Scientific American | October 31st, 1896
Summary
FROM very early times the ancients were attracted the beautiful color, the brilliant luster and the indestructibility of gold, and spared no pains in the endeavor to acqu
FROM very early times the ancients were attracted the beautiful color, the brilliant luster and the indestructibility of gold, and spared no pains in the endeavor to acquire it. In the code of Menes, who reigned in Egypt some 2,000 years before the time of Moses, the ratio of value between gold and silver is mentioned, one part of gold being declared equal in value to two and a half parts of silver, and it is, therefore, clear that the extraction of both metals from the deposits containing them must have been carried on before that time. It is indeed probable that gold was the first metal observed and collected, since it occurs in fragments of all sizes in loose sand, and the operations of collecting the larger pieces and melting them together are so simple. Among the rock carvings of Upper Egypt there are several illustrative of the art of washing auriferous sands by stirring and working them up by the hand in hollowed-out stone basins, and subsequently melting the gold in simple furnaces with the aid of mouth blowpipes. The earliest of these carvings is supposed to date back to about 2,500 B.C. However, in ancient times, gold appears to have been mainly derived from India, and that country continued to supply most of the gold used in Europe until the discovery of America by Columbus.