Nos. 463-466. Bronze Battle-axe and Swords. Sepulchre I. Size 1:4, about.
With the body which lay in the middle of the tomb were found some round leaves of gold with an impressed ornamentation, and the remnants of a wooden comb. With the body at the south end of the sepulchre I found fifteen bronze swords, ten of which lay at his feet. Eight of them are of very large size, and tolerably well preserved.
A HEAP OF BRONZE WEAPONS.
A large heap of more or less broken bronze swords, which may have represented more than sixty entire ones, was found on the west side, between the last-mentioned body and the middle one; also a few bronze knives and lances. Very remarkable is the battle-axe, No. 463, for I have never yet found this shape here, but I very frequently found it in Troy, and fourteen of them were contained in the Trojan treasure.[358] Compared with our present axes, this Mycenean and the Trojan battle-axes have no hole in which the wooden handle could be fixed, and thus they had evidently been fastened in or on the handle instead of the handle being fastened in them. Some of the swords show traces of having been gilded; several of them have golden pins at the handle. The other weapons shown under Nos. 464, 465, and 466, are short swords. At the lower end of No. 465 are remnants of gold-plating.
No. 467.
Sword-handle, plated with gold, richly ornamented. Sepulchre I. Half-size.
I also found, with the body at the south end of the tomb, the large handle with a fragment of a bronze sword represented under No. 467. This handle is covered with thick gold plate richly ornamented with intaglio work, which can be well distinguished, though the handle is very dirty from the smoke and ashes of the funeral pyre. The ornamentation is exactly the same on both sides. In the hollow of the handle is still preserved part of the wood with which it was once filled.