147 
the Disk. Dr. Murray says of him (op. cit., p. 13):—‘It is 
noticeable that on our ivory the attendant wears a helmet 
identical in shape with that worn by the enemies of the 
Egyptians in the sea-fight figured by Rameses on the temple 
at Medinet Abou.” These are, of course, the Philistines and 
the Zakkala, and the resemblance between the crested helmets 
of these races and the crested helmet on the Disk has led other 
scholars to believe that there is a Philistine element in the 
scription. With this, however, one cannot now agree. 
Attention may also be directed to another relic of the Assyrian 
period of the island, and this is the magnificent silver patera 
from Amathus.(10) Here are seen warriors with crested 
helmets like those of the Disk, and round shields, attacking 
à fortress, one or two of the defenders of which also wear the 
same sort of helmet. (00 
more than once, we get ten individual words prefixed 
by the hieroglyphs .in question. There is no doubt 
‘these two si 
and indicate that the characters following them 
the sa word contain the proper name of a “Chief 
of the Shield,” i.e. (probably), a commander-in-chief of 
an army, whose office was something like that held by the 
SHUPARSHAKU” (military commandant) appointed over 
districts conquered by Assyria.’ In Assyrian cuneiform it was 
o 
2e scribes who made up the Phaestos Disk text seem then to 
have followed the methods of their cuneiform-using colleagues, 
Sargon II., King of Assyria, received tribute in s.c. 715 
from the seven Ionian Kings of Cyprus, who set up in their 
island a figure of the Assyrian king as an emblem of their 
Vassalage ; and his grandson, Esarhaddon, had homage paid 
to him in p.c. 673 by ten Cypriote princes, nine Greeks, and 
0) Figured in "Cyprus," di Cesnola, London, 1877, pl. xix. 
(1) See also the helmet worn by the sphinx on the ivory object 
(No. 1126), illustrated in pl. ii., “Excavations in Cyprus.” 
