that as gold is obtained with immense labour, so it is kept with difficulty, creating great anxiety, and attended in its use both with pleasure and grief." GILDING. In the early stages of society when gold first began to be used, idols, ornaments, or other objects, were made of the metal in its pure state, till being found too soft, and too easily worn away, an alloy was added to harden it, at the same time that it increased the bulk of the valuable material. As men advanced in experience, they found that the great ductility of gold enabled them to cover substances of all kinds with thin plates of the metal, giving all the effect of the richness and brilliancy they admired in solid gold ornaments; and the gilding of bronze, stone, silver, and wood, was speedily adopted. The leaves so used were at first thick, but skill, resulting from experience, soon showed to what a degree of fineness they could be reduced ; and we find that in Egypt substances of various kinds were overlaid with fine gold leaf, at the earliest periods of which the monuments remain, even in the time of the first Osirtasen. Some things still continued to be covered with thick leaf, but this was from choice, and not in consequence of any want of skill in the workmen ; and in the early age of Thothmes III., they were already acquainted with all the various methods of applying gold; whether in leaf: or by inlay. ing or by beating it into other metals, previously tooled with devices to receive it. That their knowledge of gilding* was coeval with the sojourn of the Israelites in the country is evident from the direct mention of it in the Bible, the ark of shittim wood made by Moses being overlaid with pure gold; and the casting of the metal is noticed on the same occasiont: nor can we doubt that the art was derived by the Jews from Egypt, or that the Egyptians had long before been acquainted with all those secrets of metallurgy, in which the specimens that remain prove them to have so eminently excelled. The method devised by the Egyptians for beating out the leaf is unknown to us, but from the extreme fineness of some of that covering wooden and other ornaments, found at Thebes, we may conclude it was done nearly in the same way as formerly in Europe, between parchment; and perhaps some membrane taken from the intestines. of animals was also employed by them. In Europe the skin of an unborn calf was at first substituted for the parchment previously used, but in the beginning of the 17th century, the German gold-beaters having obtained a fine pellicle from the entrails of cattle ‡, found that they could beat *Pliny mentions the lycophoron, a composition used for attaching gold to wood. Plin. xxxv. 6. Sinopidis Ponticæ selibra, silis lucidi libris x, et melini Græciensis duabus mixtis tritisque una, per dies xii, leucophoron fit, hoc est, glutinum auri, cum inducitur ligno.” Vide Theophrast. on stones. s. 46. + Exod. xxv. 11, 12. This "pelle del budello," is mentioned by Lancellotti, who wrote gold much thinner than before, and this still continues to be used, and is known to us under the name of gold-beaters' skin. "About the year 1621," says Beckmann*, "Merunne excited general astonishment, when he showed that the Parisian goldbeaters could beat an ounce of gold into sixteen hundred leaves, which together covered a surface of one hundred and five square feet. But in 1711, when the pellicles discovered by the Germans came to be used in Paris, Réaumur found that an ounce of gold in the form of a cube, five and a quarter lines at most in length, breadth and thickness, and which covered only a surface of about 27 square lines, could be so extended by the gold-beaters, as to cover a surface of more than 1466 square feet. This extension, therefore, is nearly one half more than was possible about a century before." Many gilt bronze vases, implements of various kinds, trinkets, statues, toys, and other objects, in metal and wood, have been discovered in the tombs of Thebes: the faces of mummies are frequently found overlaid with thick gold leaf; the painted cloth, the wooden coffin, were also profusely ornamented in this manner; and the whole body itself of the deceased was sometimes gilded, previous to its being enveloped in the bandages. Not only were small objects appertaining to the service of the gods, and connected with religion, or articles of luxury and show, in the temples, tombs, or private houses, so decorated; the sculptures on * Vide Beckmann's valuable work, the History of Inventions, vol. iv. on Gilding. the lofty walls of an adytum, the ornaments of a colossus, the doorways of the temples, and parts of numerous large monuments were likewise covered with gilding; of which the wooden heifer which served as a sepulchre to the body of king Mycerinus's daughter*, the sculptures at the temple of Kalabshi in Nubia, the statue of Minerva sent to Cyrene by Amasis†, and the Sphinx at the pyramids may be cited as instances. Gold is supposed by many to have been used ‡ some time before silver, but the earliest authority, which is that of the Bible, mentions both these metals at the most remote age. The Egyptian sculptures represent silver as well as gold in the time of the third Thothmes, and silver rings have been found of the same epoch.§ Abraham was said to have been "very rich, in cattle, in silver, and in gold ;" and the use of silver as money ¶ is distinctly pointed out in the purchase of the field of Ephron, with its cave**, which Abraham bought for "four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant." On this occasion, as usual, the price paid was settled by weight, a custom retained among the *Herodot. ii. 129. 132. + Herodot. ii. 182. Pliny attributes the art of working gold to Cadmus, vii. 56. In the museum of Alnwick Castle is a silver ring of Amunoph III. Silver rings and ornaments are less common of every epoch than gold. Gen. xiii. 2. But no mention is made of it as money, till after Abraham's return from Egypt, as Goguet has justly observed, tom. i. 1. ii. c. 4. The word silver,, is commonly used in Hebrew to signify money, as argent in French. ** Gen. xxiii. 16, 17. Egyptians, Hebrews*, and other eastern people, till a late period; and, indeed, until a government stamp, or some fixed value was given to money, this could be the only method of ascertaining the price paid, and of giving satisfaction to both parties. Thus Joseph's brethren, when they discovered the money returned into their sacks, brought it back to Egypt, observing that it was "in full weight;" and the paintings of Thebes frequently represent persons in the act of weighing† gold, on the purchase of articles in the market. This continued to be the custom when ringst of gold and silver were used in Egypt for money, and even to the time of the Ptolemies, who established a coinage of gold, silver, and copper, in the country. These princes were not the first who introduced coined money into Egypt: it had been current there during the Persian occupation of the country; and Aryandes, who was governor of Egypt, under Cambyses and Darius, struck silver coins, in imitation of the gold Darics of his sovereign, for which act of presumption he was condemned to death.§ It is uncertain, as Pliny observes, when and where the art of stamping money originated. Herodotus attributes it to the Lydians, "the first people who coined gold and silver for their use || ;" Servius Tullius made ¶ copper money, about the * Vide Vol. II. p. 11. note. + Vide wood-cut, No. 78. p. 10. Vol. II. The Chinese and Japanese have a sort of ring money, or at least round coins with a hole in the centre, which are strung together. Vide Plin. xxxiii. 1. § Herodot. iv. 166. Herodot. i. 93. V. Jul. Poll. onom. 9. ; vi. 83. Lucan. Phars. vi. 402. |