Note 59 — Chapter II · THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE EXCAVATIONS AT SUSA AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE
Reading edition
It must be remembered, however, that, according to Aristotle, the copper of the Mossynœci in Northern Asia Minor was brilliant and white, owing to its mixture with a species of earth, the exact nature of which was kept a secret. The Babylonian ideograph for “bronze,” therefore, may have been a similar kind of hardened copper, which was transferred to denote “bronze” when the alloy of copper and tin became known.