No help towards clearing up the point in dispute has been derived from etymological inquiries. The word _chalkos_ is without Aryan equivalents, and can best be explained by means of the Semitic _hhalaq_, signifying ‘metal worked with a hammer.’[328] Its primitive meaning, thus left conjectural, was most probably ‘copper.’ For, from all parts of Europe, evidence has gradually accumulated that the transition from the use of stone to the use of bronze was through a ‘copper age,’ which, though perhaps of short duration, has left relics impossible to be ignored. Indications are even forthcoming among the prehistoric ‘finds’ at Hissarlik, of the tentative processes by which copper was improved into bronze.[329] The lower strata of ruins on the site of ancient Troy contained articles and implements of approximately pure copper; nearer the surface, a sensible ingredient of tin was added, augmented, here and there, to the normal proportion for bronze of about twelve per cent. At Mycenæ, domestic vessels were fabricated of copper, weapons and ornamental objects of bronze; and a copper saw, dug from beneath the lavas of Santorin, gives corroborative evidence of the early Greek use of the unalloyed metal. Footnote 328: Lenormant, _Antiquités de la Troade_, p. 11. Footnote 329: _Ib._ p. 10. _Chalkos_, then, must, to begin with, have denoted copper, and indeed it partially preserves that sense in the Homeric poems. The cargo, for example, taken on board at Temesé, in Cyprus, by the Taphian king Mentes,[330] must have been of pure copper, the distinctively ‘Cyprian’ metal. The port of Temesé, afterwards Tamassos, be it observed, was a Phœnician establishment, and bore a Phœnician name denoting ‘smelting-house,’ both instructive circumstances as regards the agency by which metallic supplies were transmitted westward.[331] Again, when Achilles enumerated with gold and ‘grey iron,’ red _chalkos_ as forming part of his wealth,[332] he could have meant nothing but unadulterated copper. The colour-adjective does not recur, but its employment this once strongly supports the inference that the unwrought _chalkos_, frequently spoken of as stored for future use or barter, was without sensible admixture of tin. Footnote 330: _Odyssey_, i. 184. Footnote 331: Schrader and Jevons, _op. cit._ p. 196; Buchholz, _Homer. Real._ Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 326. Footnote 332: _Iliad_, ix. 365.