[Illustration: FIG. 216.--Part of a bronze cup or platter. Diameter about 9 inches. British Museum.] We may quote a cup figured by Layard as a last example of this exotic style of decoration. In the centre there are four full-face heads with Egyptian wigs (Fig. 216). Around them a mountainous country is figured in relief, and sprinkled with trees and stags engraved with the point. The wide border, which is unfortunately very much mutilated, is covered with groups of figures apparently copied from some Egyptian monument, if we may judge from the attitudes and costume. One figure, whose torso has entirely disappeared, wears the _pschent_ and brandishes a mace over his head; the movement is almost identical with that of the victorious Pharaoh with whom we are so familiar. A goddess, who might be Isis, stands opposite to him. In another part of the border there is a misshapen monster crowned with feathers and resembling the Egyptian Bes.[415] [Illustration: FIG. 217.--Bronze cup. Diameter 11 inches; from Layard.] Side by side with these platters we find others on which nothing occurs to suggest foreign influence. Take, for instance, the example reproduced in Fig. 208. In the centre there is a small silver boss, while the rest of the flat surface is occupied by the fine diaper pattern made up of six-petalled flowers that we have already met with on the carved thresholds (Vol. I. Fig. 96). The hollow border is ornamented with four lines of palmettes united by an undulating line, a motive which is no less Assyrian than the first (Vol. I., Figs. 128, 138, 139, etc.). In Fig. 217 we reproduce a cup on which its original mounting, or ring by which it was suspended, is still in place. The whole of the decoration is pure Assyrian. The rosette is exactly similar to many of those found on the enamelled bricks (see Vol. I., Figs. 122, 123). In the first of the three zones, gazelles march in file; in the second, a bull, a gazelle, an ibex, and a winged griffin, followed by the same animals attacked by lions and making fourteen figures in all; in the third zone fourteen heavy-crested bulls follow one another round the dish. All these animals are among those most constantly treated by the Assyrian sculptor; their shapes and motions are as well understood and as well rendered as in the bas-reliefs. The bulls especially are grandly designed. Moreover, the idea of employing all these animals for the adornment of such a surface is entirely in the spirit of Assyrian decoration. We shall meet with it again in the shields from Van; we figure the best preserved of the latter on page 347.