Introduction op Glazes into China 137 



en passant, to a remarkable find of pottery which offers a fair guaranty 

 of being identical with the murrine vases. 



F. Petrie's discovery in 1909-10, at the south end of Memphis, of 

 kilns for baking glazed pottery, with a large number of fragments of 

 vessels, felicitously fills a gap in the early history of glazed ware, and 

 speaks in favor of the presence on Egyptian soil of murrine vessels, 

 and particularly even of Parthian murrine vessels. The date of Petrie's 

 finds is calculated at a period between a.d. i and 50, a fragment of a 

 lamp of known type permitting this conclusion. 1 The principal tints 

 of the glazed shards, which are remarkable for their coloring and their 

 design, are a deep indigo blue, lighter blues, manganese purple, and 

 apple green. The designs are almost entirely Persian, showing little, 

 if any, direct Greek influence. Winged bulls, rampant beasts, 

 "sacred tree," etc., all occur; and the problem arises whether this 

 Persian character points to some Oriental revival of the art of making 

 glazed pottery. In Diospolis, according to the Periplus, 2 murrines 

 were imitated in glass; and this imitative manufacture presupposes 

 the existence there of true pottery murrines which were taken as 

 models. The Memphis pottery of Persian style due to Petrie per- 

 fectly answers this purpose, as to both its technical properties and 

 its chronology. 



Among Greek authors, the murrines are mentioned only by Pau- 

 sanias and the Periplus. Pausanias (second century a.d.) recalls 

 them merely in a passing manner. In the Arcadica (XVIII, § 5) 

 he speaks of "glass, crystal, murrine vessels, and others made by men 

 from stone." 3 The idea that Pausanias speaks of vessels carved from 

 stone is thoroughly excluded; he hints, on the contrary, at vessels 

 turned out from products and devices of human labor. "Crystal" 

 is probably nothing but cut glass; the union of the terms "crystal" 

 and "murra" has already been discussed. "Glass" indeed belongs 

 to the same category as "murra;" and the passage of Pausanias is 

 sanely interpreted by the rendering, "glass, cut glass, and glazed 

 pottery, and other products made by men from stone." 



In the Periplus Maris Erythraei, written approximately about 

 a.d. 85,* the murrines are mentioned in three passages. In Chapter VI 



1 Compare O. M. Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology, p. 608. 



8 See below, and p. 138. 



'"TctXos nkv ye kcu KpwrraXXos Kal /xop/3io *ai dVa karlv &vOpa)irots aXXa \Ldov 

 Toiovfieva. 



* Compare the writer's Notes on Turquois in the East, p. 2, note. J. Kennedy 

 (Journ. Royal As. Soc, 1916, p. 835) is now inclined to date the Periplus at about 

 a.d. 70. 



