For the concrete purposes of actual decoration, the metal was in constant Homeric demand. Heré’s chariot and the car of Rhesus shone with its delicate radiance; the chair of Penelope was spirally inwrought with silver and ivory; the greaves of Paris were silver clasped, and the sheath of his sword silver-studded; a silver hilt adorned the weapon of Achilles, and the strings of his lyre were attached to a silver yoke.[325] Of silver, too, was the tool-chest of Hephæstus; the guests of Circe ate off silver tables; the guests of Menelaus, if particularly favoured, might have bathed in silver tubs, two of which were presented to him in Egypt; and from golden ewers water was poured into silver basins for the ablutions before meals in every establishment of some pretension. The fittings shared the splendours of the furniture in Odyssean palaces. In the great hall of Alcinous, the door-posts and lintel were of silver, and golden and silver hounds, fashioned by Hephæstus, kept watch beside its golden gates. And the courts of Menelaus were resplendent with gold, bronze, silver, and electrum. Footnote 325: _Iliad_, i. 219; ix. 187; Buchholz, _Homerische Realien_, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 316. The term ‘electrum,’ however, is a somewhat ambiguous one. In classical Greek, it denotes two perfectly distinct substances, one metallic, the other of organic origin—the latter, indeed, chiefly; the word came to be applied almost exclusively to _amber_. Or it may be that two primarily distinct words coalesced with time into one. Lepsius has urged the probability that the name of the metal was of the masculine form _elektros_, while amber was designated by the neuter _elektron_.[326] Nor is it unlikely that these words had separate genealogies, the first being derived from an Aryan root signifying ‘to shine,’ the second from a Semitic name for resin. Phœnician inscriptions may eventually throw light upon a point which must otherwise remain unsettled, by acquainting us with the Phœnician mode of designating amber. Footnote 326: _Les Métaux dans les Inscriptions Égyptiennes_, p. 60.