THE POTTER'S AKT. 



in heaps, one of which appears at his feet. The hieroglyphics 

 signify " He takes them out." 



In the original paintings from which these drawings were taken 

 the masses of dough in fig. 1 to 5, have a dark grey colour. The 

 articles of baked pottery in fig. 7, have the reddish colour which 

 characterises the ancient Egyptian pottery. 



It appears, therefore, from these remarkable paintings, that in 

 all its essential processes, the art of pottery, 4000 years ago, was 

 nearly what it is at present. 



7. It is related in a life of Homer, attributed to Herodotus, that 

 the poet when blind happened one day to pass near the celebrated 

 potteries of Samos. The potters addressed him, and requested 

 him to compose a poem on their art, offering him, as a rewaid, a 

 selection of their vases. Homer accepted their offer, and composed 

 for them the hymn called the Furnace, still extant, in which are 

 described with singular felicity and exactitude the qualities and 

 excellences of the vases fabricated by these artisans, and the 

 accidents to which they are exposed in the process of baking. 

 These incidents of the oven and their effects have counterparts 

 so exact in the processes of the present day, that the reader of 

 Homer's lines might well imagine that the poet had visited a 

 Staffordshire pottery. 



Thus it appears that in Homer's time, that is about nine or ten 

 centuries before Christ, the potters of Samos had already risen to- 

 some celebrity. According, however, to the researches of some 

 antiquarians, and their arguments founded on the results of excava- 

 tions made near Naples, known to have been the place where 

 ancient Greek colonists had established themselves, this art 

 must have been cultivated in Greece in times much more ancient 

 than the Homeric age. 



8. The Abbe Mazzola has described and delineated, with ela- 

 borate minuteness, the position of tombs and skeletons found in 

 excavations made in Campania. Beneath a stratum of vegetable 

 mould, having a depth of about forty inches, and forming the richly 

 fertile soil for which that tract of country is so celebrated, is found 

 a stratum of white sandy earth, mixed with pummice stone, hard 

 and impenetrable by water. This stratum, which is called terra 

 maschia, has a thickness of about twenty inches, and beneath it is 

 a third stratum about thirty inches thick, composed of good black 

 mould. It is beneath this last stratum that the skeletons, sarco- 

 phagi, and accompanying vases were found. 



A vertical section of the strata, showing the position and 

 arrangement of the skeletons and vases, in a part of the Campania, 

 near Nola, copied from the Treatise of Dubois Maisonneuve, on 

 Antique Vases, fol. 1817, is given in fig. 8. 

 120 



