From the necessity for symmetrical buildings arose the invention of the brick, which must have superseded the rude plastering of the hut with clay, to protect it against the sun or storm. In the history of the Semitic nations the brick appears among the earliest inventions, and its use can be traced with various modifications, from the building of the Tower of Babel to the present day. It is essential that bricks should be symmetrical, and their form is generally rectangular. Their geometrical shape affords us a clue to ancient units of measurement, and the various inscriptions with which they have been stamped have elevated them to the dignity of historical monuments. Thus the bricks of Egypt not only afford testimony, by their composition of straw and clay, that the writer of Exodus was acquainted with that country, but also, by the hieroglyphs impressed upon them, transmit the names of a series of kings, and testify to the existence of edifices, all knowledge of which, except for these relics, would have utterly perished. Those of Assyria and Babylon, in addition to the same information, have, by their cuneiform inscriptions, which mention the locality of the edifices for which they were made, afforded the means of tracing the sites of ancient Mesopotamia and Assyria with an accuracy unattainable by any other means. The Roman bricks have also borne their testimony to history. A large number of them present a series of the names of consuls of imperial Rome; while others show that the proud nobility of the eternal city partly derived their revenues from the kilns of their Campanian and Sabine estates.
From the next step in the progress of the manufacture—namely, that of modelling in clay the forms of the physical world—arose the plastic art. Delicate as is the touch of the finger, which the clay seems to obey, almost as if comprehending the intention of the potter’s mind, yet certain forms and ornaments which require a finer point than the nail gave rise to the use of pieces of horn, wood, and metal, and thus contributed to the invention of tools. But modelling in clay was soon superseded by sculpture in stone and metal, and at length only answered two subordinate ends: that of enabling the sculptor to elaborate his first conceptions in a material which could be modified at will; and that of readily producing works of a small and inexpensive form, for some transitory purpose. The invention of the mould carried this last application to perfection, and the terracottas of antiquity were as numerous and as cheap as the plaster casts now sold by itinerants.
The materials used for writing have varied in different ages and nations. Stone and bronze, linen and papyrus, wax and parchment, have all been used. But the Assyrians and Babylonians employed for their public archives, their astronomical computations, their religious dedications, their historical annals, and even for title-deeds and bills of exchange, tablets, cylinders, and hexagonal prisms of terracotta. Some of these cylinders, still extant, contain the history of the Assyrian monarchs Tiglath-pileser and Assurbanipal, and the campaign of Sennacherib against the kingdom of Judah; and others, excavated from the Birs Nimrud, give a detailed account of the dedication of the great temple by Nebuchadnezzar to the seven planets. To this indestructible material, and to the happy idea of employing it in this manner, the present age is indebted for a detailed history of the Assyrian monarchy; whilst the decades of Livy, the plays of Menander, and the lays of Anakreon, confided to a more perishable material, have either wholly or partly disappeared.
The application of clay to the making of vases was made effective by the invention of the potter’s wheel. Before the introduction of the wheel only vessels fashioned by the hand, and of rude unsymmetrical shape, could have been made. But the application of a circular table or lathe, laid horizontally and revolving on a central pivot, on which the clay was placed, and to which it adhered, was in its day a truly wonderful advance. As the wheel spun round, all combinations of oval, spherical, and cylindrical forms could be produced, and the vases not only became symmetrical in their proportions, but truthfully reproduced the potter’s conception. The invention of the wheel has been ascribed to all the great nations of antiquity. It is represented in full activity in the Egyptian sculptures; it is mentioned in the Scriptures, and was certainly in use at an early period in Assyria. The Greeks and Romans attributed it to a Scythian philosopher, and to the states of Athens, Corinth, and Sikyon, the first two of which were great rivals in the ceramic art. But, as will be explained hereafter, it was introduced at a very early stage in the history of civilisation upon Greek soil (see p. [206]).
Although none of the very ancient kilns have survived the destructive influence of time, yet among all the great nations baked earthenware is of the highest antiquity. In Egypt, in the tombs of the first dynasties, vases and other remains of baked earthenware are abundantly found; and in Assyria and Babylon even the oldest bricks and tablets have passed through the furnace. The oldest remains of Hellenic pottery in all cases owe their preservation to their having been subjected to the action of fire. To this process, as to the consummation of the art, the other processes of preparing, levigating, kneading, drying, and moulding the clay were necessarily ancillary.
The desire of rendering terracotta less porous, and of producing vases capable of retaining liquids, gave rise to the covering of it with a vitreous enamel or glaze. The invention of glass was attributed by the ancients to the Phoenicians; but opaque glass or enamels, as old as the Eighteenth Dynasty, and enamelled objects as early as the Fourth, have been found in Egypt. The employment of copper to produce a brilliant blue-coloured enamel was very early both in Babylonia and Assyria; but the use of tin for a white enamel, as discovered in the enamelled bricks and vases of Babylonia and Assyria, anticipated by many centuries the rediscovery of that process in Europe in the fifteenth century, and shows the early application of metallic oxides. This invention apparently remained for many centuries a secret among the Eastern nations only, enamelled terracotta and glass forming articles of commercial export from Egypt and Phoenicia to every part of the Mediterranean. Among the Egyptians and Assyrians enamelling was used more frequently than glazing; hence they used a kind of faience consisting of a loose frit or body, to which an enamel adheres after only a slight fusion. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the art of enamelling terracotta disappeared except amongst the Arab and Moorish races, who had retained a traditionary knowledge of the process. The application of a transparent vitreous coating, or glaze, to the entire surface, like the varnish of a picture, is also to be referred to a high antiquity. Originally intended to improve the utility of the vase, it was used by Greeks and Romans with a keen sense of the decorative effects that could be derived from its use.
In Greece, although nearly all traces of the Stone Age are wanting, and little pottery has been found which can be referred to that period,[[2]] yet the earliest existing remains of civilisation are, as we shall see later, in the form of pottery; and Greece is no exception to the general rule. But the important difference between the pottery of Asia and Egypt and that of Greece is that only in the latter was there any development due to artistic feeling. Of the Greek it may be said, as of the medieval craftsman, nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. In the commonest vessel or implement in every-day use we see almost from the first the workings of this artistic instinct, tending to exalt any and every object above the mere level of utilitarianism, and to make it, in addition to its primary purpose of usefulness, “a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.” Feeble and rude it may be at first, and hampered by imperfect knowledge of technique or capacity for expression—but still the instinct is there.
There is indeed at first but little in Greek pottery to differentiate it from that of other nations possessing any decorative instincts. As M. Pottier[[3]] has pointed out, there is a universal law which manifests itself in nascent art all over the world: “More than once men have remarked the extraordinary resemblance which the linear decoration of Peruvian, Mexican, and Kabyle vases bears to the ornamentation of the most ancient Greek pottery. There is no possibility of contact between these different peoples, separated by enormous distances of time and space. If they have this common resemblance at the outset of their artistic evolution, it is because all must pass through a certain phase, resulting in some measure from the structure of the human brain. Even so at the present day there are savages in Polynesia who, by means of a point applied to the soft clay, produce patterns exactly similar to those found on Greek or Cypriote pottery of fifteen or twenty centuries before our era.” Or to take a later stage of development, the compositions of vase-paintings of the sixth century B.C. are governed by the same immutable laws of convention and principles of symmetry as the carvings of the Middle Ages. Instances might be multiplied ad infinitum; but the principle is universal.
A question that may be well asked by any visitor to a great museum is, What is the use of the study of Greek vases? The answer is, that no remains of Greek art have come down to us in such large quantities, except perhaps coins, and certainly none cover so long a period. Portraying as they do both the objective and subjective side of Greek life, they form perhaps the best introduction to the study of Greek archaeology in general. In no other class of monuments are the daily life and religious beliefs of the Greeks so vividly presented as in the painted vases. Their value to the modern student may be treated under four separate heads: (1) Ethnological; (2) Historical; (3) Mythological; (4) Artistic.