Abstract
Early Iron in Egypt MB. CHRISTOPHER HAWKES contributes to Antiquity of September a note on the content of two pieces of iron, one from the Great Pyramid (Fourth Dynasty, c. 2900 B.C.) and one from Abydos (Sixth Dynasty, c. 2500 B.C.), constituting the two major items of evidence for the use of iron in Egypt before the New Kingdom, to which Mr. G. A. Wainwright referred in his article “The Coming of Iron” in Antiquity of March last (see NATUBE, 137, 584). It has been shown, Mr. Hawkes now points out, by tests made by Dr. H. J. Plenderleith in the British Museum laboratory in 1926 and repeated in 1932, that the Pyramid piece affords no trace of nickel, and that, although minute traces of nickel were present in two samples from the Abydos piece, these are in samples taken from the outer rust, and no nickel appears in the core. Since all meteoric iron known has been found to contain nickel, it is a reasonable inference that neither of these two pieces is of meteoric origin. Even if the date of the Pyramid specimen is doubtful, as some have maintained, though a later origin seems improbable, there can be no question about the piece from Abydos. Further, Mr. Hawkes, on submitting his material and his conclusions to Dr. C. H. Desch, was informed by him that not only was he satisfied with the result, and accepted the view that the nickel in the Abydos samples of rust was in all probability derived from the associated copper, but he also referred to further specimens of early iron “which is certainly not meteoric” lately received by him from sites in Syria and Mesopotamia. Mr. Hawkes is, therefore, of the opinion that these pieces may be taken as evidence for the occasional smelting of terrestrial iron in the Near East as early as the third millennium B.C.
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Research Items. Nature 138, 592–593 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138592a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138592a0