In reply to Thilo
Aitcheson "A History of Metals" records lead pipes from Ur and Kish (fourth
millennium B.C.) and a lead plug probably from a water system from Egypt
(about 2500 BC) but he doesn't think lead was widely used before the Romans.
One architectural use of lead that I do know of. The Greeks and I think the
Romans used lead to secure ironwork to stonework. Such jobs as securing the
iron "staples" (which have a proper name which I have forgotten) that
secured the stones in, for example, the lintels of the temples.
I expect they fixed the "hinges" of the doors of their stone buildings with
lead. Maybe the Egyptians did too. They had bronze temple doors. Until the
invention of portland cement you couldn't cement them in. I think you just
hammered strips of lead sheet into the recess around the iron "hinge".
Peter Hutchison
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