The Κοπίς, which Meyrick makes an Argive weapon, and which English translators render simply by ‘Sword,’ has been derived by me from the Egyptian Khopsh, whose ‘inside cutting curve’ it imitates, merely flattening the bend. Writers on hoplology have mostly ignored its origin. They follow Xenophon, who speaks of it as being used by the Persians and Barbarians; and Polybius, who assigns its use to the Persians before the Greeks—apparently an anachronism. They remark that on vases it is the weapon of the Giants, not of the Gods, and that the Amazons wield it against Hercules. Hence Señor Soromenho[823] would assign its origin to the Arabs, and Colonel A. Lane-Fox to the Roman legionaries. The latter authority, indeed, contends that its form is ‘obviously derived from the straight, leaf-shaped, bronze sword, of which it is simply a curved variety.’ Here, I think, he reverses the process. Specimens of the Kopis are rare; one was found in a tomb, said to be Roman, between Madrid and Toledo, and another of the same find is in the British Museum. [Illustration: FIG. 257.] [Illustration: FIG. 258.—KOPIS WITH POMMEL.] [Illustration: FIG. 259.—KOPIS WITH HOOK.] [Illustration: FIG. 260.—KUKKRI BLADE OF GURKHAS.] The peculiarity of the Kopis is, I have said, its cutting with the inner, not the outer curve, and thus suggesting the use of the point and the ‘drawing cut’ instead of the sheer cut. This peculiarity was inherited from Egypt, and long appeared in Greek blades. It is well shown in the fragment of a bronze Kopis-like broadsword from the collection of Don Giovanni Bolmarcich, the Arciprete of Cherso: the relic was found in the Island of Ossero with an immense variety of bronzes, Greek,[824] Roman, and prehistoric or proto-historic. General Pitt-Rivers has a bronze Sword-blade from Corinth—a very fine specimen. The handle has an =H= section, the pommel measuring two and a quarter inches across, and the grip three and a half inches in length. There is no tang; the blade springs from the shoulders, which are prominent; the length is twenty-seven inches, and the section that of the Toledo rapier. It is, however, slightly leaf-shaped. In the Armeria Real of Turin (section Beaumont to north-west), two Greek blades are shown in a glass case. One is especially interesting. The total length, all being in one piece, is three feet and a half; the blade has a mid-rib; there is a straight simple cross-bar at the shoulders, and the hilt ends in a crutch, like the Hindú antelope-horns and the scroll-hilt of the Danish Swords.