Note 7 — Chapter XII · How Copper-culture reached China

The early Babylonians (Sumerians) had to obtain their supplies of copper from Sinai, Armenia, the Caucasus area, and Persia. It may be that their earliest supplies came from Sinai, and that the battles in that “Mine-Land”, recorded in early Egyptian inscriptions, were fought between rival claimants of the ore from the Nile valley and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. One ancient Pharaoh refers in an inscription to his “first occurrence of smiting the Easterners” in Sinai. “This designation”, comments Breasted, “of the event as the ‘first occurrence’ would indicate that it was a customary thing for the kings of the time (First Dynasty, c. 3500 B.C.) to chastise the barbarians.”7 But were they really “barbarians”? Is it likely that barbarians would be found in such a region, especially in summer? It is more probable that the “Easterners” came from an area in which the demand for copper was as great as it was in Egypt.