Two stone tripods—in fact the only known stone tripods of early times—have for many years been in the Museum of Thebes. They are made of the local poros limestone. Even though they have been exhibited, hitherto they have not been cleaned and are virtually unpublished. Villagers found them by chance in the vicinity of Plataea; in 1899 they were handed over to A. Keramopoulos, who was then conducting excavations at Plataea. Keramopoulos, in the same year, wrote a brief note about them, in which he entirely misunderstood their dating. Karouzos included a paragraph about them in his Guide to the Thebes Museum, accompanied by a photograph of one of them.
The first tripod, Thebes 19, is intact (Plates 43, 44a–c; Fig. 1). There are a few breaks on the feet, and in places the surface of the stone has decayed, forming holes of various sizes. The height of the bowl is greater than its width, and its greatest diameter is at the mouth. As for the lip, its outer half is bevelled, its inner half horizontal. The feet are short, plump, and broad; they taper downwards because their inner surfaces, which begin at the bottom of the bowl, splay outwards. The feet are not strictly vertical, but open out slightly towards their base; they reach up to the rim. Their outer surface is slightly curved, roughly following the curve of the lip. There were no handles. The total height is 0·38 m.; the lip has a diameter of 0·31 m. outside, and 0·22 m. inside. The bevelled surface of the lip, the front surfaces of the feet and the upper half of the bowl's outer surface are covered with incised decoration: the motifs consist of zigzags, simple circles, circles with inscribed cross, and concentric circles, almost all with deep holes in the centre.