* Possibly the word in Am IS means hard black basalt, as in Dt V^. See Driver. Joel and Amoi, pp. 130, 227.
be Indian swords, which were famous in that region. See Cornill and Smcnd, in loc.
The word ' iron ' in Scripture is applied to articles which may have been made of wrought iron, and to others which probably were made of steel. Tlie apparent special allusions to steel in AV are misleading (see Steel). See also following article
James Pathick.
IRON (barzel). — The use of iron was compara- tively late. In the whole of the plunder of Syria about B.C. 14S0 iron is never meiitionuil ; nor is it in the cuneiform letters from Syria about li.C. 1300. No clearly dated example of it is known in Egypt before about B.C. 700. Probably it began to come into use in Syria about B.C. 900 or 1000. Beyond the generalities of iron being named among metals (Gn 4--', Nu 31-^ 35"^), and the phra.ses 'chariots of iron ' (Jos H'"- '«, Jg l'» i^- '^j and ' bed of iron ' (Dt 3"[?]), the 'tool of iron ' is definitely named under Solomon ( 1 K 6'), and as an .axe about B.C. 850(2 K 6'). Iron is mentioned under Tiglath-pileser I. (c. 1100). See KIB i. 39. Well-developed tools of iron (chisels, rasps, liles, centre-bits, etc. ) were made by A.ssyrians in B.C. 670, implying that such had probably been in jirogress for a century or two at least. It appears, then, that iron began to .spread about B.C. 1000, most likely from the Chalybes in the Assyr. high- lands, who still work it, and were celebrated for it anciently. This is probably quite as early as, or earlier tnan, it appears for any purpose in Europe. See Mines, Mining. W. M. Flinders Petrie.
IRPEEL (Sn5-!: ' El heals').— A city of Benjamin, noticed with Cliephirah, Jtozah, and others, Jos 18-''. The most probable site is the ruin RafAt, N. oi el-Jib (Gibeon). See SWP vol. i. sheet xvii.
IRRIGATION In Babjlonia and Egypt, on
account of the lack of rain, water was supplied to the fields and gardens by an elaborate sy.stem of irrigation. The waters of the Nile, Euphrates, and Tigris were conveyed to a distance by a net- work of larger and smaller canals. The water from these, or from reservoirs supplied by them, is raised by various machines, the most common of wliicli is the shadoof, the essential part of which is a lever, with a weight at one end, serving to raise the full bucke^at the other. Other machines are somewhat like a turbine. The water thus raised is distributed along narrow gutters. The Nile Valley is naturally fertilized by the inundations caused by the rise of the Nile ; and the control and distribution of these floods was an important feature in the irrigation of Egypt. To this pur- pose Lake Maoris was adapted by tlie great engineer- ing works of Amenemhat III. (see Herodot. i. 193 ; Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, 67 ff. , 445 &'., 763 ff. ; Lane, Modem Egyptians', ii. 26 f . ; Petrie, History of Egypt, i. 193 ; arts. Assyria, 178* ; Egypt, ii.).
Palestine, however, is by no means a waterless country ; the eastern table - lands especially are well provided with springs. In parts, however, e.g. on the Judican plateau, springs are rare, moreover the rain drains away quickly ; nevertheless, the earlier and the later rains suffice for the crops generally. As to need for irrigation, Palestine is expresslj' contrasted with Egypt in Dt ll'"- " ' For the land, wliither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs ; but the land, whither ye go over to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.' This passage does not imply that irriga- tion was unknown in Palestine, but that it was only used on a small scale, for gardens, etc. Thug we read in Is 58" of a 'watered garden,' gan rdweh ; in Ec2°- ' Solomon is made to say, ' I made
IR-SHEMESII
ISAAC
483
me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit : I made me pools of water, to wat«r therefrom the forest wliere trees were reared.' Cf. also Sir 24*'-" ' I also came out as a brook from a river, and as a conduit into a garden. I said I will water my best garden, and will alnm- dantlv water my garden bod.' So G. A. Smith, HGllL 83, ' Vegetables tlirive where summer irrigation is used.' Driver on Dt 11'" (cf. 2nd ed. p. xxi) quotes Conder, Tent-Work, p. 328, as stat- ing that he had seen gardens irrigated ' by means of small ditches trodden by the foot.' Steuernagel, however, explains ' watered with the foot ' in the same passage as referring to a wheel worked with the foot.
There are numerous references to ptUg or pnl(ii maytm (Ps l»etc.), i.e. the trenches used for irriga- tion ; but we cannot therefore deduce a wide use of irrigation in Palestine ; some of the passages may have been written in Babylonia, or by authors familiar with the irrigation trenches of Kgypt or Chalda'a ; nor is it certain that pcleg may not gometimes mean a natural tributary.