scale. This has certainly been the case with
the Great Pyramid. We can, then, accept Lepsius's theory as modified by
Dr. Borchardt.

Another interesting point has arisen in connection with the Great
Pyramid. Considerable difference of opinion has always existed between
Egyptologists and the professors of European archaeology with regard
to the antiquity of the knowledge of iron in Egypt. The majority of
the Egyptologists have always maintained, on the authority of the
inscriptions, that iron was known to the ancient Egyptians from the
earliest period. They argued that the word for a certain metal in old
Egyptian was the same as the Coptic word for "iron." They stated that in
the most ancient religious texts the Egyptians spoke of the firmament
of heaven as made of this metal, and they came to the conclusion that it
was because this metal was blue in colour, the hue of iron or steel; and
they further pointed out that some of the weapons in the tomb-paintings
were painted blue and others red, some being of iron, that is to
say, others of copper or bronze. Finally they brought forward as
incontrovertible evidence an actual fragment of worked iron, which had
been found between two of the inner blocks, down one of the air-shafts,
in the Great Pyramid. Here was an actual piece of iron of the time of
the IVth Dynasty, about 3500 B.C.

This conclusion was never accepted by the students of the development of
the use of metal in prehistoric Europe, when they came to know of it.
No doubt their incredulity was partly due to want of appreciation of the
Egyptological evidence, partly to disinclination to accept a conclusion
which did not at all agree with the knowledge they had derived from
their own study of prehistoric Europe. In Southern Europe it was quite
certain that iron did not come into use till about 1000 B.C.; in Central
Europe, where the discoveries at Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut exhibit
the transition from the Age of Bronze to that of Iron, about 800 B.C.
The exclusively Iron Age culture of La Tene cannot be dated earlier than
the eighth century, if as early as that. How then was it possible that,
if iron had been known to the Egyptians as early as 3500 B.C., its
knowledge should not have been communicated to the Europeans until over
two thousand years later? No; iron could not have been really known to
the Egyptians much before 1000 B.C. and the Egyptological evidence was
all wrong. This line of argument was taken