877 



POTTERY. 



POTTERY. 



678 



of vases, bricka, and other objects of red earthenware in Egypt, are 

 proved by the remains and wall paintings. The wheel was a small 

 circular table placed horizontally, which the potter turned with his 

 hands, not feet, at the earlier period, and produced vases of dark- red 

 earthenware, either polished or dull, of various and simple shapes, and 

 sometimes of large dimensions, applicable for all purposes, and often 

 gaily painted all over with a coating of clay or lime to imitate valuable 

 stones, or ornamented with zones or wreaths and other plain orna- 

 ments, or inscribed with names and other inscriptions. Besides this 

 process the Egyptians moulded vases of red ware in the shape of men 

 and animals, and modelled coffins and other large objects. Under the 

 Roman empire figures of gods and lamps were moulded in Egypt, and 

 fragments of pottery were used for receipts and inscriptions till the 6th 

 or 7th century, A.D. But the most remarkable Egyptian pottery was 

 the porcelain, or rather fayence, the body composed of a white or gray 

 sand, and the surface covered with a siliceous glaze, often ^tli of an men 

 thick, coloured with the oxides of copper, manganese, silver, and tin. 

 The objects of this material were of small size and generally moulded, 

 and consisted of small tiles, and portions used for inlaying vases, beads, 

 bugles, little figures of deities, and sepulchral figures [MUMMY], prin- 

 cipally in a blue of different shades, but of remarkable beauty. Under 

 the 19th and subsequent dynasties, the blue gave place to a green 

 porcelain of inferior quality. At the earlier period the art of glazing 

 steatite with this glaze was introduced. The Egyptians appear to have 

 invented this porcelain and retained the secret, small objects in 

 these materials having been found in Greece, the Isles of the Archi- 

 pelago, and Italy, apparently exported from the ports of Egypt. The 

 manufacture was continued under the Greeks and Romans, but gradu- 

 ally disappeared at the beginning of the Empire, a few vases and 

 lamps of it having been found in Italy of Greek form, and with Greek 

 subjects in relief, probably made at Alexandria; it seems to have been 

 superseded by metallic and glass work. 



The Assyrians like the Egyptians made extensive use of sun and 

 kiln-dried bricks, especially for the substructure of their edifices, walls, 

 houses, and tombs ; their bricks were of another size, about 1 4 inches 

 square by 4 inches thick. Like the Egyptian their upper surface is 

 often stamped with the names and titles of their king in Assyrian 

 cuneiform. The Assyrian potter was also extensively engaged in pro- 

 ducing in clay histories, title-deeds, religious dedications and other 

 documents on hexagonal prisms, cylindrical rolls, and small square 

 slabs convex on both sides. On these the inscribed letters were im- 

 pressed from a small punch. Many of these were impressed with 

 seals, and even seals of baked clay added to deeds. About 10,000 

 fragments of an ancient terra cotta library were found in the archive 

 room of the palace at Kouyunjik, and the preservation of the history 

 of Sennacherib and his campaign against JuoUca, as recorded in the 

 Assyrian annals, \n owing to this indestructible method of preserving 

 public records. Like the Egyptians the Assyrians, in the 8th or 9th 

 century, B.C., were acquainted with the art of trialting a fayence or 

 enamelled ware with metallic oxides and tin and lead fluxes; and the 

 story of Semiramis and her constructions with glazed bricks, repre- 

 senting subjects, is by no means fabulous. The vases and other 

 objects of this material differ considerably in their body, which is of a 

 yellow paste, from the Egyptian, and the ware is inferior to it in 

 colour and elegance. The potter's art seems to have been in full 

 activity till the fall of Nineveh, and to have been kept up till a late 

 period in the plains of Assyria. 



The arts of the Babylonians, who were contemporary with or suc- 

 ceeded the Assyrians, are so like that the difference is hardly per- 

 !. Sun-dried bricks of nearly the game dimensions as the 

 Assyrian, found in all the ruins of the plains of Shinar, were prepared 

 by the same process, and generally had straw. The kiln-dried bricks, 

 mentioned in Genesis as in use after the Flood, have also straw for the 

 sake of heating them more thoroughly, and vary in quality and colour. 

 They are also stamped with the names of Babylonian monarch*, 

 buildings, as the Birs Nimrud, now known to be a temple 

 dedicated by Nebuchadnezzar to the seven planets, were made of 

 stages of differently coloured bricks, each the appropriate colour of the 

 planet. Mortar of lime and bitumen for the foundations, as mentioned 

 in the description of the Tower of Babel, is found to have been used for 

 cementing the brick-work together. Small cones were also used for mak- 

 ing an ornamental brick-work. The public and private records were pre- 

 served in baked clay like the Assyrian, and bas-reliefs and small votive 

 figure* of baked and sun-dried clay, made by a mould, were used for 

 religious purposes, and portions of the colossal statues of the gods appear 

 to have been made of clay, plated externally with brass, or clay formed 

 part of the figure with other metals. The glazed ware of the Baby- 

 lonians was of the same character as the Assyrian. The potteries of 

 Assyria and Mesopotamia appear to have continued in activity under 

 the foreign rulers of that country, and the remains show local wares 

 manufactured under Greek and Roman influence, while the use of the 

 fayence under the Saisanian monarchs took an extraordinary develop- 

 ment, an immense number of glazed coffins of that period having been 

 found at Warka and Mugeyer, with other fictile remains of a late 

 epoch. The Persians, who succeeded to the empire of the Assyrians, 

 are only known to have used pottery, and the art of pottery must be 

 considered at this period to have been chiefly exercised by the Phoeni- 

 cians and Greeks. The first of these people, the great traders of antiquity 



seem to have made plain unglazed terra cotta and glazed ware like 

 the Egyptians, and to have traded in them with the Greek islanders 

 and the Etruscans at about the 7th century, B.C. The Hebrews 

 do not appear to have exercised the art till after the Exodus, and pro- 

 bably brought it with them from Egypt, having before that period 

 used other substances for drinking purposes, or acquired them from 

 other people ; and the very few Jewish vases as yet found do not seem 

 older than the Maccabees, although the art of glazing by litharge was 

 known in the days of Solomon. At the time o the Captivity the 

 prophets often used metaphors derived from the potter's art, and some 

 bowls supposed to have been used by the captive Jews of Assyria are 

 evidently of a comparatively recent epoch. Fragments found in Moab 

 have revealed a ware like the earlier glazed Greek ; but the greatest 

 advance in the fictile art was made by the Greeks. 



Prometheus, according to their legends, had modelled Pandora out of 

 Sinopic clay, and bricks, statues, and other objects of sun-dried clay were 

 made by some of the earliest potters. Kims were, however, in use at the 

 earliest age, and the palaces of Crcosus, Mausolus, and Attains show 

 their extensive use in Asia Minor, while constructions of brick have been 

 found at Athens and in Sicily. They were made as the Egyptian by 

 wooden moulds, plaisia, and named after the dimensions : didoi-a 1 foot 

 long and 2 palms or half a foot broad; tetradora, 4 palms square, 

 chiefly in use for private buildings ; and pentadora, or 5 palms square, 

 used in public edifices; and. Lydia, or 1 foot 6 inches long 1 foot broad, 

 probably those of the palace of Croesus. Besides which a very light 

 kind was made at Pitane in Mysia. Bricks of dimensions not described 

 by ancient authors have been also found, and all are distinguished 

 by their greater thinness than the Egyptian or Assyrian ,resernbling 

 tiles, and made of a fine red or yellow clay. Till about B.C. 580 the 

 temples of Greece were roofed with terra cotti tiles keramoi, which 

 were said to have been invented in Cyprus, and are flanged at both 

 sides like the Roman, the joint being covered with a semicircular 

 tile, and the lower semicircle of the series having an upright semi- 

 oval part called the antetix, on which ornaments were impressed in 

 a bas-relief, the front of the antefix being faced with a finer clay 

 for the impression ; all these tiles have occasionally stamped upon 

 them, in relief, the name of the city, the potter, and year of the 

 magistrate in which they were made. The cornices of tombs and 

 naoi or shrines of the Doric order were ornamented with gargoile 

 heads of lions, and the invention of antefixes was attributed to the 

 Corinthian potter Dibutades, who flourished at a mythic period. 

 Friezes and other architectural members, and cylindrical pipes of terra 

 cotta for draining or conveying water were also used by the Greeks. 

 One large branch of the manufacture consisted in small figures 

 called pelina clays, or ayalmata ontrakina earthenware, used for 

 penates or votive offerings ; they were made in a mould of two pieces 

 of a harder and more compact terra cotta, into which a crust of clay 

 about 1-Sth inch thick was pressed so as to leave the centre and 

 base of the little figure hollow, the heads and arms were solid, and 

 sometimes produced from separate moulds and attached .while the clay 

 was moist. At the back there is usually a large hole to allow the clay 

 to expand or to attach the figure to a wall. After coming from the 

 furnace these figures were covered with a coating of whitewash leukoma, 

 and then painted and sometimes partially gilded. Some of these figu- 

 rines are as old as the Daedalids, and they continue till the close of 

 the Roman Empire. Larger figures of deities are of rarer occur- 

 rence, and existed in Greece in the days of Pauganias, and others, are 

 mentioned as extant in Constantinople. This art was first applied to 

 producing casts of statues in other materials by Lysistratus, the 

 brother of Lysippus, and by other artists, such as the celebrated 

 Zeuxis, who flourished B.C. 400, to model the subject of his pictures, 

 and Pasiteles, a Greek artist, living at Rome, in the 1st century, B.C., 

 modelled his statues first in terra cotta. Terra cotta was also used for 

 portions of statues hi toreutic work and for the moulds of objects in 

 bronze. Reliefs or friezes of different sizes, embleinata for applying to 

 other works of art, were also made from moulds and painted in the 

 same way : cones used for the loom, or as weights for nets or drapery, 

 dolls called konr, nymp/ict, or iicurw^aela, but with moveable hands 

 and arms, and lamps, li/chni, were made of terra cotta, with reliefs on 

 the upper surface, and the maker's name on the base below. 



The invention of the potter's wheel at the earliest period of Greek 

 history described in Homer, claimed by Athens for Coroabus, by Corinth 

 for Ilyberbius, and for Dajdalus or Talus by the Cretans, probably 

 came from the East. The wheel was a low horizontal table turning on 

 a pivot on a central foot ; it was made to revolve by a boy or assistant, 

 and extensively used in the production of vases of various shapes 

 and all dimensions, such as saucers, fihialte ; plates, pinakes ; jugs, 

 itnochoiK ; pots, ckytra ; boxes, pyxide ; and even jars, amp/n/rie, in 

 great numbers ; and all vases except huge casks, pit/tui, which were 

 moulded on a frame. The feet and handles of vases were stamped or 

 moulded, and fixed while wet to the body of the vase. The amphora 

 of several states, about the 2nd to 1st century B.C., are stamped with the 

 name and emblem of the magistrates on the handle to indicate the 

 state from which they came, and the date when they were made, but 

 they are otherwise not ornamented. [VASES.] Some of the sepulchral 

 vases were covered with a Uukuma, painted hi colours and gilded, but 

 these belong generally to the class of glazed vases. These vases were 

 made of a finely levigated clay, such as has recently been found at Mon 



