“Tin and lead,” says Harrison in his _Description of England_, “metals which Strabo noteth in his time to be carried into Marseilles from hence, as Diodorus also confirmeth, are very plentiful with us, the one in Cornwall, Devonshire, and elsewhere in the north, the other in Derbyshire, Weredale, and sundry places of this island.... There were mines of lead sometimes also in Wales which endured so long till the people had consumed all their wood by melting of the same.” Tin, which was of such sovereign necessity for the composition of bronze, was, with lead, an object of wide commerce, as we may learn from the prophecy of Ezekiel against Tyre, whose long black ships did the carrying trade of the world. As the Tarshish of Scripture is the Tartessus of classic authors--an entrepôt of Phœnician trade in Spain--it may well be of English mined metal that the prophet speaks:--“Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead they traded in thy fairs.” The Assyrian slabs which contain the accounts of the expedition into Syria in the ninth century B.C. include among the tribute exacted of Tyre and of Jerusalem itself “bars of gold, silver, copper, and lead.” Solomon used lead in the structure of the great wall of Jerusalem. Sir H. Layard says the mountains three or four days’ journey from Nineveh furnished iron, copper, lead, and silver in abundance, and he found instances of its actual use at Nineveh. Place also, in his excavations at Khorsabad, discovered a foundation inscription of Sargon II., the great builder of the eighth century B.C. engraved on a plate of lead. A leaden jar and a piece of pipe were found by Loftus at Mugheir. In Egypt it was sparingly used. Sir G. Wilkinson says:--“Lead was comparatively useless, but was sometimes used for inlaying temple doors, coffers and furniture, small statuettes of the gods were occasionally made in this metal, especially those of Osiris and Anubis.” In Egypt as well as in Babylonia it was the custom to make a deposit of several objects in the foundations, a tradition which we still follow to-day. At Daphnae Mr. Flinders Petrie found a set of little slabs of different stones and small plates of metal, gold, silver, copper, and lead, all engraved with the name of Psamtik. The lead tablet is here figured. [Illustration: FIG. 1.] The ornamental objects of lead to which the earliest date can be assigned are those found by Dr. Schliemann in his excavations at Mycenæ and Tiryns.[1] [1] _See_ Dr. Schuchardt, translation 1891 (Macmillan).