metalworking

   Of all the crafts in ancient Mesopotamia, as well as in other parts of the ancient world, metalworking was arguably the most important and influential. Metal-working was essential to both agriculture, the mainstay of local economies, which came to rely on metal plow blades, and warfare, which could not be waged on a large scale without metal weapons and armor. Also, jewelry and other objects made of precious and semiprecious metals had great value for barter and as booty in military campaigns. Archaeologists have excavated a few workshops used by Meso-potamian metalsmiths, one in the ruins of Eshnunna. Other sites have yielded the remains of foundries and evidence of the crafting of metal weapons.

   Most metals had to be imported into Mesopotamia, which had few native deposits. Copper came mainly from Anatolia, Palestine, and Iran, for instance. Copper was used widely for weapons, tools, utensils, and a host of other products in the fifth, fourth, and third millennia b.c.

   Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin (or copper and lead), came into use in the Near East in the 4000s b.c. but did not achieve widespread use in Mesopotamia until about 3000 b.c. Like copper, bronze was commonly used for weapons and tools. It was also employed in making statues and other religious cult objects and for decorating city gates. In addition, brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, was used for some utensils and decorations. Gold, silver, and electrum, a mixture of gold and silver, were in wide use by the early 4000s b.c. for jewelry, cups, plates, and decorative inlays. Small pieces of iron, created as by-products of the copper-smelting process, made their way into Mesopotamia as early as the fifth millennium b.c. But true iron metallurgy did not begin until about 1200 b.c., after it was introduced by the Hittites. It remained small-scale until the Assyrians brought in large quantities of iron from Anatolia beginning in the eighth century b.c.

   Metals such as copper came bound in ores and had to be refined before they could be made into useful products. copper refining was referred to as washing. One method was to heat the metal until it was liquid, which settled to the bottom of the furnace, although considerable amounts of impurities remained. Most of these could be removed using a second method, smelting, in which the metal was heated along with small quantities of charcoal. At first artisans simply poured the liquid copper into molds of the desired shapes, but by the 3000s b.c. molding copper objects was supplemented by other techniques, including the lost-wax method. It consisted first of fashioning a wax model of the desired object and covering the wax with clay. When the artisan heated it in a kiln, the clay hardened, but the wax melted away, leaving hollow spaces inside the clay.

   The artisan then poured liquid copper into the spaces, when the metal solidified, he removed the clay. The lost-wax method was also used to make bronze artifacts. Refining and molding iron was more difficult, partly because it requires much higher temperatures. Working the heated iron on a forge removed many of the carbon and other impurities, producing wrought iron, which was malleable enough to shape into sword blades and other objects.

   See also: crafts and craftspeople; trade; weapons and warfare, land