It is but a comparatively small number of the little glass vases with chevron patterns in our collections that have come from Egypt; up to the present time, however, no trace of their manufacture has been found in any other country; and although we cannot attribute so early a date as the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt to any of the little glass jugs and amphoræ found in Greek and Etruscan tombs, this ‘Mediterranean’ glass is in every respect subsidiary to the Egyptian series.

Glass in the Mycenæan Age

It would, indeed, be quite beside the mark to make a separate division for the glass of the Greeks, who for one reason or another appear never to have found much attraction in the material. This would at least seem to have been the case in Greece itself during the great centuries of Greek art, for nearly all the specimens of glass that we have from tombs of that time have been brought from more or less outlying lands, from Southern Italy, Sardinia or Etruria, above all from the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus, where the older culture long survived, and where Phœnician and Egyptian influences were strong.

Such a statement, however, would not hold for the so-called Mycenæan Age. At that time glass was indeed a rare material brought by Phœnician merchants from Egypt, perhaps from Syria also. In some cases this imported glass may have been remelted and worked up again; it was certainly highly prized.[[16]] Perhaps the most striking instance of the application of glass to decorative purposes in Greece itself at this period, is to be found in the famous frieze discovered by Schliemann in the vestibule of the men’s hall at Tiryns. The pattern, carved in low relief upon the alabaster slabs, was heightened by studs of blue glass fixed into these slabs at intervals. Some of the roundels of this glass, forming the centre of rosettes, are as much as three-quarters of an inch in diameter. We have the authority of Virchow for stating that this is a soda-lime glass, coloured by copper—an analysis showed no trace of cobalt. On the other hand, cobalt has been found by German chemists in beads of an otherwise similar composition from Mycenæ and from the bee-hive tombs of Attica.

Now the question has arisen: Is this glass inlay to be identified with the kyanos which, as Homer tells us, formed the frieze or cornice (θριγκός) round the bronze walls in the palace of Alkinoos? Helbig, writing before the discovery of the frieze at Tiryns, maintained that the poet’s kyanos was of a glassy nature. He tells us (Das Homerische Epos, pp. 79 seq., quoted in Schliemann’s Tiryns)—‘This kyanos must be identified not with blue steel, but with (1st) the later Σαπφειρός—lapis lazuli; (2nd) with the blue colour obtained by pulverising this stone, and finally with the artificial imitation of this stone or of ultramarine. The classical passage is in Theophrastus (On Stones, § 55). This author distinguishes between the natural αὐτοφυής and the artificial (σκευαστός) kyanos. That by the first lapis lazuli is intended appears from an another passage (§ 39), where the gold dust distinctive of the lapis lazuli is cited as the peculiarity of the natural kyanos.... Theophrastus continues—“There are three kinds of kyanos, the Egyptian, the Scythian, and the Cyprian. The best for the darker colour is the Egyptian, for the lighter, the Scythian. The Egyptian is artificially prepared, and those that write about the kings tell us which king first, to imitate natural kyanos, melted the prepared kyanos (Κυάνος χυτός), and they allege that, among other things, from Phœnicia came a tribute of kyanos, partly natural and partly burnt (τοῦ μὲν ἀπυροῦ τοῦ δὲ πεπυρωμένου).”’

Helbig goes on to identify the unfired kyanos with the copper ore of Cyprus—the blue carbonate which the Phœnicians brought to the Pharaohs, and which was the main source of copper for the Eastern Mediterranean.[[17]]

At Mycenæ itself little glass has been found—some minute tubular beads, decomposed externally but with a core of blue glass (pronounced by Landerer to contain lead and cobalt), and a few beads of clear glass. In the bee-hive tombs of Attica, especially at Spata, were found a number of small objects of glass, cast, says M. Tsountas, in moulds of granite and basalt which have been discovered on the spot. Indeed in all these tombs, next to the beads, the commonest examples of glass are the little rosettes and plaques cast in a mould with a design in low relief; these rosettes are often pierced with holes and were probably sewn on to the dresses of the women. The surface, and sometimes the whole body, is decomposed, presenting a white silvery glimmer, and this appearance Landerer considers to be characteristic of the presence of lead in the glass. At Vaphio we hear of fragments of glass ‘goblets’ being found, decorated with spirals of black, chestnut, and yellow (Tsountas and Manatt, The Mycenæan Age, 1897). If these are to be identified with our chevron vases, it is, as far as I know, the only mention of their occurrence on the mainland of Greece at this time.

But it is from the Greco-Phœnician tombs of Cyprus and Rhodes that the greatest quantity of this primitive glass (chiefly in the form of unguentaria) has been obtained; again from Greco-Etruscan tombs in Tuscany, from what may be called Greco-Oscan tombs in Southern Italy, and even from Greco-Scythian tombs in Southern Russia—from, in fact, nearly all the lands visited by Phœnician traders. How widely spread was the acquaintance with these little vases we may infer from the imitations of the chevron pattern on coloured pottery found in Melos. A similar decoration has been found on Lydian pottery from tumuli near Sardis, and even, it is claimed, upon prehistoric pottery brought from the Nilghery Hills in Southern India.

These little vases now take characteristic Greek shapes. The columnar kohl-pots are replaced by alabastra, very similar in form. Even more common in later tombs are the little amphoræ, sometimes pointed at the base, at others ending in a rounded knob; a jug-shaped form like the Greek oinochoe is also common. In some cases—in specimens of Egyptian origin very frequently—the surface of the glass is entirely unchanged. But when the decay of the surface has once set in, we generally find that the decomposition has eaten deeply into the substance of the glass (see above, p. [16]). In such cases it often happens that the blue colour has been entirely removed, and the vase has assumed the appearance of a dull, whitish pottery.

I will now briefly mention a few abnormal types of decoration. On some little amphoræ from Southern Italy the chevrons are of a manganese purple on a white translucent ground—this colour appears never to be combined with the more frequent blues and yellows. I have already noted that the use of red is very rare; where it appears, the technique of the vase appears to be different—the surface has probably been ground or turned on a lathe. A beautiful alabastron in the Slade collection, with red ground decorated with turquoise and yellow chevrons, should be specially noticed. (See also Pl II, 2.)