After we had completed our researches and concluded our homilies, we repaired to a ruined convent to get figs. The inmates deal in relics, and the stock was principally composed of flattened drops of blue glass, in shape and size resembling peppermint lozenges. They must have been in enormous quantities, for they are even yet picked up along the beach at Cadiz and other places. Some suppose that the Phœnicians circulated them as money—they made money out of them by disposing of them. The ancients did not cut stones in facets; their cups, arms,[108] horse-trappings, even their ships,[109] were studded with gems: these drops were adapted to this purpose. These were gems (glass in the East still goes by that name):[110] so that in these drops we had the staple of Tyre, hinted at by Ezekiel, when he spoke of “her riches in the sand.”
In like manner, on the Guinea coast, they still find drops of Phœnician glass, which they sell for their weight in gold. We have in vain attempted to imitate them. They retain this value although Africa is deluged with glass from every work-shop in Europe. The fact is of importance, as bearing on traffic, which Herodotus makes the Carthaginians carry on, and which moderns dispute. What must glass have been when the knowledge of its manufacture was a secret; when the people who possessed it worked with system, and neither glutted the market nor undersold one another.
Observing at the bottom of a large chest in which their curiosities were kept, a quantity of rubbish, I had it turned out. There were all sorts of strange things, from glass lustre drops to blacking labels. I selected some fragments of what seemed then earthen jars: when wetted they proved to be glass of brilliant and variegated colours; some opaque, some translucent. On one there was a flower with yellow leaves and a red centre; the ground was green and translucent; the leaves were opaque, the leaves twisted in passing through, so that the yellow appeared through the green as if shaded with a brush. On the other side it came out a comet with a red head and a yellow tail. From the tombs of Egypt and Etruria have been obtained specimens of the same manufacture; but I have seen none equal to this.
These broken fragments seemed to change in my hands into a magic mirror, in which were reflected the workshops of Sidon and Aradus, smelting to order the gems of Golconda. What is the Philosopher’s Stone to their daily craft!
But it will be objected that the Egyptians were acquainted with it—that it is found as far back as the tombs of the fourth dynasty, and in the old Pyramids of Memphis; and that glass-blowing is recorded on the walls of Beni Hassan, in a tomb of the eleventh or twelfth dynasty.[111] Nevertheless, I think I shall very easily show that this art, so far as the Egyptians are concerned, was the peculiar property of the Phœnicians.
The invention is by all antiquity attributed to the Tyrians. When Pliny wrote there were still histories of Tyre extant; still traditions as well as interpretations of the hieroglyphics. It is difficult to imagine that if it had been Egyptian, it should have been given to any other people; and, if not Tyrian, claimed by and surrendered to them. Even if communicated to the Egyptians at the period when it figures on their walls, it may have been for many previous centuries the exclusive possession of Tyre, for the Phœnicians were of equal date with the Egyptians.[112] The monuments of Egypt were not pictures of common things, but records of extraordinary ones. They were designed to illustrate the lives of kings and heroes; representing their triumphal entries; their trophies; the tribute offered; the captives brought home; the arts they introduced; the inventions and incidents of their time. We have in them a few repetitions: elephants are there: they are seen but once; a cart but once; brick-making once; glass-blowing once, and that is in the reign of Sesu Sesen, consequently I will not say that this record proves, but that it at least suggests, that up to that time the manufacture was unknown in Egypt. The representation is not, however, of glass-making; it is of blowing only: no where is glass-making seen. If the Egyptians had the art of blowing glass only, they must have imported the raw material.
The monument of Carnac enumerates among the tribute paid to Tathmes III., “ingots of enamel;” and this tribute was paid four hundred years after the glass-blowing figures on the walls. The material for glass abounded in Egypt. They were dexterous in preparing mineral compounds for colouring: had they understood the manufacture they would not have imported it; and had the manufacture been known, we should have seen it figured with the blowing. But the Egyptians, having learnt the art of blowing, would desire to have the unmanufactured material in order to adapt it to their own fashions. This is entirely confirmed by the description given by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus; for it must be after them that he designates the ornaments of the sacred crocodiles (which we know to be glass), λίθανα χύτα, fused stones.
This tribute came from “Maharama,” or Mesopotamia, in the first cities of which the Phœnicians had establishments.
Having set aside the claims put in for Egypt, no other people making any, I have, I think, restored the invention to the Phœnicians.
A new claim has now been set up for the Assyrians, according to Mr. Layard. “They had acquired the art of making glass. Several small bottles or vases of elegant shape in this material were found at Nimroud and Konyunjik.”[113] But, strange to say, in the very spot where he came upon the first glass vase he found pottery, with letters which he supposes to be Phœnician.