Note 8 — Chapter XII · How Copper-culture reached China

Babylonia had likewise a Copper Age to begin with, but copper was at an early period entirely supplanted by bronze, except for religious purposes—a fact which is of great importance, especially when it is found that the religious beliefs associated with copper and gold were disseminated far and wide by the early miners—the troglodytes of Sinai in the early Egyptian texts—who formed colonies that became industrial and trading centres. Votive images found in Babylonia are of copper. A good example of early Sumerian religious objects is the interesting bull’s head in copper from Tello, which is dated c. 3000 B.C. The eyes of this image of the bull-god—the “Bull of Heaven”, the sky-god, whose mother or spouse was the “Cow of Heaven”—“are inlaid with mother-of-pearl and lapis-lazuli”. A “very similar method is met with in the copper head of a goat which was found at Fara”.8 Here we find fused in early Sumerian religious objects complex religious beliefs connected with domesticated animals, sea-shells, and metals.