Note 60 — Chapter II · THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE EXCAVATIONS AT SUSA AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE

See Garstang, El-Arâbah, p. 10. Dr. Gladstone, however, after giving the results of his analysis of the Sixth-dynasty copper discovered by Professor Petrie at Dendera, suggests that the small amount of tin observable in it (about one per cent.) may have been added to it artificially (Dendereh, p. 61). Bronze was “the normal metal” of the Amorite period at Gezer (Macalister, Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, April 1904, p. 119), and the three cities which represent this period go back beyond the age of the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty, to at least B.C. 2900 (see Quarterly Statement, January 1905, pp. 28–9). At Troy also Schliemann found numerous bronze weapons in the Second (prehistoric) city (Ilios, pp. 475–9). In Krete bronze daggers of the Early Minoan period (coeval with the Middle Empire of Egypt) have been found at Patema and Agia Triada (Annual of the British School at Athens, x. p. 198), and the pottery of the Middle Minoan period (B.C. 2000–1500) was associated at Palaikastro with a bronze button, two miniature bronze sickles, and a pair of bronze tweezers (ibid. p. 202). As for the Caucasus, bronze was not known there till a late date. Wilke (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1904, pp. 39–104) has shown that the bronze culture of the Caucasus was derived from the valley of the Danube, and made its way eastward along the northern coast of Pontus; see also Rössler, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1905, p. 118.