From Egypt the use of iron would spread through Asia Minor[352] eastward to Naharayn,[353] the two-river-land, Mesopotamia. But the date is disputed. The excavations of the late Mr. George Smith yielded no iron articles older than B.C. 1000–800. Mr. Day remarks that ‘whilst Mesopotamia has not, up to the present time, produced any solid evidence in the form of material iron relics belonging to the oldest monarchies; nevertheless, the monuments of those earliest times are numerous, and they yield abundance of testimony to the acquaintance of the contemporary people with iron.’ In later ages he alludes to the rings and bangles of iron in the British Museum, which were possibly chain-links; and particularly to the ‘ombos of a shield,’ as the most exquisite piece of their hammered iron-work he has met with: he doubts if it can in some respects be surpassed by the productions of to-day. The cuneiforms speak of iron fetters, and the people of the great Interamnian plain knew the art of casting bronze over iron,[354] only lately introduced into our metallurgy. [Heading: _IRON IN ASSYRIA._] According to Mr. G. Smith there is no pure Assyrian word for ‘iron.’[355] Its cuneiform symbol is [Cuneiform], but the phonetic value or pronunciation has not yet been determined. ‘It must have been in use 2000 B.C.,’ and it is found in inscriptions of all ages. The word is supposed to belong to the ancient Turanian or Proto-Babylonian race (Akkadian[356] or Sumirian) that held the river-plains, and it has been grafted into the more recent Assyrian language. In the inscriptions, each god has his sign, and the symbol above given, accompanies, as his attribute, one of the deities of war and hunting: thus it is a parallel to that found in the cartouche of the Egyptian ‘Iron King.’ Canon Rawlinson,[357] on the other hand, assigns to the symbol the phonetic value of _Hurud_, which thus became the Chaldæan equivalent for ‘iron.’ In concert with his distinguished brother, he came to the conclusion: ‘There are two signs for metals in Assyria, with respect to which there is a doubt which is iron and which is brass (or bronze rather). These are [Cuneiform] and [Cuneiform]. Sir Henry Rawlinson, on the whole, inclines to regard the first as bronze and the second as iron, although the former is nowhere rendered phonetically. The latter is rendered in a syllabary as equivalent to _Hurud_ in Akkadian and _Eru_ in Assyrian. Mr. George Smith reverses the meanings of the two signs. The point is a very doubtful one.’