In default of archæological evidence, the only possibility there is of discovering an answer to this question lies in an examination of the primitive pictures out of which the cuneiform characters eventually developed. Here we are at once struck by a curious fact. The “determinative” attached to ideographs signifying “knife,” “weapon” and the like is not an ideograph which expresses the name of a metal; nor is it an ideograph denoting “stone,” but one which means “wood.” That is to say, the material of which cutting instruments were made at the time when the picture-writing of Babylonia came into existence was neither metal nor stone, but wood. That it should not have been stone is explained by the geology of the Babylonian plain, which consists of alluvial soil devoid of stones. That it should not have been of metal can only mean that the inventors of the pictorial script were not yet acquainted with the use of copper, bronze or iron. In default of metal and stone they had to content themselves with hard wood. On the other hand, copper, as well as gold and silver, had become known to them when the primitive pictographs were still in process of formation, and long before they had passed into cursive cuneiform. Copper was represented by the picture of an ingot or square plate of the metal with a handle attached to it, showing that it was already in a fused and worked state when it was imported into Babylonia. Gold seems to have originally been denoted by the picture of a collar or necklace, which signified “shining,” and was afterwards employed before the names of the precious metals. I have, however, never found this collar actually used to signify “gold”; in the earliest texts yet discovered the phonetic syllable _gi_ is attached to it when “gold” is denoted, the Sumerian word for “gold” being _azag-gi_. “Silver” was “the white precious metal,” the symbol for “white” being attached to the picture of the collar, and so forming a compound ideograph. This implies that silver became known to the inventors of the hieroglyphs at a later period than gold, though still before what I will call the cuneiform age. Even iron was known to them at the same early epoch, and was expressed by ideographs which literally mean “stone of heaven,”[58] an indication that meteoric iron must be referred to. [Illustration: HEAD OF ONE OF THE STATUES FROM TELLO. [_See p. 73._] [Illustration: VASE OF SILVER, DEDICATED TO NINGIRSU, BY ENTENA PATESI OF LAGAS. [_See p. 58._]