That iron was common amongst the ancient Egyptians we may assume as proved. Mr. A. Henry Rhind, when opening the tomb of Sebau (nat. B.C. 68), noted on the massive doors ‘iron hasps and nails,’ ‘as lustrous and as pliant as on the day they left the forge.’ Belzoni, who died in 1823, found an iron sickle under the feet of one of the Karnak Sphinxes dating from B.C. 600. In June 1837, Mr. J. R. Hill, employed by Colonel Howard Vyse, when blasting and excavating the Jízeh[330] Pyramid, came upon a piece of iron, apparently a cramp, near the channel-mouth of one of the air-passages: it had thus been preserved from rust, and its authenticity cannot be doubted. Some suggested that it was used for scraping and finishing; others for finally levelling the faces of dressed stone, but it tapers off from the middle to an edge on either side and it narrows at one end.[331] This relic can hardly be of later date than B.C. 4000–3600, when Khufu (Cheops) built his burial-place and inscribed in it his hieroglyphic shield[332] or cartouche [Hieroglyph]. Stowed away in the British Museum, it excited scant attention till Dr. Lepsius at the Congress of Orientalists (London, 1874), suggested that it was of steel. A trial was made (Sept. 18); it yielded readily to a few turns of the drill, and the surfaces of the hole showed the whiteness and the brightness of newly-cut malleable iron. Since that discovery, sacrificial iron knives have been found in the Nile Valley, despite the ready oxidation of the metal in a climate of the hot-damp category. In the Bulák Museum (Salle de l’Est), with the wooden Swords, was a straight and double-edged iron blade that had two ribs running along its length. Another room showed a straight, double-edged, and round-pointed dagger of gilt iron. Of the latter weapon there are three fine specimens (Salle du Centre). [Heading: _IRON IN EGYPT._] The literature of Egypt abounds in allusions to the use of iron.[333] The Rev. Basil H. Cooper[334] believes that Mibampes the ‘Iron King,’ sixth successor of primæval Mena (circ. B.C. 4560),[335] bore on his cartouche the word ‘Benipe’; and that no less than three records[336] entitle him ‘Lover of Iron’ (i.e. the Sword); ‘thus attesting, not only the extreme antiquity of the use of iron, but unfortunately (?) of that most dreadful evil of all which are the scourges of humanity—war (?).’ And so we see the nineteenth century repeating the Herodotian half-truth, ‘Iron has been discovered to the hurt of Man’; and looking only at one side of the question, the evils of War, without which, I repeat, strong races could not supplant the weaker to the general benefit of mankind. The Epos of Pentaur, the jovial temple scribe[337] (circ. B.C. 1350), mentions ‘iron’ thrice; and Pharaoh Mene-Ptah II., whose ‘Sword gave no quarter,’ had vessels of iron. In later hieroglyphic literature the notices become too numerous to justify quotation. [Illustration: FIG. 103.—EGYPTIAN SACRIFICIAL KNIVES (IRON).]