Oreichalkos

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Oreichalkos ( Greek  ὀρείχαλκος , from ὄρος óros "mountain" and χαλκός chalkós "ore", so "Bergerz") is the Greek name for brass , an alloy of copper and zinc in a ratio of 4: 1.

According to the ancient Greeks, the metal was invented by Kadmos , the mythical Greco- Phoenician king of Thebes . The Greek philosopher Plato reports in his dialogue Kritias that Oreichalkos is a “fiery shimmering metal” that the inhabitants of Atlantis valued most “after gold ”.

Lore

Ancient Greece

Oreichalkos is mentioned for the first time in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and in the Epyllion "Shield of Heracles" attributed to Hesiod , in which greaves are made from this metal, among other things.

Plato mentions Oreichalkos in his dialogue with Kritias and describes it as "fiery shimmering metal" (Kritias 116c). It is the material that the inhabitants of Atlantis valued most “after gold ” (Kritias 114e) and with which their royal castle and the temple inside it was covered and decorated. Oreichalkos would have been mined in several places on the island of Atlantis (Kritias 114e), but Plato does not specify which metal is meant by this.

The Greek geographer Strabon (approx. 63 BC to 26 AD) writes: “Near Andeira there is a stone that [...] secretes zinc, and this with the addition of copper results in the 'mixture', as they say, which is called by some orreichalkos. ” Andeira was 80 kilometers southeast of Troy . In Palestine brass was already in the late Bronze Age produced.

Pausanias (around 150 AD) used the term Oreichalkos around 500 years after Plato once in his "Perihegesis". Since he does not explain the term and does not say anything else about it, Oreichalkos seems to have been well known in his time.

In modern Greek orreichalkos also means brass, more rarely bronze , which supports the assumption that it could have meant the same thing in ancient times. In 1990 John Chadwick translated the ka-ko written in linear B with the ancient Greek sound equivalent kha (l) ko (s) as "bronze".

Ancient Rome

The Romans adopted the term as Latin aurichalcum and used it to designate a copper-zinc alloy (= brass) of a gold-like color, which was valued more than pure copper and which was used for minting coins. Since the coin reform of Augustus , the 27.3 gram sesterce and its half-piece Dupondius have been made from this alloy in a ratio of about four parts copper to one part zinc. Under Philip Arabs , the zinc content fell to up to five percent.

archeology

In 2014, a 2,600 year old shipwreck containing 39 bars of a yellowish metal was found at a depth of 3 m and 300 m from the port entrance of the city of Gela (in southern Sicily ). According to the descriptions of ancient sources, the find could be bars made of the metal of Oreichalkos . The subsequent X-ray fluorescence analysis showed a composition of 75-80% copper, 15-20% zinc and small amounts of nickel , lead and iron . The salvage of the bars from the shipwreck was carried out by the Sicilian marine authority. A full recovery of the entire wreck is planned.

Alchemy

In alchemy and various magical systems, Orichalkum means various legendary alloys made of gold, silver, copper and mercury or other raw materials, depending on the source. Supernatural powers are ascribed to the orichalkum , there are imaginative names such as elven gold for it and here, too, connections are often drawn to a mythically interpreted Atlantis, but all this is very speculative and confused and does not withstand scientific examination. Various processes in which orichalkum could be obtained from compounds containing zinc and copper served as proof that a more noble metal can be obtained from base materials, although it was not possible to produce real gold, which was a goal of alchemy for a long time.

literature

  • Earle R. Caley : Orichalcum and Related Ancient Alloys. Origin, Composition and Manufacture with Special Reference to the Coinage of the Roman Empire (= Numismatic Notes and Monographs. ) Volume 151. American Numismatic Society, New York 1964.
  • Hasso Moesta, Peter Robert Franke : Ancient metallurgy and coinage. A contribution to the history of technology. Springer, Basel 1995, pp. 145-148.
  • AS Darling: Brass and Zinc. In: Ian McNeil (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of the History of Technology. Routledge, London / New York 2002, pp. 72-76.
  • Edmund O. von Lippmann: Origin and expansion of alchemy. Published by Julius Springer, Berlin 1919, pp. 188, 189, 571, 572, 591.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Homeric Hymns 6: 9.
  2. ↑ Hesiod, Shield of Heracles 122.
  3. ^ Plato, Critias 116c – 116e.
  4. ↑ Strabo, Geography 13.56 (610).
  5. ↑ Harald Haarmann : History of writing. From the hieroglyphs to today (= Beck'sche series. Volume 4075). CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59218-8 , p. 29.
  6. ↑ Pliny , Naturalis historia 34.2.
  7. ↑ Anumis.de - Aurichalkum coin dictionary . ( Memento from May 15, 2003 in the web archive archive.today )
  8. ^ Richard Gray: Mythical red alloy said to be from the lost island is discovered off the coast of Sicily. In: Daily Mail Online. January 8, 2015, accessed January 8, 2015 . ; Francisco Aguirre A .: Investigadores encuentran 39 lingotes del "legendario metal de la Atlántida", descrito por Platón. La Tercera , January 7, 2015, accessed January 8, 2015 (Spanish).