The design upon the inside of the cup seems to resemble Egyptian art. The body of a man is seen, painted in red, the arms and legs separated, and the shoulders bearing the head of the dragon with teeth and crest. The color is similar to the rest of the piece—purple, white, and black. The intermediate spaces are filled with very intricate designs.
This extraordinary design is shown in Fig. 215, and it will be seen that it agrees in many respects with figures presented in the lost color and alligator groups. It is compound in character, however, the head referring to the alligator, the body and extremities perhaps to a man or to a monkey. The suggestion of the oriental dragon in this, as in other examples, is at once apparent, and the resemblance to certain conventional forms that come down to us from the earliest
known period of Chinese art is truly remarkable. We cannot, of course, predicate identity of origin even upon absolute identity of appearances, but such correspondences are worthy of note, as they may in time accumulate to such an extent that the belief in a common origin will force itself upon us.
Fig. 215. Painted design of vase in Fig. 214, viewed from above, thought to represent a dragon by De Zeltner; probably a composite of the alligator and the monkey or man.
[ Unclassified.—]
A small number of vases do not admit of classification under any of the preceding heads. In most cases, however, they are not of especial interest and may be passed over. They represent a number of varieties of ware and are possibly not all Chiriquian, their affinities being rather with the pottery of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. One remarkable piece, of which a sketch is given in [Fig. 50, c], is of large size and is shaped somewhat like an hour glass, and on account of its peculiar form and markings may be said to resemble a corset. The upper end is somewhat the smaller, and the septum, which forms the bottom of the vessel, is placed about an inch above the base of the foot. The interior surface is smoothly polished and painted a dark dull red. The exterior is uncolored and neatly fluted. The series of vertical ribs of the upper end is separated
from those of the base by a belt of horizontal flutings, and a wide smooth space extends from the top to the base, the lower section of which is occupied by a row of button-like, indented knobs. The use of this utensil may not have been peculiar, but its shape is wholly unique. It resembles most nearly the ware of the maroon group. Its height is twelve inches.
Perhaps the most interesting of these unclassified vases is a somewhat fragmentary piece, of which an outline is given in Fig. 216. The ware closely resembles that of the alligator group in color of the paste and slip, but the base has been supplied with an annular stand, a feature not observed in that group, and the colors of the design, with the exception of the black, are unlike those used in Chiriquian vases.