If, as I have said, there is little evidence for the existence of glass in Egypt before the Eighteenth Dynasty, it is quite otherwise with regard to a very similar substance, identical almost in chemical composition—one whose history can be traced much further back. On beads of clear rock crystal, dating from the First Dynasty, and it would seem from an even earlier period in some cases, we find a coating of turquoise blue transparent glaze[[8]]—the very glaze, in fact, that has given a prevailing tint to the vast series of smaller objects of Egyptian art that we see in the cases of our museums. A similar colour, I may observe, continued in favour in Mohammedan times, and indeed gives a dominant note to Oriental art in contrast to the ochry tints of yellow, red, and brown prevalent in the West.
The Egyptians soon learned to apply this blue glaze—essentially a silicate of soda and copper—to the surface of other natural stones, and above all to a fritty porous earthenware, the so-called Egyptian porcelain. Such an alkaline glaze, indeed, will only adhere to a porous base of this kind, with which it becomes united on firing, by a chemical reaction, or at least by the solution in it of some of the silicates of alumina and lime in the clay. This glaze differs essentially from those used on true porcelain—these last are almost of the same composition as the ground they cover—but, as in the case of the glazes on porcelain, so the materials of the Egyptian glazes were probably first incorporated together in a partially fused frit which was then ground and mixed with water to form a soup-like ‘slip,’ into which the object to be glazed was dipped. There have been brought from Egypt a few rare objects carved out of a blue frit (probably similar to that used in the preparation of glazes), for which a very early date has been claimed. But such a frit is no true glass.
The Egyptians had from the earliest periods been adepts in the carving of native minerals and rocks, and evidently found great pleasure in the strange markings and contrasts of colour found on their polished surfaces. Already in pre-dynastic times they availed themselves of their native granites, porphyries and conglomerates; from these materials they manufactured those large, carefully turned vases of which so many have lately been brought from Egypt. For smaller objects—jewellery, beads, and inlay of various descriptions—they had command of a wide scale of colours—reds and tawny yellows from jasper, purple from the amethyst, greens from root of emerald and from a special kind of felspar, and blue from the turquoise and (at a very early period) from the lapis lazuli. But the stones to which they had recourse for their favourite blues and greens were rare, and they were therefore the more ready to find a cheaper substitute in glass. Again, in Egypt, no stone was in greater favour than the native alabaster,[[9]] with its bands and zig-zag lines of transparent crystals in an opaque base of a warm milky hue. But there was no play of colour in this latter substance, and its very softness restricted the uses to which it could be put. In glass they found a substance hard enough to allow of more delicate forms, and on it chevrons of yellow and white could be traced upon a nearly opaque ground of turquoise or dark blue. Some such origin in native stones we may perhaps find for the decorative motives of the little vases, variously known as phialæ, unguentaria, alabastra, which were in such favour not only with the Egyptians, but perhaps even more so among the inhabitants of the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, during a period of at least a thousand years. It is indeed these little vases that are the most characteristic product of the first period of glass-making.
It is not too much to say that the little we know of the processes of these early Egyptian glass-makers is derived from notices on the subject scattered through the memoirs in which Dr. Flinders Petrie has described the results of his excavations, more especially from the report issued in 1894, on his discoveries at Tell-el-Amarna. In the introduction to the catalogue of the Egyptian Exhibition held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1895, Dr. Petrie has summed up our knowledge on this subject. I will quote the description of the method by which, according to him, these alabastra were made.
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