642 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
their statuettes, even without other monuments, would show them 
to us as masters of sculpture. But where the Roman plastic art 
manifests itself most strikingly is in the use of fired clay in the 
decoration of their temples and palaces. Their historical antefixes 
and bas-relief are chefs-d’oeuvre, after which our famous art nouveau 
appears quite ridiculous. 
The Greeks and Romans had learned the technique of glazes in 
Egypt, which, after the defeat of Darius the Third by Alexander the 
Great, fell under Greek domination, only to pass, three centuries 
later, into the hands of the Romans. But they no doubt wished to 
make the clay alone responsible for the disappearance of ceramic art. 
As I have shown in a former paper, it was the Egyptians and not 
the Pheenecians who in their discovery of glass in the eighteenth 
dynasty also discovered the art of glazing. As a matter of fact, 
what is a glaze but a transparent glass formed of silica and potash 
or soda and the more lately discovered oxide of lead? 
Enamel is glaze rendered opaque by oxides of tin, antimony, 
chromium, and sometimes of iron, an example of which we have seen 
in the Roman pottery; covered glazes are those which are only 
applicable to vitrified clay, such as stoneware and porcelain, in mak- 
ing clay articles. 
The discovery of glazing did not completely supersede the use of 
engobe. This was overlaid in many cases by a glaze, as is proved 
by a great many antique oriental ceramic objects. 
In the beginning, the first Egyptian glazes were composed entirely 
of quartzeous sand and carbonate of soda. Later, however, in the 
Saite epoch, perhaps because of their contact with the Persians, the 
Egyptians came to know all the numerous enamels that we are cog- 
nizant of to-day. 
It is in the Orient, however, that we should look for the most 
beautiful manifestations of ceramic decoration and for the complete 
comprehension of the science of colors. Not only are we very infe- 
rior to the ancients in these respects, but it would appear that as 
our scientific progress becomes more accentuated art seems to become 
more and more feeble. The enameled ceramic ware of the Orient is 
the most beautiful that human genius has conceived, and I would 
even say the most grandiose if we considered the monumental ceramic 
pieces. It embodies the successful solution of all those difficult prob- 
lems which confront the potter in his struggle for perfection—the 
form, design and coloring, the working of the clay, the application of 
the enamel, and the firing. Our famous faiences of Palissy, of 
Nevers, of Rouen, of Moustiers, and of Marseille, not to mention 
those of Italy and Holland, are but child’s play by the side of these 
works of genius carried out by the Egyptian, Persian, and Arabian 
ceramists. 
