This peculiar kind of damascening work was completely forgotten before the classical age. It seems to have originated in Egypt at least as early as 1600 B.C.[372] and Egyptian influences are palpable both in the decorative designs on the Mycenæan blades and in the mode of their execution. The papyrus, for instance, is conspicuous in a riverside scene. Nevertheless, these remarkable objects were certainly not imported. They were wrought by native artists inspired by Egyptian models. The freedom and boldness with which the subjects chosen for portrayal are treated make this practically certain. A specimen of the same style of work, brought from the island of Thera (now Santorin) to the Museum of Copenhagen, suffices to show that acquaintance with it was at one time pretty widely diffused through the Ægean archipelago, and hence cannot serve to localise the origin of the Homeric poems. Footnote 372: ‘A sword exactly in the style of the Mycenæan blades was taken from the grave of Aa Hotep, the mother of Ah Mose, who freed Egypt, about 1600 B.C., from the Hyksos.’—Schuchhardt, _op. cit._ p. 316. In its entirety, the Shield of Achilles was beyond doubt an ideal creation. The poet described something imaginatively apprehended as the _chef-d’œuvre_ of a superhuman artist, but claiming no existence out of the shining realm of fancy. Only the elements of the creation were taken from reality. The idea dominating its construction, of moulding a work of art into a comprehensive world-picture, is eminently Oriental. It recurs in the mantle of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and, more or less abortively, in various Indian and Moorish embroideries. And the arrangement of the sequence of scenes in concentric circles on the ‘vast circumference’ of the ‘orbed shield’ was certainly copied from Assyrio-Phœnician models. In its manufacture no iron was employed; and this was quite in accordance with Homeric usage. The latest metallic acquisition of the fore-time boasted no traditional consecration; it could impart neither beauty nor splendour; the part its nature assigned to it was one of prosaic usefulness. It is accordingly excluded from the Mycenæan scheme of ornament imitated in the Shield, and may, indeed, have been unknown to the artists by whom that scheme was elaborated. The Olympian Demiurgus, at any rate, was acquainted with no such substance; but then the gods of Greece were never quick to adopt new improvements. So far as Homer tells us, the only Olympian use of iron was in the chariot of Heré, thus described in the Fifth Iliad: