covered with a coating of white to serve as a ground for the colour that was subsequently added. Most of this seems to have faded, though it can be traced in the eyes with their dark iris and pupils, as well as on the eyelashes. As the body had been cremated, the mask could not be placed on the face of the defunct, and accordingly it was found leaning against the cinerary urn that contained the ashes. Coins of Claudius that accompanied the interment give a clue to the date; it belongs to the latter end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century.[1]
Hitherto all the masks mentioned have been Roman or the result of Roman influence; but now we must turn to Eastern Europe, to the Cimmerian peninsula and the adjoining region, where the population was vaguely termed Scythian, and the civilising influence was Greek. In a stone sepulchral chamber covered by a tumulus at Olbia, on the right bank of the Bug, near its mouth, was found the mask of a woman in gold-leaf. It is much damaged, and is of superficial, barbaric art, that presents analogies with the art displayed on the masks discovered by Schliemann at Mycenæ, though it probably belongs to a later period. In all the metal masks we have already passed under review the metal has been excised in certain places; a hole was left for the eyes and sometimes for the mouth and nostrils. Here the surface of the metal is not perforated. The eyes and eyelids are modelled in gold-leaf like the rest of the face, and there are no apertures for the nostrils or slit between the lips. In 1837 the mask of an elderly woman was found on the face of a skeleton lying in a marble sarcophagus, enclosed in a tumulus near Kertch. It was formed of thick gold-leaf beaten with a hammer, and the small inequalities had been carefully smoothed. The work and the type of face are excellent. The features, which have an expression of calm seriousness, were evidently modelled
- ↑ Benndorf, p. 51.
