Alloy of copper and tin. In the West bronze was largely superseded by BRASS, the alloy of copper and zinc, by the 5th century AD; many brass artworks, however, are commonly described as ‘bronze’. In early times Classical languages had just one term for copper and copper alloys, thus for example the Chinese had the word tang, the Tibetans li, the Greeks khalkos and the Romans aes. (For copper–zinc alloys produced by cementation the Greeks had the term oreikhalkos and the Romans the related term aurichalcum, but these were not often used in general literature.)