The other, more elaborate, and larger box measures eight inches long by five in height. In shape it is a parallelogram, with a deeply bevelled rather than--as Amador describes it--a five-sided top. Bands of a simple winding pattern outlined in black enamel on a ground of delicate niello-work run round the top and body of the casket. The central band upon the lower part contains a Cufic inscription of slight interest. Some of the letters terminate in leaves. The bevelled lid is covered with groups of peacocks--symbolic, among Mohammedans, of eternal life--outlined in black enamel. These birds are eight in all, gathered in two groups of four about the large and overlapping hinges. Four leaves, trifoliate, in _repoussé_, one beneath the other, decorate the clasp, which opens out into a heart containing, also in _repoussé_, two inverted peacocks looking face to face. Between the birds this heart extremity is pierced for the passage of a ring. Amador de los Ríos considers that both caskets were made between the years 1048 and 1089. The use of coloured enamel in the manufacture of these boxes dates, or generally so, from somewhat later. Although the history of enamelling in Spain is nebulous and contradictory in the extreme, we know that caskets in _champlevé_ enamel on a copper ground, with figures either flat or hammered in a bold relief, became abundant here. Two, from the convent of San Marcos at León, and dating from the thirteenth century, are now in the Madrid Museum. Labarte says that the lids of these enamelled reliquaries were flat until the twelfth century, and of a gable form thenceforward. [Illustration: V ALTAR-FRONT IN ENAMELLED BRONZE (_11th Century. Museum of Burgos_)]