Colonel A. Lane-Fox[533] remarks that one of the most peculiar forms of Sword used in Africa is the corrugated, having an ogee-section. On each face a portion of the blade is sunk on one side only, and on the other face the depression is on the reverse side. Thus the transverse section somewhat resembles the angles of the letter Z. We can understand the use of this device when adapted to the pile of the arrow or the javelin. It would give the weapon a rotatory motion on the principle of the screw-propeller, the action being only reversed instead of the screw propelling itself by acting upon the surrounding medium: in this case the air impinges upon the screw flanges and rotates the arrow, thereby increasing the accuracy of its flight. But the peculiarity has been preserved where it is wholly useless; and, curious to say, this ogee-form is persistent in all the Swords obtained from the Caucasus, while the iron blades of Saxon and Frankish spears discovered in the graves of England and France have the same distinctive. Both may have derived it from Egypt: the Caucasians through Colchis, and Western Europe by means of the Phœnicians. The illustration is taken from the ‘Pagan Saxondom’ of Mr. J. Y. Akerman, who was the first to draw attention to the strange resemblance between the Saxon and Hottentot spears.[534] Thus we see that whilst Egypt originated the three shapes of Sword-blades—straight, curved, and half-curved—the rest of Africa invented positively nothing in hoplology. Negroids and negroes either borrowed their weapons from Egypt or imported them from beyond the sea. Intertropical Africa never imagined an alphabet, a plough, or a Sword. CHAPTER IX. THE SWORD IN KHITA-LAND, PALESTINE AND CANAAN; PHŒNICIA AND CARTHAGE; JEWRY, CYPRUS, TROY, AND ETRURIA. Centuries before the Hebrews had left the Delta, a great empire bounded Nile-land on the Asiatic side, reflecting Egypt as the New World reflects the Old; in fact what Kemi was to the West, that Khita-land was to the East. The people were known to the Nile-dwellers as the Khita, Kheta, or Sheta of [Hieroglyphs]. The Hebrews from the days of Abraham to the age of Nehemiah and the Captivity, called them חתים, Khitím (our Hittites), or the ‘children of Heth.’[535] A hunting-inscription of Tiglath-Pileser (Tigulti-pal-Tsira) the First, B.C. 1120–1100, mentions the [Cuneiform], Kha-at-te (Khatte);[536] he makes them dwell on ‘the upper Ocean of the Setting Sun.’ The Greeks translated from Hebrew Γῆ Χεττιεὶμ, and termed the race Χεττιὶμ and Χεττεινί. They are the ἑταῖροι Κήτειοι (Keteian or Cetian[537] auxiliaries) of Homer (‘Odys.’ xi. 520), whose leader Eurypylus, was slain with ‘the copper’ (Sword), and of whom many perished around him ‘on account of gifts to a woman.’