The great bronze manufacture which we have first to consider is Egypt. The exact average proportion of the alloy is hard to ascertain,[268] the tin varying from ten to twenty per cent., and the copper from eighty to ninety per cent. A dagger analysed by Vauquelin gave copper eighty-five, tin fourteen, and iron one per cent. Wilkinson’s bronze chisel, nine and a quarter inches long, and weighing one pound twelve ounces, found in a quarry at Thebes, contained in one hundred parts 94·0 copper, 5·9 tin, 0·1 iron; consequently its edge is at once turned by hard stone. He repeatedly mentions bronze chisels (ii. ch. vii. &c.), and he seems to suspect that they were sheathed and pointed with steel. Of course, he was puzzled to explain how the ‘bronze or brass blades were given a certain degree of elasticity.’[269] [Illustration: FIG. 82.—FINE SPECIMEN OF EGYPTIAN DAGGER IN POSSESSION OF MR. HAYNS, BROUGHT BY MR. HARRIS FROM THEBES. The material is bronze, and still is slightly elastic. There is a mid-rib, but not strongly marked. The tang, which is continued to the pommel, measures 4 inches long by a minimum of 5/12. The handle, of two slices of hippopotamus hide, has 26 ridges for firmer grasp, and there are rivets of bronze at the 6th and the 23rd ridges. There is no pommel, but here the handle is rounded off between two slices of hide, and the tang goes right through.] The result of Egyptian metallurgy is admirable, both in material and finish. At what period bronze was introduced we ignore; a cast cylinder, however, bearing the name of Pepi, dates from B.C. 3000 in the Sixth Dynasty of Middle Egypt, which includes Nitaker (Nitocris). Knives appear in the sculptures dating from before that time. A bronze dagger in the Berlin Museum, found by Sig. Passalacqua in a tomb at Thebes, retains a spring which might be of steel. My friend, Mr. W. P. Hayns, of the Alexandrian Harbour Works, showed me a specimen brought from Thebes by the late Mr. Harris, made of bronze still slightly elastic. The total length measures one foot, of which the blade is half; the latter, slightly leaf-shaped, has a minimum breadth of one inch and three-twelfths, and one inch at the shoulder. The tang, which is prolonged to the handle-end (four inches), has a minimum width of five-twelfths. The grip of two plates, hippopotamus hide (?), probably boiled, and not unlike wood, has twenty-six ridges for firmer hold, and there are bronze rivets at the sixth and the twenty-third ridges: it is without pommel, the end being simply rounded off.