copper as ‘red’ iron.[312] And to these linguistic facts corresponds the exceptional circumstance, due probably to early intercourse with Egypt, that the stone-age in South Africa yielded immediately to an iron-age. Footnote 310: Much, _Die Kupferzeit in Europa_, p. 173; Schrader and Jevons, _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryans_, p. 188; Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_, p. 138. Footnote 311: Lepsius, _Les Métaux dans les Inscriptions Égyptiennes_, p. 55. Footnote 312: Schrader and Jevons, _op. cit._ p. 154; Rougemont, _L’Âge de Bronze_, p. 14. In Asia, gold was discovered next after copper, the Massagetæ, described by Herodotus, exemplifying this stage of progress; silver, or ‘white gold’ succeeded, bringing lead in its train; then, little by little, tin crept into use; while iron, destined to predominate, came last. All the six, however, are enumerated in a Khorsabad inscription;[313] they were familiar to the ancient Egyptians, to the Israelites of the Exodus, and to the Homeric Greeks. Footnote 313: Lenormant, _Trans. Soc. Bibl. Archæology_, vol. vi. p. 345. Gold was with Homer supreme among terrestrial substances. It represented to him beauty, splendour, power, wealth, incorruption. It was the metal of the gods, and mortals by its profuse employment, borrowed something of divine glory. Its availability for them had, nevertheless, narrow limitations unfelt supernally. For the visionary metal of Olympus might be dispensed at will without restrictions either as to quantity or qualities. Inexhaustible stores of it lay at command; and it could be rendered infrangible and impenetrable by some mythical process unknown to sublunary metallurgists. Hence the golden hobbles with which Poseidon secured his coursers might have proved less satisfactory for the restraint of commonplace Thracian or Thessalian horses; the golden sword of Apollo would surely have bent in the hand of Hector; the golden mansion of the sea-god built for aye in the blue depths of the Ægean, could not have supported its own weight for an hour on realistic dry land; nor would the process of lifting earth to heaven by hauling on a rope have been facilitated by making that rope (as Zeus proposed to do for the purpose in question) of gold. Of gold, too, were the garments of the gods, their thrones, utensils, implements, appurtenances; the pavement of their courts was ‘trodden gold’; golden were the wings of Iris, golden was the beauty of Aphrodite. No doubt, all these attributions were half consciously metaphorical, but their main design was to set off immortal existence by decorating it with an enhanced degree of the same kind of magnificence marking the dignity of mortal potentates.