Copper Sumerian

Figure 13. Ibex on stand, arsenics copper, Sumerian, ca. 2500 B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc. 1974.190.

Mention is made of the Code of Hammurabi only to place in human history that period when reference to eye medicines or poultices was beginning to appear. The Sumerians, in southern Mesopotamia, are considered to be the first to record their history, beginning about 3100 B.C. The Egyptians used copper compounds, such as malachite and chrysocalla, as green... 

Stone age man might thus pass direct into the bronze age, or stepwise through the copper or chalcolithic age to the bronze age, according to local circumstances. A curious reversal of this procedure appears to have taken place with the Sumerians who, after using bronze, reverted to copper. Possibly this was due to shortage of tin. ... 

Woolley, The Sumerians (Oxford, 1928), pp. 41, 42. fCooK, The Metal Industry, 1937, 50, 534. Also Copper through the Ages (Copper Development Association, 1934) p. 16. 

By 3000 BCE the Sumerians, perhaps while heating copper to make it more malleable, had discovered that more copper could be retrieved from the fire if the metal were heated with certain types of dirt and stones— that is, certain earths. These earths were the metal ores, and... 

The Sumerians also mixed copper and tin to create a new material bronze. They found the new material relatively easy to cast and much harder than copper alone. Bronze could be used to make more durable hoes and spades, and knives that retained a cutting edge for a longer time. Bronze was such an important discovery that an entire era of history, the Bronze Age, was once identified by its use. However this term has lost its chronological meaning because different cultures discovered the use of bronze at widely different times. Some cultures, such as those in Finland, northern Russia, Polynesia, central Africa, southern India, North America, Australia, and Japan, had no Bronze Age but went directly from stone to iron. Egyptian bronze objects however date from as early as 2500 bce and possibly as early as 5000 bce. 

Berthelot obtained ethyl peroxide from ether and ozone.He investigated photochemical reactions. His work on galvanic cells, partition coefficient, reaction velocity and equilibrium, and thermochemistry, is mentioned elsewhere. He analysed ancient metallic and other objects from Egypt and Mesopotamia, showing that the earliest so-called bronzes were pure copper, that an ancient Sumerian vase was of pure silver, and a box from Egypt was in part platinum-iridium. This work laid the foundations of chemical archaeology. His fundamental work on the history of chemistry is dealt with in Vol. I. One of his most important early researches, on glycerine, has been left over for consideration and will now be taken up. 

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