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8 The Museum of Gizeh contains an admirable bronze statue of Pepi I., who is supposed to have reigned about 3400 B.C. It seems probable that the use of metal was not discovered in Egypt, but that the Pharaonic Egyptians brought the knowledge of metals with them from the East.

As regards iron, Mr Budge informs me that in a passage in the funeral text of Pepi I., about B.C. 3400, it is said that this king will sit upon a "throne of iron ornamented with lions' faces," and the hoofs of the bull Sma-ur (see Recueil de Travaux, vol. vii. p. 154), and in several places in the texts of this period there is abundant reference to iron. Thus the abode of the blessed was in heaven, the floor of which was made of iron, and the Nile flowed across it. The earth below was lit by night either by lamps being suspended from, holes which had been bored in it, or by the light which made its way through the holes. The recensions of these texts which we now have cannot have been made after B.C. 3800, and in his opinion they are much earlier.

There is a prayer in the Harris papyrus, written during the reign of Rameses III. (1300 ), that the words of the king may be "firm as iron." In the same papyrus vessels of iron are mentioned, and the king is said to have made the wall of the temple of Horus like a "hill of iron." Objects of iron are also mentioned in the Karnac tribute. In the lists of Thothmes III. (1600 B.C.) iron comes third in the series of metals paid as tribute. These references, however, imply that the use of iron was already well known. This renders less improbable the authenticity of the piece of iron said to have been found wedged in between two of the stones of the Great Pyramid. Maspero, moreover, in 1882 found some pieces of iron in the Black Pyramid of Abousir (VIth Dynasty); but no iron has been found in any of the tombs belonging to the earlier Egyptian dynasties.

The earliest evidence of iron in Assyria is an