Below the building lay quite the
most wonderful part of the king's palace.
Here in the long north rooms, hermetically quiet, was the heart of
the treasure of the ancient island. Here, saved inexplicably from
the wreck of the past, were a thousand testimonies to that lost and
but half-guessed art of the elder world. Beautiful things, made in
the days when King Solomon built the Temple at Jerusalem, lined the
walls, and filled the stone shelves, together with curios of that
later day when Phoenicia stood first in knowledge of the plastic and
glyptic arts. Workers in gold and ivory, in gems and talismans, in
brass and fine linen and purple had done the marvels which those
courtier adventurers brought with them over the sea, and to these,
from year to year, had been added the treasure of private
chests--necklaces and coronals and hair-loops, bottles and vases of
glass coloured with metallic oxides, and patterned aggry-beads, now
sometimes found in ancient tombs on the Ashantee coasts. Beneath an
altar set with censers and basins of gold was a chest brought from
Amathus, its ogive lid carved with _bigae_ or two-horsed chariots,
and it was in this chest, Jarvo told them, that the Hereditary
Treasure had been kept.
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