Iron, of all the important metals, was the last to be employed generally and extensively, although when so used it quickly eclipsed in importance all the other metals.

Yet iron is to be found in almost every country in the world, and so much is there in India that it must have been known in that country in early times.
We know indeed that the African natives have used it from time immemorial, and that it is mentioned in the Bible at a very early stage, Tubal Cain being de¬scribed as “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron ” ; that on the sepulchres of the Egyptian Thebes, butchers are depicted as sharpening their knives on a round bar of iron, while the weapons of Rameses III. are painted blue to indicate they were of steel, in contrast to those of bronze, which are painted red; while the British Museum exhibits include iron knives, picks and hammers from Nineveh, of a date about 3000 B.C.

We read also that iron was discovered in Mount Ida about 1406 B.C, that the Romans mined it in Britain 54 B.C, that the Spartans and ancient Britons used bars of iron for money, and that the Philistines carried off all the ” smiths” after their conquest of the Israelites. Yet among Greeks and Romans it appears to have been little used. Why was this ?

The principal explanation is due to the superstitious fear of iron which these people appear to have felt. Plutarch tells us it was unlawful to introduce any iron implement into a Greek temple, and no Roman priest might be shaved by an iron razor or use iron scissors, Even surgical knives, though of steel, bore on the opposite side from the actual blade a, leaf-like projection of bronze with two edges, a survival of the earlier bronze blade, preserved for ceremonial reasons. The superstitions connected with Vulcan and Thor, survived long after the Christian era, and many a legend clings round ancient ” smithies.”

Perhaps - one reason for these superstitions is that iron is only found pure in the form of meteorites or “lumps of iron from heaven.”