In many instances oxydization had gone so far that the cups could not be lifted without falling to pieces; others, however, though covered with a thick coat of oxide, were brought away and successfully cleaned.[410] At the British Museum I compiled a catalogue of forty-four plates or cups of this kind, nearly all from the same treasure, while in the store rooms of the same institution there are many more waiting to be cleaned and rendered fit for exhibition. All these, with a few exceptions, are ornamented, the simplest among them having a star or rosette in the centre. Wherever the bronze has not been completely eaten away the decoration may be recovered, and often it is still singularly clear and sharp. A few cups that had been protected by those placed above them showed, when discovered, such brilliant copper tones that the workmen at first thought they were of gold. The mistake was soon recognized, but we may well believe that the conquerors of half Asia numbered gold and silver vessels among the treasures stored in their palaces; as yet, however, none have been found. All these cups, like the deeper vessels recovered at the same time, were of bronze; the precious metals only appear in the form of small inlays and incrustations in the alloy. In the centre of the rosettes with which some of the bands are decorated a small silver stud, slightly raised above the rest of the surface, is sometimes placed, and in a few cases the points of the great rosette that occupies the centre of the plate radiate from a centre of gold, silver being banished to the small rosettes at the edge. Again, the middle is sometimes a kind of boss, over the whole of which traces of gold may still be distinguished. The decoration of these _pateræ_ is always inside: on the outside nothing is to be seen but the confused reverse of the pattern, such as may be seen on the left of our Fig. 208. I have found but one exception to this rule in a much deeper cup on the outside of which a lion hunt is represented.[411] In that case figures engraved within the vase would have been invisible, for it is very deep.