But our one undoubted example of Sassanian glass forms part of a bowl now in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This famous vessel was long preserved in the treasury of the Abbey of St. Denis; as in the case of an enamelled cup preserved at Chartres, it was claimed for it that it had been a present from Harun-ar-Rashid to Charlemagne. The body of this bowl consists of a framework of gold, the openings of which are filled with rosettes of rock crystal and glass. The central medallion of rock crystal is carved to represent a king seated on his throne; for this reason the vessel was formerly known as the ‘Cup of Solomon.’ The seated king has, however, now been identified as Khosroes II. (Kosrou Parviz), one of the last of the Sassanian monarchs (590-628). The rosettes of glass and the lozenges between them are white, emerald-green, and purple, and the colours are still brilliant. M. de Longperier, who first identified the subject of the central medallion, has brought forward passages from early Arab writers in which mention is made of glass drinking-cups in use in the court of the Sassanian kings.
The question, however, of the origin of the enamelled glass of the Saracens—one of the most burning ones in the history of glass—receives no light from this quarter. Nor is the problem much advanced if we turn to Egypt to study the interesting middle period between the first introduction of Christianity and the Mohammedan conquest. It is only quite lately that the exploration of Coptic tombs has thrown some quite unexpected light on the culture of these long-neglected centuries. Not a little glass has been found, chiefly in fragments, and of these the date can only be inferred from the style of the decoration. The use of thin opaque ‘painted’ enamels, quite different from the brilliant jewel-like enamels of the Saracens, seems to have been much in vogue in Egypt at this time. What has been found is not very accessible so far, nor has much been done in the way of classification. A small collection, derived chiefly, I think, from the excavations at Achmin in Upper Egypt, has lately been purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum (from M. Richard). The little bottles of various simple shapes call to mind those preserved in the treasuries of certain European churches (see above, p. [99]). One slim spindle-shaped vessel reminds one a little of the vase with Greek inscription found in the South-Saxon cemetery near Worthing (p. [107]). Among the fragments is one delicately painted in thin enamels in Egypto-Roman manner—we see a flying bird and the stalks and seed-vessels of the lotus; others are decorated with entrelacs of Byzantine character, also in a thin opaque enamel; but on the majority of these fragments the subject and the design are thoroughly Saracenic. Some ribbed bowls (in shape identical with those from the later Celtic tombs of North Italy) have been added lately to the British Museum collection; they come from Upper Egypt; the scroll-like decoration in a manganese brown enamel is of distinctly Byzantine character. Though these ribbed bowls may possibly be of later date, they at any rate carry on the tradition of pre-Arab times.
Those who have visited the natron lakes of Lower Egypt (three days’ journey to the south-west of Cairo), declare that there is evidence that the brine and the saline deposits have been worked more or less continuously from Roman times. The natron is still extracted from the lakes by the fellahin in the dry season. The impure sub-carbonate of soda forms a cake beneath the coating of common salt, and lies also upon the ground around. Near the village of Zakook fragments have been found that point to the existence of glass-works in former days—this is indeed probably the site of the town of Nitria. A French traveller of the eighteenth century speaks of seeing near here ‘trois verreries abandonnées’ (Voyages en Égypte par le Sieur Granger, 1745). Indeed the ruins of three conical buildings are still to be seen; the stones are fused on the edges, and plentiful scoriæ of common green glass lie around. Some of the enamelled lamps of Saracenic style, now so much prized by collectors, may perhaps have come from monasteries in this neighbourhood. There are besides these a few lamps (as that from Siti Mariam, reproduced in the late Mr. Butler’s Coptic Churches of Egypt) which are of quite a distinct character. These lamps are set round with blue bosses and little plaques; there is, however, no ground for attributing any great antiquity to such work.
CHAPTER VI
GLASS FROM ANGLO-SAXON AND FRANKISH TOMBS.
THE SO-CALLED HEDWIG GLASSES
We must now turn to the Germanic tribes of the north. Thanks to the late conversion of these tribes to Christianity, we have in the objects found in their graves a comparatively rich store of information, up to as late a date as the sixth and seventh centuries.
A few rare specimens of glass of an essentially Byzantine character have been found in these pagan cemeteries. The most remarkable, perhaps, is the tall, somewhat spindle-shaped vase discovered in 1894 in a South-Saxon cemetery at the foot of the South Downs, some five miles to the west of Worthing.[[73]] The design which encircles the body of this vase has been engraved somewhat summarily with the wheel; we see a hound pursuing two hares—formal fern-like fronds rise between. The Greek inscription round the top in large letters is similarly cut; the expression ✠ Ο ΥΓΙΕΝΩΝ ΧΡΩ may be regarded as equivalent to the Latin Utere feliciter—‘May the draught do you good!’ In this little vase we have perhaps the latest example of classical glass of sepulchral origin.
The glass of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors must be considered in connection with that found in the graves of kindred tribes on the Continent. Of these, the most important are the Frankish people who dwelt for some time before their conversion to Christianity in the district between the Rhine and the Ardennes. It is here, more especially in the middle valley of the Meuse, about Namur and Liége, that the most important finds have been made; the more elaborate examples, at any rate, of this Franko-Saxon[[74]] glass were possibly manufactured in this district.
Now the importance for us of this glass from pagan cemeteries lies in the fact that in it we have the latest important and independent group of glass of which anything is known, until we come to the Saracenic enamelled ware of the thirteenth century. In England, indeed, the gap extends to a much later period; but in the case of Western Germany there is some reason to believe that the Frankish fashions and traditions of glass-making were carried on without any break during the Middle Ages—that, in fact, in this early mediæval glass may be found a link between the glass of Roman times and that in use in the Rhine district up to the time when the influence of the Renaissance first asserted itself. In Southern and Western France, on the other hand, although the glass-workers may in places have carried on the old workings, what they made was of no artistic importance. We have in this case nothing equivalent to the outcome of the renewed interest taken in the material by the northern chieftains—the verre à fougère was a product of the woods and heaths.
The Oriental influence—the distinguishing feature in all the glass of which I have treated in the last chapter—is not so pronounced in the glass of the Franko-Saxon peoples as in their jewellery and metal-work. In these we find the mark of influences that had their source in the East at two if not three widely separated periods. As for the earliest of these, it is not only pre-Roman but probably pre-Hellenic: its relations are rather with Asiatic than classical lands. The brooches and buckles inlaid with garnets, and the quaint animal forms with which the metal designs are built up, take us back perhaps to an earlier Asiatic civilisation which is best represented in the Persia of Achæmenid times.[[75]] The second of these periods of Oriental influence is to be associated with the introduction of the Christian religion. Again, at a still later time some of the older Oriental motives crept in in a modified form with the pagan Danes and even with the Normans.