We are inclined to believe that the fabrication of these cups began in Mesopotamia; that the first models were issued from the workshops of Babylon and Nineveh, and exported thence into Syria; and that the Phœnicians, who imitated everything--everything, at least, that had a ready sale--acclimatized the industry among themselves and even carried it to perfection. In order to give variety to the decoration of the vases sent by them to every country of Western Asia and Southern Europe, they drew more than once from that storehouse of Egyptian ideas into which they were accustomed to dive with such free hands; and this would account for the combination of motives of different origin that we find on some of the cups. Vases thus decorated must have become very popular, and both as a result of commerce and of successful wars, must have entered the royal treasures of Assyria in great numbers. We know how often, after the tenth century, the sovereigns of Calah and Nineveh overran Palestine, as well as Upper and Lower Syria. After each campaign long convoys of plunder wended their way through the defiles of the Amanus and Anti-Lebanon, and the fords of the Euphrates, to the right bank of the Tigris. The Assyrian conquerors were not content with crowding the store-rooms of their palaces with the treasures thus won, they often transported the whole population of a town or district into their own country. Among the Syrians thus transplanted there must have been artizans, some of whom endeavoured to live by the exercise of their calling and by opening shops in the bazaars of Babylon, Calah, and Nineveh. Clients could be easily gained by selling carved ivories and these engraved cups at prices much smaller than those demanded when the cost of transport from the Phœnician coast had to be defrayed. In one of these two ways it is, then, easy to explain the introduction of these foreign motives into Assyria, where they would give renewed life to a system of ornament whose resources were showing signs of exhaustion. This tendency must have become especially pronounced about the time of the Sargonids, when Assyria was the mistress of Phœnicia and invaded the Nile valley more than once. To this period I should be most ready to ascribe the majority of the bronze cups; the landscapes, hunts and processions of wild animals with which many of them are engraved, seem to recall the style and taste of the bas-reliefs of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal rather than the more ancient schools of sculpture.