The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

4^
THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
the passage. As Professor Sayce says : " the western extension of the empire ended
with the Syrian coast ; beyond that were Kaptara or Krete and the Tinland." Ku-Ki\
may well have been Cyprus, or some other island in the Mediterranean, or some region
easily accessible from it.
Now the importance of this passage is that it shows us that^g^rly as 280Q b.q .
th£_£ab5dioaiians_4Jffii£_XQgiiisant. of the existence of tin, and doubtless aware of its
value as an ingredient of bronze ;
^-—
this can only mean that they were using it to harden
the copper, which they had worked so well centuries earlier. The passage imphes that
Sargon's rule extended to Ku-Ki, which may perhaps mean no more than that some of
his subjects had a trading post there. What seems important is that the discovery
of the value of tin and bronze had been made before 2800 B.C., somewhere in western
Asia, though at what sites is at present uncertain. Copper mines, which are known to
have been worked at an early date, exist south of Trebizonde, near Erzeroum, in
Armenia and at Diarbekir in the upper valley of the Tigris ;
—
ancient tin workings have
been found further east in Khorazan.^^' But the local supply of tin was apparently
insufficient, and merchants from the Persian Gulf were carrying on a trade in this
commodity with a place in the Mediterranean region, even if they had not already, as
seems probable, established a definite trading post in Ku-Ki.
Thus we see that a definite organised trade, both by sea and by land, had been
estabhshed in the eastern Mediterranean region before 2800 B.C., and that this included
a new and important feature, the search for and importation of raw materials as well
as the export of manufactured articles.
Now, as I have shown elsewhere,"* at a date which cannot be very much later,
during a period which closed_abput_220o B.C., the eastern Mediterranean was in close
trade relations AYith Spain, and. was exploiting the "mineral resources of thai peninsula.
At present it is uncertain^who these traders were, but they seem to have been in touch
with Crete, the Cyclades and the second city of Hissarhk, and perhaps"too with Cyprus.
Though we have no evidence that these traders were from the Persian Gulf, they were
trading between Spain and the area in which Ku-Ki probably lay, and if they were not
subjects of the Babylonian Empire, they were at least carrying on the metal trade
first organised by the people from the Persian Gulf.
»3 Gowland (1912), 245, 252. m Peake (1916) 2. 119, 120.