Page 20 - Copper and Bronze in Art: Corrosion, Colorants, Getty Museum Conservation, By David Scott

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simple ornaments and blades, shows such distinctive features as very long twin planes and, in
some samples, unusual growth features along slip planes in the solid metal, or patterns of cor­
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rosion of the copper metal that are atypical for melted and smelted copper (FIGURE B).
Disregarding for the moment alloys of copper with arsenic, which were the first important
copper alloys used by both Old World and New World cultures, the most commonly encoun­
tered copper alloys are those with tin, called "tin bronze," or simply "bronze." The term bronze
will be used here to cover a multitude of different copper alloys in cases where the composi­
tion of the metal is either unknown or not relevant to the discussion at hand. Often lead was
added to the mixture of copper and tin, producing a series of ternary alloys of copper-tin-lead
with lower melting temperatures, making the bronze easier to cast and helping to increase the
bulk of the casting. This economized on the use of tin, which was relatively expensive in the
ancient world.

Copper and mythology The Latin word for copper, cuprum, evolved from aes Cyprium,
meaning metal from Cyprus, a region famed in Roman times for
its supply of smelted copper. In his Natural History (ca. 77 C.E.), Pliny the Elder wrote that "in
Cyprus, where copper was first discovered, it is also obtained from another stone also, called
chalcitis, copper ore." Even Roman mythology links copper and Cyprus through the symbol Ç,
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a modified Egyptian ankh, which signifies copper and is also the zodiacal sign for the planet
Venus. In Roman mythology, Venus was the successor to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess who
maintained Cyprus as her principal place of worship. In modern times this connection between
copper and Cyprus has been retained in the chemical abbreviation for copper, Cu.

I N T R O D U C T I O N
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