Domestic utensils and small household instruments were mostly made in bronze.  Such objects are exhibited by thousands in our museums, and frequently figure in bas-reliefs and mural paintings.  Art and trade were not incompatible in Egypt; and even the coppersmith sought to give elegance of form, and to add ornaments in a good style, to the humblest of his works.  The saucepan in which the cook of Rameses III. concocted his masterpieces is supported on lions’ feet.  Here is a hot-water jug which looks as if it were precisely like its modern successors (fig. 276); but on a closer examination we shall find that the handle is a full-blown lotus, the petals, which are bent over at an angle to the stalk, resting against the edge of the neck (fig. 277).  The handles of knives and spoons are almost always in the form of a duck’s or goose’s neck, slightly curved.  The bowl is sometimes fashioned like an animal—­as, for instance, a gazelle ready bound for the sacrifice (fig. 278).  On the hilt of a sabre we find a little crouching jackal; and the larger limb of a pair of scissors in the Gizeh Museum is made in the likeness of an Asiatic captive, his arms tied behind his back.  A lotus leaf forms the disk of a mirror, and its stem is the handle.  One perfume box is a fish, another is a bird, another is a grotesque deity.  The lustration vases, or situlae, carried by priests and priestesses for the purpose of sprinkling either the faithful, or the ground traversed by religious processions, merit the special consideration of connoisseurs.  They are ovoid or pointed at the bottom, and decorated with subjects either chased or in relief.  These sometimes represent deities, each in a separate frame, and sometimes scenes of worship.  The work is generally very minute.

[Illustration:  Fig. 278.—­Spoon (or lamp?).]

[Illustration:  Fig. 279.—­Bronze statuette of the Lady Takushet.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 280.—­Bronze statuette of Horus.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 281.—­Bronze statuette of one Mosu.]

Bronze came into use for statuary purposes from a very early period; but time unfortunately has preserved none of those idols which peopled the temples of the ancient empire.  Whatsoever may be said to the contrary, we possess no bronze statuettes of any period anterior to the expulsion of the Hyksos.  Some Theban figures date quite certainly from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties.  The chased lion’s head found with the jewels of Queen Aahhotep, the Harpocrates of Gizeh inscribed with the names of Kames and Ahmes I., and several statuettes of Amen, said to have been discovered at Medinet Habu and Sheikh Abd el Gurneh, are of that period.  Our most important bronzes belong, however, to the Twenty-second Dynasty, or, later still, to the time of the Saite Pharaohs.  Many are not older than the first Ptolemies.  A fragment found in the ruins of Tanis and now in the possession of Count Stroganoff, formed part of a votive