Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/88

 copper was soon understood, and the trade was monopolized for centuries by the Phoenicians and their descendants, the Carthaginians. How carefully the guarded the secret of its production appears in Strabo's story (III, V, 11) of the Phoenician captain who, finding himself followed by a Roman vessel on the Atlantic coast of Spain, ran his ship ashore rather than divulge his destination, and collected the damage from his government on returning home.

There is much confusion in the early references to this metal, because the Hebrew bedil (meaning "the departed") was also applied to the metallic residue from silver-smelting—a mixture of silver, lead, and occasionally copper and mercury. The same comparison applies to kassiteros and stannum. Pliny, for example, distinguishes plumbum nigrum, lead, and plumbum candidum, stannum. Without any definite basis for determining metals, appearance was often the only guide.

Suetonius (Vitell. VI, 192) says that the Emperor Vitellius took away all the gold and silver from the temples, (69 A. D.) and substituted aurichalcum and stannum. This stannum could not have been pure tin, but rather an alloy of lead, like pewter.

The letters from the King of Alashia (Cyprus), in the Tell-el-Amarna tablets, indicate the possibility of the use of tin there in the 15th century B. C., and of the shipment of the resultant bronze to Egypt; and tin, as a separate metal, is thrice mentioned in the Papyrus Harris, under RamesesIII (1198–1167 B.C.). This confirms the mention of tin in Numbers XXXI, 22. By the time of Ezekiel (XXVII, 12) it was, of course, well known; here it appears with silver, iron, and lead, as coming from Spain. The stela of Tanutamon describes a hall for the god Amon, build by the Pharaoh Taharka at Napata (688–663 B. C.), of stone ornamented with gold, with a tablet of cedar incensed with myrrh of Punt, and double doors of electrum with bolts of tin. (Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol.IV).

By the Greeks the true tin was understood and extensively used, and the establishment of their colony of Massilia was largely due to the discovery of the British metal coming overland to the mouth of the Rhône. The Romans ultimately conquered both Galicia and Cornwall, and then controlled the trade; but to judge from Pliny's account, their understanding of it was vague.

According to the Periplus, tin was shipped from Egypt to both Somaliland and India.

Lassen (Indische Alterthumskunde, I, 249) and Oppert, arguing from the similarity of the Sanscrit kasthira and the Greek kassiteros, would transfer the earliest tin trade to India and Malacca; but it seems probable that the Sanscrit word was a late addition to the