Scientists believe that they have come close to solving the mystery of the alloy mentioned by Plato in his dialogues about the sunken continent. According to the ancient philosopher, the greatest treasure of the legendary country was the metal called in Greek "orichalcum". In the dialogue "Timaeus" it is said that the acropolis of Atlantis was located on an island surrounded by three fortified ramparts. The wall of the outer ring was covered with copper. The wall of the inner rampart was adorned by the Atlanteans with "tin casting, and the wall of the acropolis itself - with an orichalcum emitting a fiery glitter". There was also a temple of Poseidon, the interior of which was decorated with ivory, "gold, silver and orichalcum, and the walls, pillars and floors were completely lined with orichalcum."
Orichalcum was second only to gold in value
Ten kings, who ruled in different parts of Atlantis, gathered in the temple in order to administer the judgment. Before that, they caught the bull in the sacred grove near the temple, lifted it to the orichalcum stele and stabbed it on top so that the blood would drain onto the writing. On the mentioned stele, in addition to laws, there was also a spell that called great troubles on the heads of those who would break them. Then they burned the bull on the sacrificial fire, and mixed his blood in a bowl with wine, with which they thoroughly washed the stele of orichalcum. After that, scooping up moisture from the bowl with golden phials and making a libation over the fire, they swore an oath that they would mend judgment according to the laws written on the orichalcum stele inside the temple of Poseidon.
All this information about the Atlantean orichalcum relics was thought to be so important to Plato that he literally repeated them in the dialogue "Critias". However, neither he himself, nor his contemporaries in the 5th century BC. no longer knew what the orichalcum was. The philosopher wrote that it was mined in Atlantis itself, the bowels of which gave "all kinds of fossil solid and fusible metals, including what is now known only by name, and then existed in practice: native orichalcum, extracted from the bowels of the earth in various places of the island and was second only to gold in its value”.
Despite the fact that Plato, by his own admission, never saw an orichalcum, it is safe to say that he did not invent it. This metal was mentioned by ancient Greek poets two hundred years before it. Homer, in one of his hymns, called Aphrodite's curls "orichalcum". Hesiod in the poem "The Shield of Hercules" wrote that the "highly skilled shield" of the hero was made from the orichalcum, forged at the behest of Zeus by Hephaestus on Olympus. Orichalcum, thus, appears in this poem as "metal of the gods", endowed with phenomenal properties. Hesiod described in detail the "speckled shield" of Hercules, which "never pierced a distant or near strike - admiration for the gaze … He shimmered with light amber and, moreover, was emitted by a shiny gold, stripes of azure ran through it …"
The main property of orichalcum, according to the most ancient testimonies, was its undisguised brilliance and attractive golden color. Describing it enthusiastically, the ancient authors did not really explain its composition, asking a great riddle for future generations.
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Alchemists are looking for a clue
The name of this metal comes from two Greek words - "oros" (mountain) and "khalkos" (copper) - and can be translated as "mountain copper". Based on this etymology, many believed that we are talking about a metal that is similar to copper or even contains it in its composition. The ancient Romans went even further. As a result of incorrect transliteration into Latin - aurichalcum, that is, "gold-copper" - they came to the conclusion that orichalcum is an alloy of copper and gold. Their combination is extremely rare, but still occurs in nature in a native state. Finally, in Rome, orichalcum began to be called golden bronze, from which imperial sesterces coins were minted. In modern Greek, this word is used to refer to brass, but it is clear that the original orichalcum could not have been either bronze or brass. These metals do not exhibit any special "fiery sparkle". Both of them were well known in the time of Plato and could hardly be valued on a par with gold.
In the ancient treatise "On miraculous rumors", mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, it was argued that the ancients obtained orichalcum by adding a special rock to molten copper - calmia, which was mined only on the Black Sea coast. Consequently, it was not the orichalcum itself that was born in the bowels of the earth, but that mysterious mineral, which, when combined with copper, gave an alloy that was distinguished by extraordinary brilliance. This version can please the supporters of the localization of Atlantis on the Black Sea. Pliny the Elder believed that orichalcum disappeared from use when its natural deposits were exhausted.
Already in the 17th century, Francis Bacon, in his essay "New Atlantis", expressed the idea that the rare metals of this legendary civilization were not mined from the ground, but specially alloyed by craftsmen in its depths. Allegedly because of the special conditions inherent in great depths, the alloys produced there had unusual properties. “We have, - say the Baconian Atlanteans, - vast and deep mines of various depths … These mines are called the lower sphere and are used for all kinds of thickening, freezing and preserving bodies. We also use them to recreate natural mines and to obtain new, artificial metals from compositions that we put there for many years. " Alchemists also tried to uncover the composition of the orichalcum, for whom this Platonic riddle became one of the most coveted secrets of ancient metallurgy.
Roman Nutrikhin