In the Glass-Room at the British Museum may be seen an interesting collection of this later glass of Ptolemaic or perhaps Roman date, found at Denderah. There are many fragments of glass paste destined probably to be fitted into hollows cut in a wooden plaque, the intervening surface being covered with gilt gesso. Here, as at Tanis, the colours are practically the same as those found in the Eighteenth Dynasty glass, with the addition only of the orange-yellow tint to which I have already referred. It is in the centre of these wooden plaques that what are perhaps the largest pieces of Egyptian glass known to us are found. These are the scarabæi of opaque blue glass, at times so closely resembling lapis lazuli that their true nature has been in dispute. Even the white marblings and spots of the native stone are imitated; indeed, in one specimen in the collection of Mr. Hilton Price, the little grains of pyrites in the stone, so much admired by the ancients, have been imitated by paillettes of gold scattered in the paste. (Cf. the passage from Theophrastus quoted below, p. [35].)
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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN GLASS
1. SCARAB OF GLASS PASTE IMITATING LAPIS LAZULI. TWENTY-SECOND DYNASTY
2. FLASK FOR COSMETICS, IN SHAPE OF COLUMN WITH PAPYRUS CAPITAL
3. PLAQUE OF “FUSED MOSAIC” FOR INLAY; FROM DENDERAH, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD
But the Egyptians made use also of other processes partaking of the nature both of inlay and mosaic. Taking advantage of the fact that pieces of glass when softened by heat adhere to one another—they are in fact in this condition as ‘sticky’ as partially melted sugar—they formed a mosaic of small rods of glass; these were heated to a plastic condition, and if desired drawn out to reduce the dimension of the design; when cold, transverse sections were cut, on each of which the pattern appeared. In other cases the design was excavated on the surface of the glass, the coloured paste pressed into the hollows when in a soft condition, and the whole plaque finally reheated so as to form a homogeneous mass. Some such process, at least, must have been adopted in the preparation of the large slabs, generally with a ground of deep blue glass, of which a fine series may be seen in the Egyptian department of the British Museum. Elaborate work of this kind dates for the most part from Ptolemaic and even Roman times. Similar processes we shall come across again, in the case of the millefiori glass and the inlaid wall-plates of the Romans.