Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/317

 THE TEMPLE ix CYPRUS. -95 four rooms surpassed all hope. Never had so many jewels, in which the materials were so rich and the styles so varied, been before encountered. There were bracelets of massive gold, two of them weighing each but little short of a pound ; several others weighed from ten to twelve ounces. Gold was found, indeed, in profusion and in all kinds of forms : rings, ear-rings, amulets, little boxes and bottles, hair-pins, necklaces ; silver was still more abundant in jewelry and in dishes ; neither was electrum, the alloy of gold and silver, absent ; objects of rock crystal, of carnation, of onyx, of agate, of every variety of hard and precious stone, and of glass, were found, as well as soft stone cylinders, statuettes of terra-cotta, earthenware vases and bronze lamps, candelabra, FIG. 216. Plan of the crypt at Curium. Erom Cesnoln. chairs, vases, weapons, &c. A certain order was perceptible in the way this treasure was stored. The jewels of gold were found chiefly in the first chamber ; in the second the silver dishes were ranged on a shelf cut in the rock about eight inches above the floor. Unhappily these were much more seriously injured by oxidization than the gold, and from the mass of metal that fell into dust as soon as touched, only a small number of those bowls or cups, which have lately roused so much curiosity among archae- ologists, were saved. The third room contained a few bronze lamps and fibulae, some alabaster vases, and a great number of earthenware vessels and statuettes. In the fourth there were bronze utensils, with several of copper and iron among them, and,