Early Evidence for Steelmaking in the Judaic Sources

The discovery of steelmaking can be considered one of the important leaps in the evolution of homo faber. Once iron smelting techniques were widely used, iron became the most common metal available. Although iron corrodes easily and is rather soft, with relatively simple skills and materials Its surface can be "steeled" (carbon enriched) to produce a hard metal "case." The production of homogeneous steel by a more complicated technique was achieved in India and China a millennium before it was manufactured elsewhere. In those preceding years, "Indian steel" was known only as a traded commodity in the Near East.

The present paper is the result of a working dialogue that has developed over the last few years between an archaeo-metallurgist and a philologist. Though the textual material is not generally concerned with conveying technological information, it inevitably reflects the realia of its own environment in both language and simile, if not always in the portrayal of significant political and commercial events. Our research shows that already in the Hebrew Bible, iron is portrayed as something more than just the common metal that it is, indicating an awareness of hardening and steeling techniques. In postbiblical literature, descriptive evidence of the processes of case hardening (carburization and quenching), the forge welding of steel tips, and the involvement of the Babylonian Jewish community in the trade of the highest quality Indian steel already in the 4th century CE are identified. The juxtaposition of descriptions of technical processes, based on up-to-date archaeo-metallurgical scholarship, with textual references clarifies the metal-technological meaning of terms and descriptions used in the Judaic sources. The Judaic sources are here for the first time used as a source for secular metal-historical studies; at the same time, especially due to comparisons with up-to-date archaeological data, these studies contribute to a better understanding of the often enigmatic Judaic texts.