Ancient Glass and Pottery. 3 



of the gem stones being melted, and very similar to the 

 modern scientific ruby and saphire. Some of it apparently 

 is pulverized bort or diamond dust, freed from impurities 

 so as to leave the glass clear or translucent. These earliest 

 specimens are found in the ruins of the old temples and 

 palaces and are only the smaller ,and more valuable and 

 harder specimens that have withstood the action of the 

 alkalies of the earth for forty centuries for the oldest speci- 

 mens. , Those that were made of less permanent materials 

 have not been able to withstand the corrosive influences of 

 time for so many centuries. 



The next and most important examples of ancient glass, 

 running back to perhaps one or two thousand years before 

 Christ, is the inlaid glass of the Egyptians, as found mostly 

 in the old tombs, but occasionally in the old ruins. These 

 seem to be not quite , so hard, but still heavy and solid and 

 harder than modern glass, but all are made of inlaid or 

 banded glass that later times have never succeeded in repro- 

 ducing. , These pieces are mostly in the form of what were 

 evidently highly priced ornamental pieces used more in the 

 manner of the larger gem pieces. The glass is of variegated 

 colors representing mixtures of different kinds, of gems and 

 fine stones seemingly rubies, saphires, emeralds, topaz, gar- 

 nets, amethysts, beryls and perhaps including also jade, onyx, 

 chalcedony, and other finely .colored stones. These were 

 evidently pulverized, the impurities taken out, and in some 

 way made into a hard translucent glass that by some pecu- 

 liar method, that ,the moderns have not been able to dis- 

 cover, was made into the beautiful variety of variegated 

 colored glass found in the tombs of these ancient people, in 

 the form of bottles, vases, etc. They generally range in 

 length from three to five inches and were evidently used 

 as scent bottles carried as ornaments. 



The tombs of Egypt, do not contain the lighter variety 

 or clearer examples of glass bottles and vases found in the 

 later Syrian tombs. Whether or not the extra one or two 

 thousand years of time might have entirely decomposed 

 them, as it has in large part those in the Syrian tombs, in a 

 shorter period of time, has not been determined. Ranging 

 from a little earlier than the Christian era the old Syrian 

 tombs of six or eight thousand years previous to that time 

 were provided with large numbers of very beautifully shaped 

 ornamental and finely colored .glass made of something like 



