On returning to Luxor, I found in a shop a large head of Horus in blue, apparently lapis lazuli. It was in a glass case, and was evidently considered to be very valuable. I asked to see it, and inquired from the dealer what it was. He, decent old fellow, smiled, and, turning his hands upwards, mentioned the name of a well-known Egyptologist, connected with the museum, and said, “He says perhaps it is lapis lazuli.” As a matter of fact, it was glass imitation.
At the last Agricultural Show in Cairo, there were several stalls for the sale of antiquities. At one of these I was shown Hathor, the sacred cow, and the figure of a man. The price asked was £40 for the cow, and £30 for the figure of a man. They were both wrapped up in pieces of old rag, and only brought out after I had seen most of the antiquities on the stall. After informing the man that I knew they were only glass imitations, I tried to buy the figures, but it was impossible to get them for a reasonable sum. The lowest amount he would accept for the cow was £8, and £4 for the man.
PLATE III.
WOODEN USHEBTI FIGURES.
Made at Gurna.
Later on, an itinerant vendor offered to sell me the figure shown in [Plate X.], No. 4. When we had agreed that it was imitation, and made of glass, I asked him to name a price. The lowest that he would take was £3. I was somewhat puzzled by the consistent high prices asked even for a fraud which had been detected, and after a great deal of argument, the man indignantly informed me that some men from America come each year to Cairo, at the end of the season, and purchase these blue glass figures for sums ranging between £3 and £7. They take them back to America, where they are sold for very high prices—my informant mentioned £50 and £100 each. This would quite explain why they refused to sell them to me at their intrinsic value.
There is a very considerable market for old iridescent glass. A small bottle will fetch from £1 to £3, and good specimens from £2 to £8. There is a moderate quantity of these bottles found in a district called Rakah. The bottles are extremely fragile, but good specimens are very beautiful objects and find quick buyers. There is a demand, and the ingenuity of the Egyptian is keenly exercised to meet it. Imitations are being made by pouring a chemical on the inside and the outside of specially made thin bottles and glasses. This forms a film which gives an appearance of iridescence; but in many cases the film can be detached with the point of a knife, and thus the fraud is made palpable.
One day a youth brought an iridescent bottle for me to buy, and as I happened to be out he sat down in the sun and waited. Upon my return he came up and began to explain that he had brought a beautiful bottle to sell to me, but had sat upon it and smashed it. Now he would sell it to me very cheap. Bottles made of iridescent glass are very thin, and the fragments were quite useless, but day after day the boy haunted the place, wanting to sell me the broken bottle “very cheap.” I much regretted the unfortunate accident, for the bottle, though small, had been of perfect shape and beautiful colour. At last I offered to buy another should he have one for sale, but he walked sullenly away and never came back.