Bronze
was smelted in furnaces, the remains of one of which still exist
near Gournia; and was cast in moulds, many of which have survived.
The tools and weapons which were made of the metal show an average
alloy of about ten per cent. of tin. For beaten work, copper in an
almost pure state appears to have been used. Gold was in extensive
use for the best class of ornamental work, and the Vaphio cups,
which are now held to have been imported to Laconia from Crete,
are evidence of the marvellous skill which the Minoan goldsmiths
had attained; while the necklaces and other articles of personal
adornment found at Mokhlos and in the beehive tombs at Phaestos
(Plate XXXII.), are only to be matched, among ancient work, by
the diadems of the Twelfth Dynasty Princesses, found at Dahshur
in Egypt. Silver is comparatively scarce on Minoan, as on other
AEgean sites, though a number of fine silver vessels have been found
at Knossos and elsewhere; and this scarcity is perhaps due, not
only to the greed of the plunderers, but also to the fact that,
during the greater part of the period covered by the Minoan Empire,
the metal itself was actually scarcer and more valuable than gold.
In Egypt, whose supplies of silver apparently came from Cilicia, it
maintained a higher value than gold until the time of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, or about the period of the fall of Knossos; but then and
thereafter its value fell, owing to increasing supplies, below that
of the more precious metal.
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