The secret is not in the bricks or the stone, but in the cement and mortar, neither of which essentials can we make as the ancients made them.
In modern buildings the cement and mortar are the weakest points; in the buildings which the Romans and Greeks raised thousands of years ago the cement and mortar are the strongest points, and hold good while the very stones they bind together crumble away with age. We cannot, with all our science, make such cement and mortar, and therefore we cannot build such buildings as the ancients raised.
Wonderful Ancient Dyes.
Chemistry, one might Imagine, is the science which has, perhaps, made the greatest strides during the last five or six decades. Yet modern chemists cannot compound such dyes as were commonly used when the great nations of to-day were still unborn. Now and again it happens that searchers after antiquities come across fragments of fabrics which were dyed thousands of years ago, and they are astonished by the wonderful richness of the colors of the cloths, which, despite their age, are brighter and purer than anything we can produce.
Modern artists buy their colors ready made, and spend large sums of money on pigments with which to color their canvases. The pictures of modern artists will be colorless when many of the works of ancient masters are as bright as they are to-day. Just as the secret of dyeing has been lost, so has the secret of preserving the colors of artists’ paints. Yet the secret was known to every ancient artist, for they all mixed their own colors.
Formula for Durable Ink.
How to make durable ink Is another great secret we have lost. Look at any letter five or ten years old and you will probably notice that the writing has faded to a brown color and is very indistinct. Go to any big museum, and you will find ancient manuscripts, the writing of which is as black and distinct as if the manuscript were written the day before yesterday.
The secret of glass blowing and tinting is not yet entirely lost; there are still a few men who can produce glass-work equal to that which the ancients turned out hundreds of years ago.
But the average glass manufacturer cannot produce anything that could at all compare with some of the commoner articles the Egyptians, and, later, the founders of Venice manufactured; and those who still hold the ancient secret guard it so closely that it will probably die with them and be added to the long list of things in which our ancestors beat us hollow.