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ORIGINAL SOURCES OF CULTURE. 49lay at almost equal distances from Egypt, Phoenicia, andGreece. If it was, as we are told, the country of brass andiron, and if these metals were first manufactured there/ theobscurity which covered the oldest tradition is at once removed. Late investigations have, however, led to morediscriminating views for ; they have shown, that by con1founding the Ida of Phrygia or Asia Minor, with the Ida ofCrete, many things have been applied to the latter, whichshould have been restricted to the former. 3 The prevailingminerals in Crete do not contain brass and iron3;and Cretehas, therefore, been improperly regarded as the country ofthese metals. But they are found in the Ida of PhrygianLydia ;and that there was also the home of the fabulouspersonages, the Dactyli and Curetes, to whom tradition attributes the first acquisition and working of iron, is apparenteven from the account in Strabo. 4 Yet they and their worship were transplanted to Crete and with them the ;workingof iron, which, though not originating in Crete, could easilyhave been introduced from Asia Minor and Cyprus. Norcan any one, who is familiar with the origin of the ancientreligions of nature, be surprised to find this earliest metallurgy connecting itself with a worship, which generated5sacred usages and mysteries. As far as we can judge, theimnr gration of the Dactyli and Curetes into Crete belongsto tlieage before Minos 6and if manufactures of iron and;brass were established there, the immigration, into the islandfrom various quarters, by the Pelasgi, Hellenes, and Phoenicians, are easily explained. 71The most important passage in Diodor. v. p. 381.2Hoeck's Kreta, I. Band.8Hoeck, I. 42, and the appendix by Hausmann on the character of thegeological formations of Crete, p. 443.4Strabo, p. 725, and Hoeck, 284.5 Diod. I. p. 381. So too the workmen in the mines of Germany aboundin superstitions.*Hoeck, I. 359, first appendix.7They are enumerated chronologically by Diodorus, I. p. 382. Hoeck, I.52, proves that no evidence exists of immigrations from Egypt