[Illustration: FIG. 310.--Bronze dagger.] The date at which this last named metal was introduced into the country is still matter of dispute. Various facts brought together by Dr. Birch, lead us to think that the Egyptians were acquainted with iron at least as soon as the commencement of the Theban supremacy,[384] but it would seem that they always made a greater use of bronze. [384] _Ibid._ Vol. II. PP. 250, 251. The word that signifies gold appears in the oldest inscriptions, and in the pictures at Beni-Hassan contemporary with the twelfth dynasty the whole process of making gold ornaments is represented.[385] From that time onward the Egyptian Pharaohs caused the veins of quartz in the mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea to be worked; they also obtained large supplies of the precious metal from Ethiopia. Silver came from Asia. It seems to have been rarer than gold, at least during the last centuries of the monarchy. As Belzoni remarked, while gold is lavished upon the mummies and upon all the sepulchral furniture about them silver is only met with in exceptional cases.[386] In 1878, Mariette exhibited in Paris five massive patera-shaped silver vases, which, from the style of their ornaments, he attributed to the Saite epoch. [385] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, vol. ii. pp. 233-237. [386] BELZONI, _Narrative_, etc. vol. i. p. 277. The finest specimens of Egyptian jewelry now extant belong to the three great Theban dynasties. We may give as instances the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, which are among the most precious treasures of the Boulak Museum,[387] and those found in the tomb of Kha-em-uas, son of Rameses II. These are in the Louvre. The splendid breast ornament figured on the opposite page (Fig. 311), is one of them. It is made of lapis-lazuli and gold, and is thus described by M. Pierret: "Jewel in the form of a naos, in which a vulture and an uræus are placed side by side; above them floats a hawk with extended wings; in his claws are seals, the emblems of eternity. Under the frieze of the naos an oval with the prenomen of Rameses II. is introduced. Two _tet_ are placed in the lower angles of the frame."[388] These jewels were funerary in character. They consist of a little chapel in the middle of which there is usually a scarab--emblem of transformation and immortality--adoring the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. They are called _pectorals_ because they were placed upon the bosoms of the dead. Great numbers of them have been found in the tombs, in metal, in wood, and in earthenware; few, however, are as rich as that of Kha-em-uas. Each compartment of the golden frame-work is filled in either with coloured glass or with a piece of some _pietra dura_ with a rich hue of its own.