in the iron-works, a piece of half-wrought iron, of about three-quarters of 100 weight, and of the shape of a bar in the middle, but rude and unwrought at the ends. The process for bringing the iron to this state is this: They first melt off a piece from a low of cast iron, of the proper size; this they hammer at the forge into a mass of two feet long, and of a square shape, which they call a bloom; when this is done, they send it to the finery; where, after two or three heats and workings, they bring it to this figure, and call it an ancony. The middle part beat out at the finery, is about three feet long, and of the shape and thickness the whole is to be; this is then sent to the chafery, and there the ends are wrought to the shape of ANCORARUM urbs, Ανκυρας Πόλις, a city in the Nomos Aphroditopolites, towards the Red sea; so called because there was in the neighbourhood a stone quarry, in which they hewed stone anchors (Ptolemy) before iron anchors came to be used. The gentilisious name is Ancyropolis (Stephanus).