Subscribe
Subscribe to receive new posts:
Available Now!
When Judaism Meets Science
Posts Tagged ‘metallurgy’
Copper, Tin, and Bronze in the Hebrew Bible
Native Copper – Credit: Roger Price
From about 1550 BCE to 1200 BCE, gold may have been the marker of wealth and silver the metal of commercial currency in the Ancient Near East (ANE), but that time period is known as the Late Bronze Age. The Early Bronze Age in the ANE began around 3000 BCE when some unknown metallurgist realized that melting copper (Cu) with tin (Sn) would make the resulting substance, or alloy, stronger than copper alone. But prior to that discovery, copper’s use, without any purposeful chemical additions, went unchallenged for perhaps over six millennia. In the ANE, copper began to replace stone as the material of choice for a variety of uses such as tools, weapons, and decorations possibly as far back as 8700 BCE, as evidenced by a copper pendant dated to that time which was discovered in what is present day Northern Iraq.
Copper
Copper’s supremacy, in the ANE and around 5000 BCE in other places like the Indus Valley in the Indian Subcontinent and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States, arose from a happy coincidence of several factors. Copper was, like gold and silver, two other elements in Group 11 of the Periodic Table, an element that existed in the solid phase under Standard Temperature and Pressure conditions, that is, at 32oF (0oC) and 1 atm (atmosphere). While it could be found as a carbonate (e.g., malachite), as a sulphate (e.g., chalcanthite), and as an oxide (e.g., tenorite), among other sources, it could also be found in its native metallic form. By itself, copper appeared as a reddish-brown metal, one that could be seen on the ground as nuggets and available for the taking in those locations where it existed. Today an interested person can still purchase native copper from shops located in old copper mining areas.
read more
The Metals of the Hebrew Bible: Gold and Silver
Of the ninety-two elements naturally occurring on Earth, the Hebrew Bible (the “Tanach”) mentions only six. The two most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust, by mass, are oxygen and silicon. Even though together they account for just over three-quarters of the mass of the crust, the Tanach says nothing about them. Aluminum is the next most common element, accounting for about eight percent of the mass of the crust, but it, too, is unknown, or at least unmentioned, by the authors of the Tanach.
The elements that the Hebrew Bible does identify, ordered by the frequency of mention, are gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and lead. Uniquely, in the Book of Numbers (at 31:22), they are mentioned together and in that order as metals that can be purified by fire. Sometimes they are mentioned elsewhere in different combinations and various orders. Mostly, though, they are mentioned separately , although gold and silver are often cited jointly.
Gold, zahav in Hebrew, is the most frequently mentioned metal, being identified almost 400 times, according to one concordance. Silver, or kesef, is mentioned the next most frequently, almost 300 times. Counting copper is a bit problematic as the Hebrew word for copper is nechoshet, but that word is also translated sometimes as bronze and sometimes as brass, both of which are alloys of copper. Despite the frequency of their mention, gold, silver, and copper together account for less than 0.007% of the Earth’s crust. Still, the Torah mentions these three metals as important, for instance in the adornment of the Tabernacle. (See, e.g., Ex. 31:3-5.)
read more