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that surmount the tiara of the latest Sassanian kings. The central ornament is a mixed solar and lunar emblem.

In Monsieur Dieulafoy's own words: La broderie, les entrelacs formés par les oiseaux, la forme, et surtout la disposition si particulière des ailes, et l'aspecte de la garde elle-même, accusent une filiation perse sassanide incontestable. Assisting us in our belief of the true age of the hilt, may we say that M. Dieulafoy does not think the actual workmanship oriental or of such antiquity, but holds that it was done in the west by some western craftsman imitating a Sassanian original of about A.D. 640.

Let us therefore dissect the sword and see how it is possible to fit the school of design detected by these two eminent scholars to the actual period of the weapon.

Fig. 113. Sword pommel of bronze

Late XIIIth century

Cast much in the same manner as that of the so-called Charlemagne sword in the Louvre British Museum

First, there is the blade, which has been claimed as early mediaeval; with that we are entirely in accord, for, ground down and over-cleaned as it now appears, it belongs, in our opinion, to the period of the gold hilt. Next the pommel and quillons. These, as we have said, we estimate as having been made within the first half of the XIIIth century, based solely on their individual shapes and proportions. We most certainly bow to the opinions of Sir Martin Conway and M. Dieulafoy as to their very much earlier school of enrichment, but we strongly maintain our opinion that no hilt of the actual proportions and type of the Louvre sword was made prior to the year 1200 or 1150 at the very earliest. The gold pommel is flat and what we continue to term Brazil nut shaped. It is hollow and made in two halves, much after the manner of a bronze wheel pommel in the British Museum (Fig. 113). The gold quillons are character-