Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/472

 1 64 Colour Synibolisui.

•copper, he could be reduced, like copper, in the solar crucible. His enemy Set was identified with iron — iron was " the ribs of Set," " the bone of Typho." Owing to its association with Set, iron acquired an evil reputation : it became the metal of the Wicked Age — the Indian Kali Yuga and the Greek " Iron Age."

It should not, I think, surprise us to find the ancient Egyptians imparting a religious significance to metals and interpreting in their theology the results of their metal- lurgic experiments. It would really be more surprising if we found that so momentous a discovery as that of the •existence of metals, and of the uses to which these could be put, had left no trace in their theological system and ■did not contribute to their highly complex myths. The discovery of metal in malachite must have seemed to them as great a miracle as the annual " miracle of the Nile," which flowed now green, now red, now milk-like and now blue. They saw the Nile carrying down the colours that caused vegetation to revive and flourish so that mankind might eat and live — the divine "life-substance" entered the earth, the grass, the corn and the trees, and it was ■enshrined in metal and in coloured stones. That the Egyptians gave consideration to metals and stones as well as to vegetation when they attempted to read the riddle of the universe, is apparent in the famous hymn to Ptah ■on the British Museum Stela No. 797, which Erman and Breasted have relegated to the Pyramid Age. This hymn sets forth that after Ptah had created the gods and made " likenesses of their bodies " they " entered into the bodies of every wood and every stone and every metal. Everything grew upon its trees w^hence they came forth." ^ The intimate association between metals and precious stones with the deities is emphasised in the reference to Ra in " the Destruction of Mankind " myth, which says, " Behold, his majesty the god Ra is grown old ; his bones 1 Breasted, op. cit. p. 46.