A Bronze Mirror in the Ashmolean Museum

Abstract

In 1928 Sir Arthur Evans generously presented an archaic bronze mirror to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. My thanks are due to the Keeper, Mr. E. T. Leeds, for his kindness in inviting me to publish this interesting accession and supplying me with the photographs reproduced in Plate II and Fig. 1.The mirror is in the form of a disk, 15 cm. in diameter: its thickness at the edge is 7 to 8 mm., at the centre about 5 mm. It weighs 675.5 grammes. The face, slightly concave, was of plain, burnished metal surrounded by a narrow ornamented band round the edge: it is now badly pitted and covered over the greater part of its surface by a green patina (Fig. 1).