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
Re: [b-hebrew] Iron and Curses in Deuteronomy 28
, (continued)