The Primitive Glass of Western Asia
The civilisation of the inhabitants of the Euphrates valley reaches probably as far back as that of the Egyptians. Its influence has extended at various times from the Balkan peninsula to the borders of India, including Persia on the one hand, and on the other the kingdoms that grew up in Syria, and among the primitive races of Asia Minor. Now, if we are to judge by the contents of our museums, all these lands, at least up to the time of the conquest of Alexander, may be passed over as of no concern to the writer of a history of glass. If, however, we allow ourselves to be influenced by less material evidence, we shall find that a good case may be made out for the early existence of glass in these lands. But before discussing this evidence, I would impress upon the reader how much the survival of objects of glass depends upon the habit of burying in tombs, and their discovery upon the systematic exploration of these tombs. Compared with Egypt, how little has been accomplished in this way in these Western Asiatic countries!
I have already noticed the coincidence of the sudden development of the manufacture of glass in Egypt with the first close contact, at the period of the Eighteenth Dynasty, of the Egyptians with races already affected by Babylonian culture; and we must remember that the glass made within a few years of this first contact was never surpassed in later times. Nor must we overlook the classical tradition concerning the invention of glass handed down to us by Pliny and other writers. According to this tradition, glass was first made by Phœnician traders on the coast of Syria. Here, at any rate, the three great requisites for the manufacture were at hand—a pure silica in the convenient form of a white sand, alkali either from the ashes of marine plants or from adjacent salt deposits, and finally, an abundant supply of fuel. And yet, for the present, all that can be said is that we must associate all the early glass that has been found in other countries than Egypt with the trading peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean, whether Pelasgians, Carians, or Phœnicians. To a similar source we may refer the rare glass beads found in tombs of the bronze period in Western Europe, as well perhaps as the scanty specimens of glass that have come from Assyria and Persia. To these last we will now turn.
Of glass of undoubted Assyrian origin, by far the most important example known to us is the little barrel-shaped vase with stunted handles found so many years ago by the late Sir Henry Layard in the ruins of Kouyunjik. This little vessel, after many vicissitudes, has found its way into the British Museum. It is three and a quarter inches in height, and is formed of a glass that is perfectly white and nearly transparent; it still remains, indeed, our earliest example of such glass. The date is fixed to the latter part of the seventh century B.C., by an inscription cut in cuneiform characters containing the name of Sargon, together with his titles as king of Assyria; on it is also engraved the figure of a lion. Layard speaks of this vase as being shaped and hollowed on a turner’s lathe after being ‘blown in one solid piece’ (Nineveh and Babylon, 1853)—a curious expression for one who interested himself so much in the manufacture of glass! We may, perhaps, regard it as having been carved like an object of rock crystal out of a solid piece of glass. We know of nothing like it from Egypt, but then the Egyptians had no love for transparent, colourless materials; from an early time, as we have seen, they had covered their beads of rock crystal with a blue glaze (cf. p. [20]). Here I may add that the other specimens of glass discovered by Layard at Nineveh have no claim to so early a date. Among them, however, were two bowls of great interest, formed of a vetro di trina or ‘lace glass,’ with very fine meshes. These are now in the Assyrian Department of the British Museum. Some almost identical bowls from the late Greek tombs of Canosa, in Southern Italy, may be seen in the Glass-Room in the same Museum.
The Assyrians and the Babylonians before them were, we know, from an early date past masters in the manufacture of coloured glazes. The turquoise blue glaze of their pottery and wall tiles has been handed down in these lands apparently without a break, through Persian and Sassanian times to their later Arab masters. In the Louvre are some slabs of a translucent glass of a fine turquoise tint, about three inches square, and three-quarters of an inch in thickness, which were found in Babylonia, associated apparently with objects of great age. Such masses of glass paste were perhaps manufactured as articles of commerce to be employed afterwards in the preparation of glazes.[[20]]
Apart from these examples, the glass brought from Western Asia is of the usual later Phœnician or Roman type—‘lachrymatories’ and bowls mostly of greenish glass. It is not till we come to Sassanian times that we can find any distinctive features, and the rare specimens dating from that period will best be treated in a later chapter along with the contemporary Byzantine glass. I may mention finally that there are one or two passages in our Greek classics that may point to the use of glass by the Persians in the fifth century B.C. For instance, among other hardships suffered by the Athenian embassy to the great king—so we are told ironically by Aristophanes in his Acharnians—they were forced to drink from vessels of gold and from cups of glass, or, may be, of rock crystal (ἐξ ὑαλίνων ἐκπωμάτων).
We know of no glass other than that of Roman type from the Bible lands, using that expression in the narrower sense, nor in the whole literature of the Hebrews is there, as far as I know, any definite reference to glass. The word Zechuchoth, which occurs in a passage of Job (xxviii. 17), is translated in the Vulgate by vitrum, but like the Greek ὕαλος, it may as well refer to rock crystal, or any other hard transparent substance. There is, however, a passage in Jeremiah (ii. 22) which is really of more interest to us. It begins, ‘For though thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much soap.’ From this passage we learn at least that the natron of the salt lakes was in early days applied to practical ends. This was one step to its application to the manufacture of glass. Since then the soap-boiler has often been the ally of the glass-maker.
I have thought it well to bring together these few facts and theories bearing upon the early knowledge and use of glass in Western Asia, for could its early existence in these lands be once definitely established, we should be better able to fill up a gap in our history, and it would perhaps be then possible to solve that obscure problem—When and where was the great step taken and the blowing-tube first made use of for the production of a vesicle or paraison of glass?
At the present day, in some of the villages around Hebron, glass is still made by very primitive processes. Thence come the many-coloured bangles of glass, dear to the Arab women of Palestine and Egypt; some of these have found their way into collections of Egyptian antiquities, so closely do they resemble the old wares. This glass is carried by Arab and Jewish pedlars as far, it is said, as the Soudan. Here, indeed, we have an industry that may well be regarded as a survival from very early days.[[21]] On the other hand, some two thousand years ago, as we learn from the evidence of the tombs, blown glass of an advanced type, colourless and transparent, was a common article in daily use, not only on the Syrian coast, but at Nazareth and other Galilean towns (see below, [Chap. IV.]); and yet, as far as I know, there is not a single allusion to glass or glass-making in any of our four Gospels.[[22]]
CHAPTER III
THE LATER GREEK GLASS AND THE MOULDED AND CAST GLASS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
So far, all the glass with which we have come in contact has belonged without exception to one family; small objects, generally brightly coloured—beads, ornaments of various kinds and shapes, and, above all, little vases decorated with chevron bands; all these things belong rather to what in a general way may be classed as jewellery, objects of personal decoration. Of the one essential application of glass, as we understand the term, we have not so far found a single undoubted example—its application, I mean, to vessels intended to hold wine or water. This was to come a little later, and to come with a rush, as it were; for by the first century of our era, glass had already taken a position at least as important as at any subsequent time in our history.
I am speaking of glass, of course, in the narrow sense of the word, especially as a receptacle for liquids, for wine in the first place. From this time onward this is the predominant service to which the material has been put, and, indeed, at no time was its relation to wine-drinking more intimate than among the Romans of the early empire.
It is certainly strange that in spite of our comparatively intimate acquaintance with the ways of life of the Greeks during the time that intervened between the conquests of Alexander and the period of their absorption in the Roman Empire, we should be in possession of no evidence, documentary or material, that would throw light on this, for us, most important of all questions: Where was it, and at what time, that the great discovery was made—the art of blowing glass? For it was thanks to this discovery that the material came for the first time to take an important place among the art products and even the industries of the day. This is a point that cannot be too often or too strongly impressed upon the reader.
The glass vessels of the ancients rarely bear any inscription, and there is little, as a rule, in the decoration that can give occupation to the antiquary. Classical glass has therefore been comparatively neglected, except when of superlative merit; the record of its provenance has generally been lost: in continental museums it has either found a back place on the shelves of the Greek and Roman collections, or it has been handed over en masse to other departments. We thus find crowded together in the same case delicately turned bowls from Greek tombs, cinerary urns from Gaul or Britain, and examples of the rudely carved and engraved glass of the third and fourth centuries.
Such little evidence as there is, especially a few passages in Roman writers, would point to Alexandria, above all other towns, as the principal home of the glass industry in the first centuries before our era. We know, however, of no find of blown glass in Egypt, previous to later Roman or Coptic times. The Ptolemaic glass found at Tanis and elsewhere differs, as we have seen, little from the old type; and even at what is probably a later period we have found the same old type of glass in use at Denderah for inlaying (see above, p. [32]). It was not the Egyptians themselves that favoured the new process—by them the new glass was doubtless rejected as something exotic and unholy. The Greeks, on the other hand, seem never to have taken any interest in the material—the ‘fused stone,’ as they called it, was at the best but a poor substitute for the native minerals that it imitated.
1
2
3
1. FLASK WITH “PEACOCK” DESIGN
GRECO-ROMAN
2. BOWL, FINISHED ON LATHE, SHOWING IRIDESCENCE
GRECO-ROMAN
3. BOWL OF THIN GLASS, BLOWN INTO MOULD
ROMA
Perhaps after all there is an element of truth in the prevalent Roman tradition, and we should not be far wrong in giving the credit for the introduction of the new system of manufacture to the glass-makers of Sidon or of some other of the Phœnician coast towns.
I have already pointed out that the Greeks had at first no separate word for glass. Herodotus speaks of ear-ornaments made of ‘melted stone’ (λίθινα χυτά). Plato, in the Timæus, thinks it necessary to explain that he uses the word ὕαλος in the same sense. In the treasure-lists of temples, of the early part of the fourth century, where the same word is used, the reference is apparently to vessels of glass. We hear, too, of seals of glass (σφραγῖδες ὑάλιναι) in similar inscriptions of the same date. The word ὕαλον ultimately became the equivalent of the Latin vitrum.
In any case, it is from Greek tombs of the Hellenistic period that we obtain our earliest specimens of glass, other than the small articles of verroterie that formed the exclusive subject-matter of the last chapter. There have been preserved a few rare bowls of transparent glass, sometimes quite colourless, or more often stained with blue or with a honey-like tint resembling that of the hyacinth or the sard. These bowls are distinguished by the purity of their outline; they have apparently been finished on a lathe, but whether the glass was originally simply cast, or, as is possible, blown into a mould, it is impossible to say. The only ornament consists in one or more incised lines near the margin. A few of these bowls have been obtained in Athens, others come from tombs in the south of Italy,—we have unfortunately no means of fixing the date in either case. It is rather from the refinement of their curves and the restraint in the decoration that we are led to class them as pre-Roman.
But it is from the glass found in the tombs of Canosa that we can form the best idea of what the Greeks of Ptolemaic times were capable in this direction, and we are fortunate in having in London a remarkable series of glass vessels from these tombs. Canusium was one of the few cities of Apulia that preserved much of its Greek culture as well as the partial use of the Greek language well into the time of the Roman Empire. The beautiful specimens in the Glass-Room in the British Museum, some of them so thoroughly Hellenic in character, are referred to the first century of our era, but in general character and feeling, as well as in their shapes, they reflect the art of an earlier period. A bowl of pure white glass—the sharp outlines, especially of the solid handles, show that it was finished by a cutting tool—is of a form (the σκύφος of the Greeks) well known both in pottery and metal ware. The two graceful bowls, decorated in gold with an exquisite design of acanthus leaves, combined with a small plant with tendrils, both radiating from a central flower, even in their present condition, perhaps surpass in beauty any other known example of ancient glass. From the technical side, the marvellous skill with which the two shells of glass of which these bowls are built up, are fitted together, should be carefully noted. It will be observed that the inner shell projects considerably beyond the outer one, and that the latter at the line of junction has been apparently levelled down by subsequent grinding. How far the two layers have been soldered together by subsequent firing, it would be difficult to say. Between the two shells, the gold leaf that forms the base of the decoration has been applied. We are reminded (but longo intervallo, not only artistically but technically also) both of the so-called cemetery glass of later date, and of the ‘doubled glasses’ made in the eighteenth century in Bohemia.
Scarcely less remarkable are the other examples of glass from Canosa exhibited in the same case. Here may be seen two bowls built up with coils of little rods, each rod containing an opaque white string in the centre of a clear base; these, as I have mentioned, are identical with the bowls, now in the Assyrian Department, brought back by Layard from Nineveh. In addition to these varied types of glass there were found in the same tombs some large dishes of millefiori ware, and finally a large flat bowl of white glass with a somewhat rude pattern cut with the wheel, and with a row of spurs projecting from near the edge. This, as will be seen further on, is a method of decoration more common at a time of artistic decline, in the third and fourth centuries.
Quite Greek in character are the strange little unguent pots that come from Cyprus. On the cup-like overlapping lid of one in the British Museum may be seen outlined in black, apparently between two layers of glass, a little cupid bearing a bunch of grapes. Although many of these little pots have lately been found in Cyprus, it is only in a few cases that the design on the lid, so truly Greek in style, has been preserved.
There is some reason to believe that when the use of the blowing-tube was first introduced it was applied as a supplement to a moulding process. The hollow vesicle of glass—the paraison, to use the old French word—was blown into a more or less hemispherical mould, and the irregularities of the resulting bowl were then removed by grinding on a wheel. At any rate, during what we may call the Alexandrian period, a bowl of simple outline, whether shallow or deep, is the characteristic form. In the case of certain dishes in the shape of a boat, the wheel has played a still more important part.
For the personal adornment of their women the Greeks continued to make a variety of small objects of glass, more or less on the old lines. We find, too, intaglios engraved on glass of various and often most exquisite tints at least as early as the fourth century B.C. In the preparation of these pastes the greatest attention was paid to the exact imitation of precious stones. At a somewhat later date, in the second century B.C., cameos in high relief cast in glass pastes of various colours came into vogue. The ‘mother’ design was modelled in clay, and upon this matrix the mould in which the glass was to be cast was formed. These early glass cameos are compared by the late Dr. Murray to the circular, moulded reliefs on the black pottery of this period, and he points out that they apparently preceded the large reliefs engraved on stones of the onyx family which were so much in favour a little later (Greek Archæology, p. 160). It must be borne in mind that neither in the case of cameo or intaglio could the paste copy be made directly from the original stone. The paste gem, thus moulded, was often carefully finished by hand.