THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

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IRON. 621
the Greek traditions as the introducer of the Phoenician letters
into Greece, and though the arts of dyeing with purple, and
of making glass, are ascribed by the Greeks to Phoenicia, there
is no hint that the knowledge of iron came from thence to
Greece. Furthermore, although the Homeric poems give us
many references to the articles brought by the Phoenician
traders, such as the fine fabrics wrought by the Sidonian
women, vessels of silver, and necklaces of gold and amber beads,
nowhere do we hear of iron as part of their wares. On the
contrary when that metal is mentioned as employed in barter, it
is the Acheans who give
it in exchange for wine, not indeed
to Phoenician shipmen (such as those who had brought from
Sidcm the great silver crater, given by Evenus king of Lemnos
to Patroclus as the price of Lycaon, son of Priam) \ but to
traders from Lemnos. But it is
highly probable that the
Acheans purchased the wares of Sidon with precisely the same
kind of objects as those with which they bought wine. From
this it is not im])robable that already by
B.C. 1200 the Phoenicians
were importing iron from the Greeks just as they
were doing in the days of Ezekiel.
Though " Cyprus has considerable masses of iron ore of fair
(juality, and there is evidence that they were discovered and
worked as soon as the knowledge of the metal extended'^" there
is no evidence that this Avas vei-y early.
Some iron has been
found in tombs containing two scarabs of Amenophis and
Taia, and also pottery of Mycenean
character-'. But we have
already seen that such isolated scarabs give us no sure date lor
the tombs and other objects in which, or with whicli, they are
found, and also that th(> ^lycenean ])i)ttery appears in Cyprus
only at the close of that period, oi' in other words, afti'r the
Achean conquest.
'^rhe same holds true foi- Crete, since Mr A. .). Kvans has
found at Cnossus no iion objects save tnw ornamented nail of
that metals
622 IRON.
On the other hand Miss Boyd\ whilst conducting excavations
for the American School at Athens, has quite lately discovered
at Kavusi a vase of the Dipylon period
adorned with human
figures and a chariot, and along with it iron swords of the
Hallstatt and Glasinatz type, two of which are well preserved,
the others being fragmentary^ She found iron swords of a
similar type in the ruins of a house at Bronta, as well as a
portion of a large curved knife, recalling similar knives found
at Glasinatz. The sword handles from both Kavusi and Bronta
resemble those of Glasinatz more closely than those from Hallstatt
itself
Miss Boyd likewise found in a necropolis at Bronta
several bowed fibulae resembling types found in north Italy
and in the Danubian area, and like several found in Mycenean
graves in Salamis (p. 503). These brooches were associated
with very late Mycenean pottery.
These most important discoveries render it highly probable
that Crete owed its
knowledge of iron to Europe, and not to
Egypt or Palestine, for who can point to the prototype of the
groat iron Danubian swords as indigenous in either Asia Minor
or Egypt ?
Iron must then have either crossed with the Achean settlers
from the mainland of Greece, or have come there from the
Troad, as is sliadowed forth in the legend of the Idaean Dactyli.
But, as we shall soon see that the great iron swords were
imported inti^ tlie Troad from Thrace, it follows that iron
reached Crete either directly or indirectly from Europe.
Since then in Homeric times it is the Acheans and not
the Phoenicians who are the holders of su])plies of iron, there
is a presumption
that the Acheans were not indebted to the
of iron.
p(M)|)le of Coele-Syria fn- their knowledge
We may now even go a step fui'ther and show that neither
had they obtained a knowledge of that metal from upper Asia
Minoi-. In the sixth centuiy B.C. the Chalybes were famous
for thriiiatii)ii to llic kimlin'ss of iiiv lYicinl Mr I'",vaiis.
] must cxiuTss my deep ohli^'ations to ]\Iiss Boyd for her kindness in
|.'ivinK me plioto^'iajjlis of the nlijeets diseovered l)y her, and for permitting me
tti make use' of lier discoveries, still uiipui;lished.