was insufficiently authenticated, and therefore valueless, in the absence of other definite archaeological evidence in the shape of iron of supposed early date.  To this article the Swedish Egyptologist, Dr. Piehl, replied in the same periodical, in an article entitled Bronsaldem i Egypten, in which he traversed Prof.  Montelius’s conclusions from the Egyptological point of view, and adduced other instances of the use of iron in Egypt, all, it is true, later than the time of the IVth Dynasty.  But this protest received little notice, owing to the fact that it remained buried in a Swedish periodical, while Prof.  Montelius’s original article was translated into French, and so became well-known.

For the time Prof.  Montelius’s conclusions were generally accepted, and when the discoveries of the prehistoric antiquities were made by M. de Morgan, it seemed more probable than ever that Egypt had gone through a regular progressive development from the Age of Stone through those of copper and bronze to that of iron, which was reached about 1100 or 1000 B.C.  The evidence of the iron fragment from the Great Pyramid was put on one side, in spite of the circumstantial account of its discovery which had been given by its finders.  Even Prof.  Petrie, who in 1881 had accepted the pyramid fragment as undoubtedly contemporary with that building, and had gone so far as to adduce additional evidence for its authenticity, gave way, and accepted Montelius’s view, which held its own until in 1902 it was directly controverted by a discovery of Prof.  Petrie at Abydos.  This discovery consisted of an undoubted fragment of iron found in conjunction with bronze tools of VIth Dynasty date; and it settled the matter.* The VIth Dynasty date of this piece of iron, which was more probably worked than not (since it was buried with tools), was held to be undoubted by its discoverer and by everybody else, and, if this were undoubted, the IVth Dynasty date of the Great Pyramid fragment was also fully established.  The discoverers of the earlier fragment had no doubt whatever as to its being contemporary with the pyramid, and were supported in this by Prof.  Petrie in 1881.  Therefore it is now known to be the fact that iron was used by the Egyptians as early as 3500 B.C.**

     * See H. R. Hall’s note on “The Early Use of Iron in Egypt,”
     in Man (the organ of the Anthropological Society of
     London), iii (1903), No. 86.

** Prof.  Montelius objected to these conclusions in a review of the British Museum “Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age,” which was published in Man, 1005 (Jan.), No 7.  For an answer to these objections, see Hall, ibid., No. 40.

It would thus appear that though the Egyptians cannot be said to have used iron generally and so to have entered the “Iron Age” before about 1300 B.C. (reign of Ramses II), yet iron was well known to them and had been used more than occasionally by