This fashion endured throughout the Theban period. The most important relic of it which we now possess is from the decoration of a temple built by Rameses III. to the north-west of Memphis, near the modern Tell-el-Yahoudeh, upon the railway from Cairo to Ismailia. The building itself was constructed of crude brick, the walls being lined with enamelled tiles. The royal ovals and titles were cut in the earth before it was fired, and afterwards filled up with an enamel so tinted as to stand out in strong relief from the colour of the brick. Other tiles represent African and Asiatic prisoners. The figures are in relief; the enamel is parti-coloured, the hair of the prisoners being black, their carnations yellowish-brown, and certain details of their costume being accentuated by other hues. Dr. Birch reproduces some of these painted reliefs and compares them to the figurines rustiques of Bernard Palissy.[370] The principal fragments of this decoration are in the store-rooms of the Boulak Museum. They deserve more publicity than they have received. Most of them are purely decorative in character and bear designs of which an idea may be gained from three pieces of faience which are now in the British Museum. Two have graceful rosettes, while the third is covered with a pattern resembling a spider's web (Figs. [303]-305).[371]
Figs. 303-305.—Enamelled earthenware plaques in the British Museum.
Certain buildings in Memphis seem to have been decorated in the same fashion. "The most curious thing brought by me from Mitrahineh," writes Jomard, "is a fragment of enamelled and sculptured terra-cotta, which probably belonged to a wall lined with that fine material. It is remarkable for the brilliant blue, the blue of the lapis-lazuli, which covers it.... The outlines of the hieroglyphs are as firm, and their edges as sharp as if they were the work of a skilful carver, and had never been subjected to the heat of a furnace. They are of blue stucco, inlaid into the body of the enamel. I look upon this kind of decoration as analogous to that of the Cairo divans, in which we see walls covered with earthenware tiles which are painted with various ornaments and subjects."[372] Now that attention has been attracted to this kind of decoration, traces of it will no doubt be found at many other points of Ancient Egypt.[373]
These enamels were not always used upon stone or faience; their charming varieties of tone are also found upon wooden grounds. M. Maspero mentions as an example of this the fragments of a mummy case in the Turin Museum. An inscription upon the wood is surrounded by faience ornament of a very rich colour. Mariette also mentions bronzes in which the remains of enamel and of pietra dura inlays are yet to be seen.[374]
Enamel is glass coloured by means of a metallic oxide and spread thinly over a surface, with which it is combined by means of heat. The Egyptians must therefore have understood the manufacture of glass at a very early date. It is represented in the paintings at Beni-Hassan.[375] Workmen are shown crouched by a fire and blowing glass bottles by means of a hollow cane, exactly as they do to this day. This industry continued to flourish in Egypt down to the Roman epoch. The glass manufacturers of Alexandria told Strabo that Egypt possessed a peculiar vitrifiable earth, without which the magnificent works in many-coloured glass could not be executed.[376] It is generally supposed that this "earth" was soda. The Venetians of the middle ages imported the soda required for their glass-making from Alexandria. It is said that Egyptian soda is the best known. It comes from the ashes of a plant called by botanists Mesem Bryanthemum copticum.[377]
Vessels of Egyptian glass are to be found in most museums, which recall those of Venice by their bands and fillets of brilliant colours. As for ordinary glass it seems never to have been quite transparent and colourless; it was always tinged with green and slightly opaque. It was upon their productions in colour that the fame of the Egyptian glass-makers depended. They produced vases, cups, pateræ, goblets, beads and other ornaments for necklaces and bracelets, amulets and everything else that the material would allow, in prodigious quantities, both for domestic consumption and for exportation. At one time mummies were covered with a kind of garment composed of multitudinous strings of beads.
Statuettes, such as the two figured below, were also made of glass. The larger of the two, which still has the hook, by which it was suspended, in its head, is entirely covered with parti-coloured ornaments similar to those shown upon its right shoulder. Our draughtsman at Boulak had no time to finish the drawing he had begun, and we have reproduced it in its actual condition rather than omit it or have it completed in any degree conjecturally. The details given afford a sufficiently good idea of the motives employed by the Egyptian artist. The ornamentation of the other figure is more simple (Fig. [307]), but the attitude is the same. There are two colours on the very well modelled head which acts as tail-piece to the Introduction in our first volume. The globe of the eye and its contours stand out in black against the yellow of the flesh. The wig is also black.
