ABSTRACT
The paragraphs that follow relate to craftsmanship and its divine origins. The first is a description of the workshop of Hephaistus, the protector god of craftsmanship, and it could be seen as a reliable description of the workshop of a successful craftsman. We have to notice the presence of the tripods in it, objects that in Homeric poetry are very prominent gifts: they appear as the first prize in the funeral games of Patroclus, as the guest-gifts taken home by Odysseus, and as the appeasement offered to Achilles by Agamemnon. Participating in the ceremonies of the heroic world, the tripod acquired a direct linkage with their values and social practices, which eventually made it the most appropriate category of object to operate as a transitional medium through which the social rituals of the aristocratic world were transferred to the social organisation as this changed shape in the following periods (Langdon, 1987).
