460 



The Rev. Charles Graves exhibited an ancient gold orna- 

 ment, belonging to the Earl of Leitrim, of which the follow- 

 ing description is given in Vallancey's Collectanea, Vol. V., 

 p. 90 : 



" Mr. Burton Conyngham has now in his possession one of 

 those double cupped patera, described and engraved in the 13th 

 Number of the Collectanea. The instrument is of gold, was found 

 in the county of Mayo, and weighs about six guineas. On the out- 

 side of one cup is an Ogham inscription; on the outside of the 

 other an inscription in the Phoenician or Estrangelo character. — 

 See PI. III., — where the cups are reversed to show the inscription. 

 The Phoenician word is composed of the^i7i, Lamed, Tau, AlepJi, 

 i. e. Nnb37, i. e. Alta or Olta, signifying an holocaust. This con- 

 firms my former opinion, that these instruments were used in sacri- 

 fices. The Ogham characters are UOSER, Uoser, Osir, or Usar, 

 the Sun, the principal deity of the pagan Irish. The names Aesar, 

 Aosar, frequently occur in ancient Irish MSS., which are always 

 translated God." 



Mr. Graves stated that, whilst he recognised the gold 

 ornament itself as being a genuine and a very fine specimen 

 of the ancient manillse,* of which many are preserved in the 

 Museum of the Academy, he was forced, after a careful exami- 

 nation of it, to pronounce the inscription to be a forgery of com- 

 paratively recent date. For this conclusion he assigned the 

 following reasons : 



Faint tracings of all the characters scratched upon the sur- 

 face, as if to serve as a pattern to be copied by the engraver, 

 are still quite visible. There can hardly be a doubt but that 

 casual attrition, and the action of the atmosphere or earth for 

 a thousand yea.rs or more, would have eifaced such marks. 



The inscribed characters have a sharpness which is not 

 to be seen in ancient work, even though executed in gold. All 

 the original devices which appear on ancient gold articles 



• See Sir William Betham's papers on Ring Money, in the Transactions 

 of the Academy, vol. xvii. 



