METALLURGY. but these cups. If they have come down to our time in far greater numbers than anything else of the kind, it is because they were protected by their shape ; they are almost flat ; they have neither feet nor handles ; they offer far fewer weak points to destroying agencies than hollower vessels and vessels with many projections. The variety of forms made use of in Phoenician orfevrerie is attested by figured representations and by texts, as well as by actual finds. FIG. 278. Silver Patera. Diameter 8 inches. Take, for instance, the tomb of Rekhmarah (Fig. 266). You find a two-handled bucket with a goat's head on the lid, you find amphorae with boldly swelling sides, craters with wide mouths and double handles, cenochoe's, rhytons, cups with stems, and even those curious horn-shaped goblets which we shall again encounter in Greece, but only at Thera and lalysos. The two passages of Homer already quoted prove that the large craters which we see in the paintings of feasts were bought from the Phoenicians. Moreover, in the same tombs and other places as the cups we VOL. II. 3 A
