So far as regards the Old World there are some who have supposed that, owing to iron being a simple and not a compound metal like bronze, and owing to the readiness with which it may be produced in the metallic condition from some of its ores, iron must have been in use before copper. Without denying the abstract possibility of this having been the case in some part of our globe, I think it will be found that among the nations occupying the shores of the eastern half of the Mediterranean—a part of the world which may be regarded as the cradle of European civilisation—not only are all archæological discoveries in favour of the succession of iron to bronze, but even historical evidence supports their testimony. In the Introductory Chapter of my book on Ancient Stone Implements I have already touched upon this question, on which, however, it will here be desirable farther to enlarge. The light thrown upon the subכject by the Hebrew Scriptures is but small. There is, however, in them frequent mention of most of the metals now in ordinary use. But the word כְהֹשֶה, which in our version is translated brass—a compound of copper and zinc—would be more properly translated copper, as indeed it is in one instance, though there it would seem erroneously, when two vessels of fine copper, precious as gold, are mentioned.[8] In some passages, however, it would appear as if the word would be more correctly rendered bronze than copper, as, for instance, where Moses[9] is commanded to cast five sockets of brass for the pillars to carry the hangings at the door of the tabernacle, which could hardly have been done from a metal so difficult to cast as unalloyed copper. Indeed if tin were known, and there appears little doubt that the word בְדִיל represents that metal, its use as an alloy for copper can hardly have been unknown. It may, then, be regarded as an accepted fact that at the time when the earliest books of the Hebrew Scriptures were reduced to writing, gold,[10] silver, iron, tin, lead, and brass, or more probably bronze, were known. To what date this reduction to writing is to be assigned is a question into which it would be somewhat out of place here to enter. The results, however, of modern criticism tend to prove that it can hardly be so remote as the fourteenth century before our era. In the Book of Job, as to the date of which also there is some diversity of opinion, we find evidence of a considerable acquaintance with the metals: “Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.”[11] Lead is also mentioned, but not tin.