The other pateræ resemble these as far as the technique and decoration are concerned: they evidently came from the same workshop and belonged to one owner. Were they for daily use or only for ornament? It would seem that they were not fashioned for a definite use: at least they do not recall the shapes seen on the monuments in the hands of guests at a banquet or of priests in the sacrifices. They were hung on the walls of halls, or placed on sideboards on fête-days, and if they were given to the guests, it was not simply for them to eat or drink out of. Filled with fresh water or clear wine, it was a sort of miniature lake, in the centre of which the point of the gold hat rose like an islet: the landscape and figures, seen through the transparent medium, stood out on the flat background with peculiar vivacity, and were effaced or deformed at pleasure when the liquid was disturbed. It is not so long since we were pleased with similar puerilities, and Orientals do not disdain them to-day: the pateræ were, perhaps, toys rather than objects of real utility. I shall not say the same of the silver strainers, the forms of which are elegant but not overladen with ornament, and evidently intended for use. A wide opened funnel, a plaque at the bottom pierced with tiny little holes--the handle alone testifies to any artistic attempt--an open papyrus flower, the petals of which, bent over the stem, lean on the rim of the funnel. It is a useful implement for kitchen or cellar, well adapted to its end, easy to keep clean, in a word practical, a thing in truth that the pateræ are not. V It is clear, then, that the interest of the find is great in itself on account of the number and beauty of the objects. Until now the greater part of the goldsmiths’ work we possess was of the Ptolemaic period, and those that could be attributed with certainty to the Pharaonic period possessed no characteristics that permitted us to judge the skill of the Egyptians. The pictures on the walls of tombs or temples authorize our belief that it was very skilful, but the conventions of their designs are still so ill-defined that there is not always agreement about their interpretation. It is even necessary to ask if certain motives figuring outside a vase ought not to be taken as belonging to the decoration of the inside. We now have a sufficient number of their works to justify our conjecture, and to declare in all sincerity that the goldsmiths were in no way inferior to the sculptors, at least so long as the second Theban Empire lasted. [Illustration: THE BOTTOM OF ONE OF THE ZAGAZIG SILVER PATERÆ.]