A tiny plaque in the Grüne Gewölbe at Dresden is another instance of this connection with the manuscripts. It is one of two surviving portions of a casket decorated with the life of Joseph, and is directly inspired by the wonderful Genesis codex at Vienna. This codex is especially interesting as showing the artist’s delight in scenes of domestic affection; the picture, which coincides with the ivory carving, illustrates the departure of Joseph to get news of his brethren. His father with a stately gesture bids him go, and as he goes he turns to kiss his little brother Benjamin, who follows him a little way. The sculptor has taken the moment of the kiss, and the gentleness of the action is like the little domestic scene on the casket in the Museo Kircheriano at Rome (Fig. 16). [Illustration: DR. H. GRAEVEN PHOTO.] [MUSEO KIRCHERIANO, ROME 16. FRONT OF A CASKET. SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF DAVID Byzantine, ninth century] The carvings on this casket give a graphic account of the early life and adventures of David, and are most probably derived from some lost manuscript of the Book of Samuel. The active little figures are exceedingly droll, and it is difficult not to think that a little of the gay secular spirit had crept into these more sober scenes. The lamb which sits up and begs while David pipes is particularly engaging. The front side of the sloping lid is given up to most tragic scenes. _The Massacre of the Innocents_, and the _Murder of Zachariah, the High Priest_, “_killed between the temple and the altar_.” The inscription tells us that the casket was intended as a marriage gift to a Basileus and Basilissa from another wedded pair, the portraits all being on the top. The various details which the two series of caskets have in common, prove they belong to the same period. On the _Veroli_ casket (Fig. 15), the group of men stoning the bull which bears away Europa corresponds with a miniature in the Joshua Roll, which depicts the stoning of the captive people of Achan. The rosette border is also found on a twelfth century casket with half-length figures of saints in the Bargello. On some of these caskets the plaques are decorated with designs taken bodily from Oriental textiles and carvings; the smaller _Volterra_ casket in the Musée de Cluny is a case in point, and it has the additional charm of an openwork border of maple leaves on a gilt background. Some writers call these caskets Italo-Byzantine because a large number have been found in the treasuries of Italian cathedrals, but their ancestry is thoroughly Byzantine. It is not impossible that some few examples were made in the West, as several stone reliefs have been found in Venetia, clearly dating from the first decade of the eleventh century, and ornamented with the same classical subjects, confused in the same way with foreign elements, and surrounded by the customary rosette border, and which are most probably copies of these Byzantine fancy goods.