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SALAMIS IN THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS.
BY ALEXANDER PALMA DI CESNOLÀ, F.S.A.,
page 24

CHAPTER III.

GOLD OBJECTS.

FRONTALS— NECKLACES—HAIR PINS—EAR-RINGS— FINGER-RINGS — NONDESCRIPT OBJECTS, AND PARTS OF PERSONAL ORNAMENTS.

HE relics of this precious metal consist of frontals and other parts of face-masks for the dead, such as eyepieces and mouthpieces, besides necklaces, hairpins, ear-rings, finger-rings, nondescript objects, and parts of personal ornaments. Some of the engraved gems are hereafter described with the finger-rings. A few more occur in the class of nondescript objects. It must be understood that many golden antiquities found in the tombs of Cyprus and in other countries, such as Etruria and Greece, are obviously of too fragile a nature for use by the living. They are sometimes so small that children alone could have worn them, if, indeed, they were worn at all. It is evident that a considerable proportion of these relics, like those found in other sites, were constructed for mortuary service only, that is, they were designed for the grave alone; and it is likewise beyond a doubt that these are substitutes or facsimiles in all other respects but solidity,1 of the prototypes which remained above ground with the survivors. No class of golden relics discovered in Cyprus or elsewhere, not even the diadems which occur in Ireland and other lands of the Celts, equals in interest those face-masks, to the very limited number of which known to be existing I have been

1 In tombs of the Cyrenaica, sham jewels of lead were often found.

fortunate enough to make some very important additions, which were gathered in a new field, and exhibit characteristics of their own. Dr. Schliemann, the celebrated excavator of the Troad, who based some of his very remarkable theories, and historical as well as personal deductions, on the fact, found such masks at Mycenae. Gold frontlets were discovered by him on the site of his Ilion; others were exhumed at Kertch, Olbia, and other places in the Khersonese—sites which had contributed much wealth of antique golden works to the matchless collection in the museum at St. Petersburg. Such masks have also occurred in Phoenicia and in Mesopotamia, that yet but half-explored world of treasures of ancient use and beauty.1 The relics of this kind, however great may be their antiquity—and there can be no doubt they range within considerable spaces of time—are exceptionally interesting, because they exhibit distinct traces of primitive ornamentation of the nature hereinafter described in respect to each

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