Some possible light is thrown on this difficult vase by the consideration of two others. First we have two designs from the obverse and reverse of an amphora[725], shown together in fig. 71. On the obverse to the left we have a scene fairly familiar, a goddess rising from the ground, watched by a youth, who holds in his hand some sort of implement, either a pick or a hammer. The meaning of the reverse design is conjectural. A man, short of stature and almost deformed in appearance, looks at a curious and problematic figure, half woman and half vase, set on a quadrangular basis. Before it, if the drawing be correct, is a spiked crown; round about, in the field, a number of rosettes. A design so problematic is not likely to be a forgery. Before its meaning is conjectured, another vase, whose interpretation is perfectly clear and certain, remains to be considered. Its meaning may serve to elucidate the others. [Illustration: FIG. 71.] The design in fig. 72 is from a red-figured amphora[726] of the finest period, in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. At a first glance, when we see the splendid figure rising from the ground with outstretched arms, the man with the hammer and Hermes attendant, we think that we have the familiar scene of the rising of Kore or Ge. As such, had no inscriptions existed, the design would certainly have been interpreted. But, as it happens, each figure is carefully inscribed. To the left _Zeus_, next to him _Hermes_, next _Epimetheus_, and last, not Ge or Kore, but _Pandora_. Over Pandora, to greet her uprising, hovers a Love-god with a fillet in his outstretched hands. [Illustration: FIG. 72.] Pandora rises from the earth; she _is_ the Earth, giver of all gifts. This is made doubly sure by another representation of her birth or rather her making. On the well-known _Bale_-cylix of the British Museum[727] Pandora, half statue half woman, has just been modelled by Hephaistos, and Athene is in the act of decking her. Pandora she certainly is, but against her is written her other name (A)nesidora[728], ‘she who sends up gifts.’ Pandora is a form or title of the Earth-goddess in the Kore form, entirely humanized and vividly personified by mythology. * * * * * In the light of this substantial identity of Pandora and the Earth-Kore, it is possible perhaps to offer an explanation of the problematic vase in fig. 71. Have we not on obverse and reverse a juxtaposition of the two scenes, the Rise of Kore, the Making of Pandora? On this showing the short deformed man would be Hephaistos, and Pandora, half woman half vase, may be conceived as issuing from her once famous _pithos_.