Despite the availability of iron ore, iron objects were ex-
tremely rare, mainly because the refi ning processes are very
complex. Iron has to be worked hot, a practice for which the
Egyptian handheld hammers were not suitable; haft ed ham-
mers were not introduced until the Late Period. Th erefore,
the few advantages of wrought iron over copper alloys did not
compensate for the cost of production.
Most native silver occurred in the form of a natural al-
loy with gold, and true silver objects are rare before the New
Kingdom (1550–1070 b.c.e.), when expanding contact with
the silver-producing nations of the Near East increased the
availability of silver. Silver objects were fashioned both by
hammering and by casting.
THE MIDDLE EAST
BY LYN GREEN
Th e Near East, especially Mesopotamia, contains some of
the oldest examples of metalworking in the world. From
6000 b.c.e. the peoples of the ancient Near East began ex-
ploiting a number of diff erent metals: copper, tin, gold, sil-
ver, iron, lead, arsenic (in alloys), and to a limited extent
antimony. Th ey also used naturally occurring or artifi cial
alloys, such as electrum and copper. Electrum is a mixture
of gold and silver that oft en occurs in nature. Since gold al-
loye d w it h si lver i s muc h h a rder t h a n pu re gold , a nc ient me t-
alsmiths oft en would not have bothered to try to refi ne the
gold f ur t her. Si lver occurs in a lmost a l l gold a nd a lso may be
found in association with lead. Copper was also found with
other metals, including arsenic, creating a sort of natural
bronze. Th e term bronze, however, should be applied only
to an alloy of copper and tin. Most of the techniques used
in metalworking were standard throughout the Near East,
though certain regions had advantages in terms not only of
the minerals available but also of other substances useful in
refi ning and working metals.
Although no metals can be mined in southern Iraq, where
Sumer was located, the Sumerian and Akkadian languages of
t hat a rea have na mes for nu merou s t y pes of met a ls a nd met a l-
working techniques, and many fi nely worked metal artifacts
have been uncovered there. One explanation for these devel-
opments may be the presence of petroleum products, such as
asphalts, which could have been used in furnaces to produce
temperatures high enough to melt many metals. Th e Dead
Sea also produced bitumen. In Roman times the Nabataeans
controlled this trade, though bitumen was usually used in in-
dustries other than metalworking. Other civilizations were
not so fortunate, however.
One of the major diffi culties for ancient metalworkers
was the purifi cation of the ore. Recent excavations and exper-
iments have clarifi ed how this might have been done. Th e fi rst
stage was smelting. Researchers who studied the production
of tin at the 4,500-year-old mine of Goltepe in Turkey con-
cluded that ancient workers fi rst ground the ore into powder
with stone grindstones. Th en they put the powder between
layers of charcoal in a shallow container and fi red it to about
1750 degrees Fahrenheit (much lower than the temperature
of over 2370 degrees Fahrenheit used in tin smelting today)
so that the tin would crystallize in the melted charcoal. Th is
procedure was repeated a number of times—perhaps with
the addition of arsenic—until the tin was separated from the
glassy melt.
Impurities in a metal were not always a drawback, how-
ever. Arsenic present in copper meant a harder metal, as did
silver in gold. In addition, the mixture of metals in an alloy
resulted in a much lower melting point than that of a pure
metal, in turn making the metals easier to work. Some schol-
ars have suggested that bronze was discovered when ancient
miners and metalworkers exhausted the surface deposits of
copper, which were comparatively pure, and had to go under-
ground for ores. Th ese underground ores were much more
likely to contain a variety of other substances, especially sul-
fi des, that would have changed the properties of the copper in
diff erent ways and inspired smiths to try diff erent combina-
tions of ores to get a desired result.
One of the best examples of a coppersmith’s workshop
dating to the Bronze Age was excavated in Iran at Tepe Gha-
bristan. Th e workshop, which seems to have been activeCopper vessel with silver wire, from Ur, southern Iraq (ca. 2600–
2400 b.c.e.) (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)680 metallurgy: The Middle East