INCENSE CUPS. 81 



Various opinions have been expressed as to their use, none 

 of which can be regarded as altogether satisfactory. Some of 

 these are grounded upon the belief that the vessels which ac- 

 company burials were once used for domestic purposes. As I 

 cannot assent to that view, any considerations arising from their 

 supposed domestic use are not, in my opinion, of much value 

 in the argument. The whole question of the domestic origin 

 of the sepulchral vessels is, however, more fully considered here- 

 after, I will therefore say nothing more in this place than to 

 express my dissent from that theory. 



The ' incense cups,' as indeed the name given to them implies, 

 have been regarded as vessels in which to burn incense, aromatic 

 oils, or perfumes; and it has been conjectured that they were 

 suspended over the funeral pile. This is the view propounded 

 by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, by whom the name was first given 

 to them \ Mr. Birch, in ' Ancient Pottery and Porcelain Y appears 

 to regard them as pots or lamps, though it is doubtful whether 

 he refers, in the passage in question, to ' incense cups' or 'food 

 vessels.' By others they have been regarded as the receptacles 

 of some particular part of the human body, such as the ashes of 

 the heart. The Hon. W. Owen Stanley and Mr. Albert Way, in 

 a valuable essay upon Ancient Interments and Sepulchral Urns, 

 found in Anglesea and North Wales, printed in the Archseologia 

 Cambrensis 3 , seem to lean to the belief that they may have 

 been chafers, 'for conveying fire, whether a small quantity of 

 glowing embers, or some inflammable substance, in which the 

 latent spark might for awhile be retained, such for instance as 

 touchwood, fungus, or the like,' with which to kindle the funeral fire. 



That they were incense or perfume burners appears to imply a 

 state of refinement to which we can scarcely consider the people 

 who used them to have attained ; and though the sepulchral 

 remains show the great importance that was attached to burial 

 and its attendant rites, it is improbable that fumigation, used 

 either as concealing the odour of the burning body or as part 

 of a religious ceremony, was practised 4 . The objections to the 



1 Ancient Wilts, vol. i. pp. 25, 209. 



2 First Edit., vol. ii. p. 380; second Edit., p. 587. 



8 Third Series, vol. xiv. Revised for private distribution, under the title of Hydrio- 

 taphia Cambrensis, &c., from notices collected by the Hon. William Owen Stanley, M.P., 

 with additional observations by Albert Way, M.A., F.S.A. 



* Mr. Way mentions, in the essay just above referred to, that from the information 

 of Mr. Lodge, a gentleman long resident in India, it appears that ' it is not unusual 



G 



