1910. No. I. GRECO-ROMAN AND ARABIC BRONZE INSTRUMENTS. 9 
pletely to the double sounds Pl. III, 16—21, of which 19 and 20 were 
found broken near the central quadrangular handle. Also in instrument 
23 the active end is broken; I have, however, good reasons for ascer- 
taining the probable use of this instrument, about which I will speak 
below. 
Pl. III, 24 is a spatula sound which stands isolated, being yellow and 
lacking patina. Though metallic zinc was unknown to the people of 
Antiquity round the Mediterrean, they understood how to make brass 
(0peíyaAxoc, aurichalcum »gold copper«), by melting copper ores with the 
zinc ore »calamine stone«; among the hundreds of medical instruments 
from Pompeji 2 scalpel handles are of brass (25 °/, zinc, 75 9/9 copper). 
So far Pl. III, 24 might certainly be an instrument from Antiquity, but 
the workmanship speaks against this supposition. Whereas the other instru- 
ments prove to be forged out of bronze in bars by a more or a less careful 
round hammering — No. 24 is hammered together by a stripe of brass 
plate; it is a rough piece of work and probably dates from a relatively 
modern time. 
The bronze instruments in Pl. III differ in many things from the 
Greco-Roman ones in Pl. II. The handle in Pl. Ill, 23 is four-sided, the 
same is the case with the »middle handle«, placed exactly in the centre, 
of the double sounds 16— 21; the ornaments are here short straight grooves 
made with a file. The corresponding handles of Greco-Roman instruments 
are round, the ornaments are transversal ring grooves, sometimes elabo- 
rately turned; there are also spiral ornaments. The middle handle is 
excentrical in all the Greco-Roman double instruments which I have seen 
in reality or in pictures (see Pl. II, 6). 
It was, however, the spoon spatulas Pl. III, 11— 14 which first attracted 
my attention; the spoon is only a round hollow stamped in the end of 
the spatula; the /wined ornaments in 12—14 have a decidedly oriental 
character and are never seen on Greco-Roman instruments. And above 
all, in the spoon spatula 11 are seen some letters in basso-relievo which as 
far as I could see were Arabic; I thought they were most likely the name 
of the instrument maker. Such a one to my knowledge has been found 
only once before on a medical instrument from Antiquity, a toothed for- 
ceps from Pompeji. There is stamped an inscription which Védrènes read 
AGATGELVSF and interpreted as »Agathangelus fecite; Milne reads the 
name somewhat differently. 
I addressed myself to Mr. A. Fonahn, Ph. D., lecturer at the University 
in Kristiania, and asked him to inspect the inscription, which he very kindly 
did. He finds it is a Palmyrene man's name in Arabic transcription. 
