Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>]

Dear Yitzhak,

Thanks again for the article you recommended by Jane Waldbaum.

http://books.google.com/books?id=AjUy9SA3vqcC&pg=PA27

So far I have read the part about the time period before 1200 B.C. I am 
not well-informed in such details, but I was struck by a few things in 
the article. She admits that there are very few remains, though she 
counts 150 iron objects from the Bronze Age. Some were clearly smelted, 
and even some iron products with nickel in them could have been. She 
shows that there was steel very early, both in Jordan and in the Hittite 
area. These include blades and an axe, though there are questions about 
how well the artisans understood the techniques they used. She says that 
some of the iron objects are so rusted away that one could not even test 
them scientifically to see how they were produced. She speaks of Hittite 
literary records of far greater quantities of iron than the 
archeological remains show. Based on what she says, it seems conceivable 
that a great deal of iron products of the ancient world have oxidized 
away, as others have said.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard