Posted on 01/15/2025 6:57:50 AM PST by Red Badger
Ancient texts speak of a strange and valuable metal known as orichalcum. The mystical material was often dismissed as a fantastical invention – until they discovered a large cache of the stuff in the Mediterranean Sea.
Orichalcum’s name is derived from the Greek for "mountain copper.” One of its most prominent mentions comes in the legend of Atlantis by Plato, in which it is described as “more precious [...] than anything except gold.” The dialogue, called Critias, explains how the mythical citadel of Atlantis was adorned with walls, pillars, and floors that were coated in orichalcum, endowing the building with a flash of “red light.”
It’s also featured in several other ancient texts, including those by the 1st century CE writers Cicero and Pliny the Elder.
Often said to possess a reddish hue, there were many hints that orichalcum might be a form of brass – an alloy of copper and zinc – although its precise identity wasn’t revealed until several breakthroughs in modern science and archaeology.
In 2014, a diver discovered 40 ingots of an alloy metal in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the ancient Greek town of Gela in modern-day Sicily. Further surveys by the local authorities in 2016 revealed another 47 ingots just 10 meters (~33 feet) away from the first discovery. It was evident the two caches of ingots were from the same shipwreck that sunk to the seabed around 2,500 years ago.
The skinny metal bars were found to be a copper-zinc alloy, suggesting they were a bundle of ancient orichalcum.
Scientists also believe they’ve found evidence of orichalcum in ancient Roman coins. Most coins from this era were made of gold, silver, bronze, or copper. However, a 2019 study used a scanning electron microscope to show that some coins minted after the reforms of Augustus (23 BCE) and Nero (63–64 CE) were composed of copper-zinc alloy with up to 30 percent zinc, i.e. orichalcum.
So it turns out that orichalcum isn’t as enigmatic as it’s often portrayed. The metal is not fundamentally chemically distinct from brass; instead, it is an ancient term often used to describe a specific type of brass. However, its makeup varied over time, with varying concentrations of zinc, copper, and impurities.
“In a strict sense, the term orichalcum should be understood to refer not to a single alloy but to a class of alloys that contained copper and zinc as principal components. Though Roman alloys of this class may be called brass, they contain lower proportions of zinc than most varieties of modern brass. Orichalcum is therefore a convenient and distinctive term for designating the particular kind of brass manufacture,” Earle Radcliffe Caley, an American chemist and historian of chemistry, wrote in a 1964 paper.
From Brave AI:
Red brass Red brass, also known as C23000 brass, is an alloy that typically contains 85% copper and 15% zinc. It is highly valued for its durability, corrosion resistance, and ease of casting. This alloy is widely used in various applications due to its properties:
Plumbing: Red brass is commonly used in plumbing fixtures, pipes, and fittings because of its excellent resistance to dezincification and season cracking. It is also specified for underground service lines due to its corrosion resistance to all types of potable waters. Jewelry: The distinctive reddish hue and malleability of red brass make it a popular choice for jewelry, especially for creating intricate designs. Musical Instruments: In the context of musical instruments, particularly trombones, red brass is used for the bell to influence the sound quality. Users report that a rose brass bell (which is another term for red brass in this context) can produce a more mellow sound compared to yellow brass, which tends to produce a brighter tone. Recycling: Red brass scrap, also known as gunmetal, is highly sought after in the recycling industry due to its high copper content, which exceeds 80%, making it more valuable than yellow brass. Other Applications: Red brass is also used in fire hose couplings, zippers, condenser and heat exchanger tubes, and as a material in modern architecture due to its rich inherent color. Red brass is distinguished from yellow brass by its higher copper content and lower zinc content, which contributes to its superior corrosion resistance and strength.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunmetal
All that glitters is not Orichalcum, PinGGG!................
I was hoping for Mithril.
I found a huge deposit of unobtanium on my property last week.
Interesting stuff. I knew that brass was an alloy of copper and zinc, bit that’s all.
Whoa! I think I’ve may have a couple buckets of Orichalcum under the loading bench in my garage... Cool!
don’t tell your local government or it WILL be unobtanium to you.
Different proportions of copper and zinc yield different properties.
The ancients weren’t so primitive as we seem to think...........
I found wonderflonium on mine.
I might build a freeze ray.
(Dr. Horrible reference)
I wouldn’t want to work around a 2000-degree furnace for long.
They had big furnaces, as is revealed in the Bible, but I would imagine that most copper smelting was done in small, oven sized furnaces with long handled crucibles..........
Nearly all metals are alloys of some kind.
"1st century CE"
CE = Christ Emmanuel....................
The ancients metallurgy was indeed primitive.
The only known metals were coper, zinc, tin, lead, mercury, iron, silver, and gold. (missing something?)
So any metal had to be an alloy of these.
Nice.
Red brass also contains lead ….
California brass does not. It was a new metal invented by the idiots in the California legislature because lead is evil.
Now the brass sold here is brittle and hated by people who work with it for its ridiculous cost and substandard durability.
Democrats destroy everything they touch. They are as ignorant children playing with matches.............
It also indicates that the written histories of those times weren’t necessarily incorrect.
It would seem that more lies are promulgated in the media stream nowadays....
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