During 1970 the Ashmolean Museum acquired at auction in London two Syriac-inscribed bronze censers of a now well-known but insufficiently studied type decorated with New Testament scenes in relief and with incised ornament on their plain surfaces. The following speculations about these objects are offered in admiration to Sir Max Mallowan, and as a reminder of bumpy but delightful journeys to certain ancient monasteries in the Mosul area where such objects will have been used: forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.

Several fresh examples of these censers have come to notice in recent years, so that the number known to exist in museums or private collections must now exceed 30 or even 40, while the number still in ecclesiastical possession is presumably very much greater. All of those recently acquired by museums must once have belonged to churches or monasteries of the Near East; and one may suspect that some of these communities have either recently been robbed or, more probably, have been induced to sell or succeeded in selling some of the more battered contents of their sacristies.