable iron at once, the
lump was so much carbonized, owing to excess of carbonizing
materials, that it had to be submitted to a decarbonizing process
before it could be hammered. Experience in working the Stiickofen
proved it to be extremely wasteful of fuel; and about 1840 it was
to a great extent abandoned in Carniola, Carnithia, and Styria,
although still worked in Germany and Hungary to a limited
extent (Karsten). In some cases a throat was added to the furnace,
of a gradually widening form: this gave facility in charging. The
tuyere was placed about a foot above the hearth bottom; but
as the furnace continued in operation this distance became
increased, by reason of the disintegration or wear of the hearth
(silicious conglomerate), which we learn influenced the yield and
quality of the iron as well as the quantity of charcoal consumed.
Besides being made of the form shewn at fig. 3, the Stiickofen
sometimes increased with a regular taper throughout' the entire
height of the shaft, being broadest at the bottom, and both
rectangular as well as circular in horizontal section.
The
tuyeres were sometimes made of clay, at others of copper,
situated at different parts of the furnace; and when in the
breast, the bellows had to be removed before the lump of reduced
iron could be withdrawn. As the demand for cast iron increased,
the Stiickofen was gradually replaced by the Blauofen, in which
*
cast iron was produced alone; but it still retained its place for the
direct production of malleable iron—and indeed malleable iron was
also produced in the Blauofen, which at first, it would appear,
was simply a tall Stiickofen, eventually becoming increased in
height to from 20 to 25 feet, in which case it was capable
of producing cast iron only. In working these furnaces for
the production of malleable iron, the slag was allowed a constant
escape, so that the lump of metal in the hearth might be
exposed to the action of the blast, which prevented it from becom
ing carbonized to excess; at other times the slag was allowed to .
accumulate, thus protecting the metal from the decarbonizing
action of the blast, after it had become carbonized in passing
through the lower part of the furnace, and therefore producing
•By some authors termed “blue furnace.” Fr. “ Fournean blue,” “blue
oven.
�The “Blauofen.
19
carbonized or cast iron. The Blauofen, as in common use on
the continent, is represented in vertical section at fig. 4, wherein
a is the breast, b the tuyere. This furnace may be kept in blast for
three to six months, or even longer, when the hearth widens and
interferes with successful operations. In working with this furnace,
the practice is to heat it by a fire,
The “ Blauofen.”
after which the breast previously
open is closed; it is then filled
to the top with coal and iron ore,
which are renewed as the charge
sinks. The tuyeres are about
14 inches above the hearth, which
slopes towards the breast. This
furnace requires rich ores and a
plentiful supply of charcoal, and
produces good pig iron, as well
as a metal specially suitable for
steel, sometimes called “ steel
metal,”* and said to be that from
Fig. 4. Section.
which German steel (shear steel) is made. The management of the
Blauofen is simple—generally and where sparry carbonates are
plentiful—and the furnace is cheaply constructed.
From the preceding remarks we have become familiar with the
earliest known form of the blast furnace, which originating in the
Stuckofen, or high bloomery, of some’95 cubic feet capacity, passed
into the Blauofen of some 500 to 600 cubic feet; and without
following its progressive development minutely through the fur
naces in the Hartz, Silesia, Prussia, Sweden, Great Britain, and
America—all of which has been already done, and so excellently in
the Treatises of Percy, Osborne, and others—we may at once come
down to our own age, and now find furnaces in the Cleveland
district of the enormous capacity of 20,000 to 30,000 cubic feet, or
about 280 times that of an early Blauofen.
* Osborne’s Metallurgy, p. 294.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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On the past and present of iron smelting.
Creator
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Day, John Vincent
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Edinburgh
Collation: 19 p. ill. (figs.) ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From the 'proceedings' of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, communicated April 23, 1873. Inscription on front cover: From the Author. Includes bibliographical references.
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Edmonston and Douglas
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1873
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G5273
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Engineering
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (On the past and present of iron smelting.), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Engineering
Iron