ABSTRACT
The diffusion of metallurgy remains more nearly a postulate. By the beginning of the Illrd millennium archaeologists are confronted with distinct assemblages of fully differentiated local types in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus valley. The first relatively specialized type that could be used as an argument for diffusion is the knot-headed pin. But it is a long lived device and is first found, almost simultaneously, in regions so far apart as Gerzean Egypt and Sialk IV. Only a little later the scalloped or crescentic axe is represented in Early Pharaonic Egypt and on the Middle Euphrates in Early Dynastic I. In Early Dynastic times written documents show that they relied upon the services of the damkur or professional merchant. Fayence, on the contrary, may very well have been invented in Gerzean Egypt and, on the tabulated chronology, transmitted thence to reach Mesopotamia in Uruk times, the Iranian plateau by Sialk IV, and India before the Harappa period.
