ABSTRACT
The role played by Urartian enterprise at Levantine ports for a period in the early and mid-eighth century b.c., have been shown as a principal means by which Orientalizing decorative arts, and technical skills, were first propagated throughout the commercial world of Greeks and Etruscans. In the west, Urartian objects reached Italy, and Etruscan no less than colonial Greek artificers turned out reproductions and adaptations that gave currency not only to new shapes in metal vessels, but to a wide range of ornamental innovations including griffins, ferocious lions, serpents, and winged goddesses. The intermingling of Middle La Tene swords and ornaments with Thracian weapons and other goods in graves in south-west Oltenia, and north-west Bulgaria support historical indications at least for the late third and second centuries. There can be little doubt that opportunities of give and take were so frequent that there could have been such results as the bra and gundestrup cauldrons and the silver cups from mollerup.
