HISTORY ETHNOGRAPHY NATURE WINE-MAKING SITE MAP
Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
 
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SALAMIS

SALAMIS IN THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS.
BY ALEXANDER PALMA DI CESNOLÀ, F.S.A.,
page 37

twisted silver wire, with beads, were found. The bead on the former is of the class called "Druids' Beads" in this country, or "Adder Stones", of which larger examples are described under their proper heading among the articles in glass. With the silver,

on parts of the same necklace, they comprise beautiful pearls, and a large silver oval object, of which portions remain. The larger portion has been beaten up of a peculiar form, which might readily be mistaken for that of a human mouth. Such votive offerings have been common in all ages; their types survive in every church in Italy, where models of legs, arms, eyes, lips, and ears abound. The British Museum, and its fellow institutions on the Continent, contain numerous votive sculptures of breasts, hands, lips, and eyes, and other members of the human body, the offerings of sufferers of antiquity for cures believed to have been effected by divine interference with the course of nature. It has been suggested that, as this relic was found in a tomb at Salamis, it may have belonged to a face-mask, such as those already described withother golden objects. On this point, it is worth while to notice that the art employed to represent the mouth1 (or bowl, if this is part of a spoon) is not archaic, but of a very far advanced kind. In addition to these remains are several extremely curious and uncommon articles in silver, bracelets, formed of stout wires, the overlapping ends of which are furnished with rings. These, sliding on the body of the ornament, enabled the owner to enlarge or reduce its circumference at pleasure, so that it might be adapted to the arm of a lady or of a child, of almost any diameter.2 Among the silver fibulae, two examples ' are very similar in form and character; each one having attached, below the setting which includes the iridescent bead, a disk of glass, on which is impressed a figure of a lion passant,

with a lunette represented over its back in the corresponding position to that of the star over the back of a bull, which has been described among the finger-rings in the chapter on the gold objects. Such symbols remain to be considered among the coins of Cyprus, of which I have yet to give an account. There are three beautiful rings, set with scarabǽi, of cornelian. On the stone of one is the figure of Pasht, or Sekhet, an Egyptian goddess, with two pairs of wings displayed, crowned with a disk, and holding an uncertain object in each extended palm (fig. 61). Another bears a griffin, with large wings extended. On the back a male figure sits astride, in a mantle, wearing a rayed crown, such as often appears in Cypriote statuettes, and carrying a staff, with a ball, or fir-cone, at its

1 Plate lI, fig. 10. 2 Plate II, fig. 14.

upper extremity (fig. 62). I shall say more of these crowns in the chapter devoted to a consideration of the terra-cottas. The third has a bull, standing with wings expanded (fig. 63).

Fig. 64 is an example of a rare and fine kind, unusually bold and good in its character, and of

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