There are also numerous vases and cups of terra-cotta, and a few of gold and silver, and bars of silver which have every appearance of being used for money, being of the same form and weight. The fragments of ordinary pottery are innumerable, the finer and more perfect vases are often of a graceful form, and moulded into shapes of animals or human heads, and decorated with spirals, rosettes, and other ornaments of the type which is more fully illustrated as that of the pre-Hellenic civilization of Mycenæ. For Schliemann has not only restored the historic reality of Priam and the city of Troy, but also that of Agamemnon "King of men," and his capital of Mycenæ. The result of his explorations on this site has been to show that a still larger and more wealthy city existed here for a longer period than Troy, and which affected a more extensive area, for its peculiar art and civilization were widely diffused over the whole of the eastern coast of Greece and the adjoining islands, and specimens of it have been found on the opposite coasts of Asia Minor, as we have seen at Troy, and as far off as Cyprus and Egypt, where they were doubtless carried by commerce. The existence of an extensive commerce is proved by the profusion of gold which has been found in the vaults and tombs buried under the _débris_ of the ruined city, for gold is not a native product, but must have been obtained from abroad, as also the bronze, copper, and tin required for the manufacture of weapons. The city also evidently owed its importance to its situation on the Isthmus of Corinth, commanding the trade route between the Gulfs of Argos and of Corinth, and thus connecting the Eastern Mediterranean and Asia with the Western Sea and Europe. The still older city of Tiryns, of which Mycenæ was probably an offshoot, stood nearly on the shore of the eastern gulf, while Mycenæ was in the middle of the isthmus about eight miles from either gulf. Tiryns was also explored by Schliemann, and showed the same plans of buildings and fortifications as Troy and Mycenæ, and the same class of relics, only less extensive and more archaic than those of Mycenæ, which was evidently the more important city during the golden period of this great Mycenæan civilization.