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to explain how Moses burnt and reduced the gold to powder. Many have offered vain and improbable conjectures, but an experienced chemist has removed every difficulty upon the subject, and has suggested this simple process. In the place of tartaric acid, which we employ, the Hebrew legislator used natron, which is common in the East. What follows, respecting his making the Israelites drink this powder, proves that he was perfectly acquainted with the whole effect of the operation. He wished to increase the punishment of their disobedience, and nothing could have been more suitable; for gold reduced and made into a draught, in the manner I have mentioned, has a most nauseous taste."

The use of gold for jewellery and various articles of luxury dates from the most remote ages. Pharaoh having "arrayed" Joseph "in vestures of fine linen, put a gold chain about his neck;" and the jewels of silver and gold borrowed from the Egyptians by the Israelites at the time of their leaving Egypt (out of which the golden calf was afterwards made), suffice to prove the great quantity of precious metals wrought at that time into female ornaments. It is not from the Scriptures alone that the skill of the Egyptian goldsmiths may be inferred; the sculp

fg are articles of jewellery. The hieroglyphics read "goldsmith" or "worker in gold." tures of Thebes and Beni Hassan afford their additional testimony, and the numerous gold and silver vases, inlaid work, and jewel

lery, represented in common use, show the great advancement they had made in this branch of art.

But gold was known in Egypt, and made into ornaments, long before; and the same mode of washing and working it is figured on the monuments of the 4th Dynasty.

The engraving of gold, the mode of casting it, and inlaying it with stones, were evidently known at the same time; they are mentioned in the Bible, and numerous specimens of this kind of work have been found in Egypt.

The origin of the sign signifying gold has been happily explained by Champollion as the bowl in which the metal was washed, the cloth through which it was strained, and the dropping of the water, united into one character, at once indicative of the process and the metal.

Much cannot, of course, be expected from the objects found in the excavated tombs, to illustrate the means employed in smelting the ore, or to disclose any of the secrets they possessed in metallurgy; and little is given in the paintings beyond the use of the blow-pipe, the forceps, and the mode of concentrating heat by raising cheeks of metal round three sides of the fire in which the crucibles were placed. Of the latter, indeed, there is no indication in these subjects, unless

it be in a preceding woodcut (403, fig. c.); but their use is readily suggested, and some which have been found in Egypt are preserved in the museum of Berlin. They are nearly five inches in diameter at the mouth, and about the same in depth, and present the ordinary form

405.

Blowpipe, and small fireplace with cheeks to confine and reflect the heat. Thebes.

and appearance of those used at the present day.

At Beni Hassan, the process of washing the ore, smelting or fusing the metal with the help of the blow-pipe, and fashioning

*Exod. xxxii. 4; xxviii. 9 and 11.

it for ornamental purposes, weighing it, and taking an account of the quantity so made up, and other occupations of the goldsmith, are represented; but, as might be supposed, these subjects merely suffice, as they were intended, to give a general indication of the goldsmith's trade, without attempting to describe the means employed.

From the mention of earrings and bracelets, and jewels of silver and gold, in the days of Abraham, it is evident that in Asia, as well as in Egypt, the art of metallurgy was known at a very remote period; and workmen of the same countries are noticed by Homer † as excelling in the manufacture of arms, rich vases, and other objects inlaid or ornamented with metals. His account of the shield of Achilles proves the art of working the various substances of which it was made, copper, tin, gold, and silver, to have been well understood at that time; and the skill required to represent the infinity of subjects he mentions, was such as no ordinary artisan could possess.

The ornaments in gold found in Egypt consist of rings, bracelets, armlets, necklaces, earrings, and numerous trinkets belonging to the toilet, many of which are of the time of Osirtasen I. and Thothmes III., about 3930, and 3290 years ago. Gold and silver vases, statues, and other objects of gold and silver, of silver inlaid with gold, and of bronze inlaid with the precious metals, were also common at the same time; and besides those manufactured in the country from the produce of their own mines, the Egyptians exacted an annual tribute from the conquered provinces of Asia and Africa, in gold and silver, and in vases made of those materials.

406.

Thebes.

* Gen. xxiv. 47, 53.

Hom. Iliad xxiii. 741. A silver cup, the work of the Sidonians, Od. iv. 618,

&c.; Iliad ii. 872, vi. 236; xvii, 474,

There was great elegance in the form of many of the oldest Egyptian vases, especially those of gold and silver. Much taste was also displayed in other objects as well as in the devices which ornamented them, among which may be mentioned the golden baskets in the tomb of Remeses III.

The gold mines of Egypt or of Ethiopia, though mentioned by Agatharcides and later writers, and worked even by the Arab Caliphs, long remained unknown, and their position has only been ascertained a few years since, by M. Linant and Mr. Bonomi. They lie in the Bisháree desert,-the land of Bigah (or of the Bugaita” mentioned in the inscription at Axum)-about seventeen or eighteen days' journey to the south-eastward from Derow; which is situated on the Nile, a little above Kom Ombo, the ancient Ombos.

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Those two travellers met with some Cufic funereal inscriptions there, which from their dates show that the mines were worked in the years 339 A. H. (951 a. D.), and 378 A. H. (989 A. D.); the former being in the fifth year of the Caliph Mostukfee Billah, a short time before the arrival of the Fatemites in Egypt, the latter in the fourteenth of El Azeéz, the second of the Fatemite dynasty.

They continued to be worked till a much later period, and were afterwards abandoned, the value of the gold barely covering the expenses; nor did Mohammed Ali, who sent to examine them and obtain specimens of the ore, find it worth while to re-open them.

The matrix is quartz: and so diligent a search did the Egyptians establish, throughout the whole of the deserts east of the Nile, for this precious metal, that I never remember to have seen a vein of quartz in any of the primitive ranges there, which had not been carefully examined by their miners; certain portions having been invariably picked out from the fissures in which it lay, and broken into small fragments. The same was done in later times by the Romans; and evidences of their searching for gold in quartz veins are even found in some parts of Britain.

The gold mines are said by Aboolfeda to be situated at El Allaga (or Ollagee); but Eshuranib (or Eshuanib), the principal place, is about three days' journey beyond Wadee Allaga accord