The objects from Toprak Kale in Armenia are often referred to in archæological literature, but usually in vague terms or with one author contradicting the other. Thus for Perrot and Chipiez (1882) the bronze furniture-ornaments are simply Assyrian products found in Armenia. Heuzey, writing in 1912, was clearly not in favour of their being Assyrian; they belonged to the art of Urartu. This was the deduction to be drawn from Belck and Lehmann-Haupt's excavations at the end of the last century. Lehmann-Haupt's own views were that the culture of the Urartians was “almost wholly western with only minor traces of Assyrian influence,” while its own influence on Etruscan art was very noticeable. Karo and Hertzfeld laid great emphasis on the importance of Urartu as a centre of metal-working, and Hertzfeld asserted that Urartian art was a native, aboriginal creation, which influenced Assyrian art, finally passing into that of Achaemenid Persia, as shown by certain pieces in the Oxus Treasure. Schachermayer declared Urartian art to be a phase of that art of a larger cultural metal-working area embracing Eastern Anatolia and Tabal (Phrygia). Götze expanded this area to include Western Persia.

Sir E. Wallis Budge in his Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum (1922), notices on p. 236 an interesting group of coins and other objects formerly exhibited in a table-case in the Assyrian room which contained “miscellaneous antiquities chiefly from Quyunjik and Nimrûd.” The notice runs “The contents of the shop of a worker in metals, consisting of lead handle of jug, bronze ring, pieces of lead and silver and a group of Persian sigli and coins from Lycia, Samos, Tyre, Aspendus, Cyprus, Sidon, Athens, and Aegina.” The most important piece, the jug-handle (which is, of course, silver and not lead) has been already published by Filow and Paul Jacobsthal. The rest has escaped notice until now, and as it comprises some fragments, and a series of coins, interesting from more than one point of view, it seems worth while to record them more fully. I am indebted to the Keeper of the Department, Mr. C. J. Gadd, for his kind permission to do so here, and to Mr. R. D. Barnett, for help and advice on many points of detail. The coins have now been transferred to the Department of Coins and Medals.