CHAPTER V EARLY CHRISTIAN GLASS, BYZANTINE GLASS, AND THE GLASS OF THE MIDDLE AGES IN THE EAST AND THE WEST.

The vague and indefinite use of the terms ‘Byzantine Period’ and ‘Byzantine Art’ has been the cause of much confusion in many branches of history, and nowhere more than in the history of architecture. Were I treating of the latter art I should prefer to use the term in its narrower sense, confining it within definite limits of time and space. With the minor arts, however—illuminated manuscripts, ivories, and metal ware—the case is different. Here the term Byzantine may often be conveniently applied to cover a very wide field; so in the case of glass, the rare specimens that come to us from widely scattered sources find, for a long period, a common centre, as it were, in Constantinople.

After the end of the third century the East begins once more to assert itself. The spread of the Christian religion, the transference of the capital of the empire to Constantinople, and again the advance of the barbaric tribes, were all important factors in this movement. As far as our northern lands are concerned, the importance of this last factor as an orientalising influence has perhaps not been sufficiently recognised. We think of this advance chiefly as a descent of Germanic tribes from the north upon Italy. But this last movement was only a side issue—the general progress was from East to West. We know now that for whatever culture these tribes brought with them at the time of their advance, they were at least as much indebted to the early civilisations of Western Asia as to that of Greece and Rome. It was only with the fringe of this latter civilisation, and that comparatively lately, that they had come into contact. In a measure we may look upon the influence of what we call classical civilisation as merely a temporary interruption, a breaking in upon the old established route by which the peoples, and still more the produce, of the East reached Western Europe. This is what gives that Oriental nuance, often so difficult to define, to so much of our Western European art of the early Middle Ages,^[59] up to the time when the Roman culture, under the lead of the Western Church, asserted itself once more.

So in the somewhat miscellaneous assortment of glass from many lands, and often of uncertain date, that we treat of in this chapter, it is this new wave of Oriental influence working upon the now decadent Roman types which gives in some measure a common note to objects otherwise so divergent.

In another way the spread of the new religion had an even more direct and practical bearing on our subject-matter. If between the fourth and thirteenth century—between the later Gallo-Roman glass and the enamelled glass of the Saracens—there is in our collections a gap representing nearly a thousand years, only sparingly filled up by a few rare examples, the immediate cause is to be found in the abandonment of the practice of cremation, and of the habit of burying objects of value with the deceased. Fortunately for us, however, there was at first one important exception to this rule, and to this exception we owe the survival of so many specimens of a family of glass which is essentially both Christian and Roman, a family which should therefore rightly find its place at the commencement of the present chapter.

The Gilt Glass of the Cemeteries is, indeed, strictly Roman, both in provenance and in its artistic and technical relationships. The essential character of this early Christian glass depends upon the inclusion of a foil of thin gold between two plates of glass united by fusion. This is the principle of the decoration of the two bowls from Canosa that I have already described, and, indeed, in the technical difficulties overcome, and still more in artistic merit, these bowls far excel any later work of this class. As it is, the interest of these vetri a fondi d’oro, as the Italians call them, depends rather upon the fact that they constitute one of the earliest records of the art of the primitive Church, than upon any especial merit they may possess as examples of glass.^[60]

It is now well known that nearly all these little discs of glass have formed the base of tazza-shaped bowls, or of cups of conical form. Most of them have been extracted from the plaster in which they were embedded at the sides of the loculi, where in the passages of the catacombs the corpses were deposited. There is also a class of smaller medallions or studs, covered with thick lenticular glass, which were inserted round the body of a glass cup; in a few rare examples, chiefly from Cologne, the medallions remain in their original position on the cup (Pl. X.). These studs are sometimes of blue glass, and we are then reminded of a style of decoration in use in earlier times—blue bosses or ribs, appliquÉs or fused into the body of the bowl.

Apart from a few remarkable specimens found beneath some of the old churches of Cologne, as at St. Ursula and St. Severinus, these gilt glasses come almost exclusively from the catacombs of Rome. The Roman collections naturally contain the most numerous specimens; in the British Museum, however, may be seen an important and typical series, illustrating most of the points of interest.

In the preparation of these vetri a fondi d’oro, the gold leaf was laid down upon the glass with some gum or varnish; the superfluous gold was then scraped away, and the internal lines of the draperies accentuated with a sharp metallic point; a covering of glass was then superimposed. So far all are agreed; but as to the actual process by which the two sheets of glass were united, there is some difference of opinion. The problem had already appealed to Heraclius, the writer of some barbarous hexameters treating De Coloribus et Artibus Romanorum. Heraclius was probably a monk living at Rome, perhaps about the end of the tenth century. The fifth of his little didactic poems is inscribed ‘De fialis auro decoratis.’ In this he tells us how he produced some small cups of pure glass, smeared them with gum with a brush, and then proceeded to lay down on them leaves of gold. On the gold leaf, when dry, he inscribed birds, men, lions, as it pleased his fancy. ‘Finally,’ says Heraclius, ‘I fitted over the surface, glass rendered thin by a skilful blast of the fire; but when the glass had yielded equally to the heat, it united itself admirably to the phials as a thin sheet.’^[61]

Theophilus, writing a few generations later, probably in Germany, knew nothing of this cemetery glass. He describes, however, the process by which the Byzantine Greeks made their gold mosaics by sprinkling a layer of powdered glass over the gold leaf covering the surface of the tesserÆ; this coating was then fused on. But this was an enameller’s process, and the coating must have consisted of a somewhat fusible glass, perhaps containing lead. The Greeks employed, he tells us, a similar process in decorating their glass cups.

Signor Andrea Rioda, the art director of the Impresa Venezia-Murano, tells me that in the case of some clever imitations of fondi d’oro made by his firm, the gold leaf was fixed upon a thickish sheet of glass, a thinner sheet was then placed over it, and the whole heated to the softening-point. A third method has been adopted in the preparation of some experimental imitations made by Mr. Westlake: that gentleman soldered together the two sheets of glass round the edges only, by means of a flux.

In the general treatment of the figure, and in the choice of the subject, we are reminded in the case of this cemetery glass of the reliefs upon contemporary Christian sarcophagi—that is to say of the more rudely executed of these reliefs. But among these fondi d’oro there is a small class of portrait heads, highly finished by means of a sort of pointillÉ or stipple process, which are of a somewhat superior artistic merit. In these circular medallions—miniatures, we might call them^[62]—the large eyes, the small mouth, and a peculiar affable but sad and ‘worn-out’ expression, remind us of the portrait heads on late mummy cases brought from the Fayum. These highly finished miniatures are probably of somewhat earlier date than the typical glass from the catacombs.

We find occasionally in this cemetery glass a sparing use of coloured enamels, above all on the draperies.^[63] In others the outlines, it would seem, were cut into the glass and filled up with coloured pastes, a process of great technical interest; I have not, however, myself seen an example of such work.

A few rare pieces with Jewish symbols have been found, but not in any case, I think, from Jewish cemeteries. We see the scrolls of the law lying on the aron, and the seven-branched candlestick. I have already pointed out that at this time in Rome the working of glass was very probably to some extent in the hands of Jews and Judaising Christians.^[64]

The cemetery glass dates, it would seem, from the fourth and from the first half of the fifth century, but some of the finer pieces may be a little older. The disasters of the fifth century and the rapid decline of Rome after the time of Honorius help to explain the total extinction of this genre soon after the latter period.

Apart from these gilt medallions, the examples of glass that may be classed as early Christian present no special feature. There is in the British Museum a series of cameo medallions, some of hÆmatinum and others of sapphire-blue glass paste. In these the treatment of the figures—the Virgin and Child and St. George (or possibly St. Theodore) are the favourite subjects—is quite Byzantine in character. In the Vatican Museum, among many other such medallions, are some cast from the same moulds as our English examples. The little pendeloques of stamped glass remind one of the late Roman and Saracenic glass weights found in Egypt; they have formed probably parts of a necklace, or they may have been attached to drapery.

The early Christian engraved glass is of more importance, but it in no way differs in technique from that carved with pagan subjects; some of the vases may possibly have served as chalices for use in the service of the Eucharist. In the British Museum is a conical cup from Cologne; the figures are roughly cut with the wheel, and the subjects from the Old and New Testaments are the same as those found on contemporary sarcophagi. The design on the Podgoriza bowl,^[65] perhaps the finest example of early Christian engraving on glass, shows the influence of the northern barbarians; there is a Viking air about some of the subjects. Notice especially the ship from which Jonah is being thrown, and the gaping monsters in the sea, more like dragons than whales. (See Mr. Arthur Evans’s paper in ArchÆologia, vol. xlviii.)

As I have already said, the gap which exists between the later Roman and the great school of enamelled Saracenic glass of the thirteenth century can only be filled by a few scattered examples from widely distant sources. The tombs now fail us, and we are thrown back for the most part upon the treasures and relics preserved in the churches of Italy, France, and Germany. Such objects represent but one aspect of the glass produced at the time: they reflect above all the skill now acquired in staining glass so as to imitate precious stones. We shall see later that there has been preserved an interesting literary record bearing especially on such imitations. The alchemists now begin to come into touch with the glass-workers—a connection that has been maintained even to quite recent times. The Jews, too, were early occupied with the manufacture of coloured pastes, and their interest in the subject has continued, as we know, up to the present day.

It would be impossible to neglect the importance of Constantinople when treating of the art of the early mediÆval—the so-called dark ages. But so far as glass, in our narrower sense of the word, is concerned, there is little that can be definitely attributed to that city. For us, however, the interest of the Greek Empire lies in the fact that we have in it a common middle term with which to correlate the art of the Copts in Egypt, of the Sassanians in Persia, and at a later time, in some measure, that of the early Saracen dynasties and even of the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks in the north. At two widely separated periods the influence of Constantinople has been more directly felt. The first centres round Justinian in the sixth century; we are brought at that time into relation with the Copts and the Sassanian rulers of Persia. The other is the time of the great revival of Byzantine power in the tenth century, when, chiefly through alliances with the emperors of the Saxon house, the renewed art of the Greeks spread through Germany and even reached, not for the first time indeed, the shores of England.

The great work, no doubt, of the Byzantines in the domain of glass is to be found in the manufacture of the mosaics with which they lined the walls of their churches, and when we hear that glass was made at Thessalonica, and again that one of the gates of the capital was named after the adjacent glass-works, it is of this branch of the art that we must first think.^[66] Byzantine artists travelled to Cordova on the one hand, and to Damascus on the other, to work in mosaic for Mohammedan masters; we find them, too, at Rome, at Ravenna, and at Aachen. No doubt these musivi took with them, at first at least, the materials with which they built up their pictures.

For the use of coloured glass in the windows of churches, we may probably find a similar origin. In Justinian’s great church glass was not used for mosaics only; there were windows filled with stained glass, some of which may even now be in place. In the seventh century we hear of Greek workmen summoned to France for such work, just as from Merovingian France, as Bede tells us, Benedict Biscop obtained, a little later, skilled craftsmen to make the glass for his new church at Monk Wearmouth.

In the ode that Paul the Silentiary wrote for the opening ceremony at St. Sophia (563 A.D.), he speaks of silver discs, hanging from chains and pierced to receive vessels of ‘fire-wrought’ glass, shaped like the butt of a spear (????a???) (Lethaby’s Santa Sophia, p. 50 seq.).^[67]

We have here in these lamps what is probably the first mention of a new use for our material—one which became before long, for a time, the dominant one. In the ‘spear-butt’ shaped lamps of St. Sophia we may see the prototypes of the conical oil-cups of the Saracens.

Glass, however, was never held in great honour in the ceremonies of the Christian Church. Chalices and patens of glass are indeed mentioned in the Liber Pontificalis as in use at the end of the second century: St. Jerome writes of ‘the Lord’s blood being borne in a vessel of glass,’ and some early miracles have reference to the making good of glass that had been broken. Of a ninth-century saint we are told that his Eucharistic vessels were first of wood, then of glass, and finally of pewter! In later times the use of so fragile a material fell out of use, and was even forbidden by the Church.

In shape it would seem that these early chalices resembled the Greek cantharus. Of this form is what is perhaps the oldest example of a metal chalice that has survived—the cup found at Gourdon, now in the BibliothÈque Nationale. We have, or rather had, another example of this type in the golden chalice inlaid with jewels which was formerly preserved at Monza. In fact, this form is especially characteristic of early Byzantine art; we see such vases represented over and over again on marble reliefs and mosaics. Now in the British Museum there are two vases, distinctly of this cantharus shape; they are of blue, somewhat bubbly glass, with fluted body: one which is perfect was found at Amiens (Plate XII.); the other, from the Slade collection, has lost its handles. These vases may well date from the sixth century, and they may very probably have served as chalices.

Let us now turn to some of the rare specimens of early glass to be found in the treasuries of churches, chiefly in the north of Italy.

At Rome, in the church of St. Anastasia, is a bowl of opaque glass, with ornaments in relief, mounted on a metal foot. This claims to be the chalice used by St. Jerome.

More famous is the sacro catino preserved in the cathedral of St. Lorenzo at Genoa. There is no reason to doubt the story that this bowl fell to the share of a Genoese when the town of CÆsarea was sacked by the Crusaders in the year 1101. It seems to have suffered no diminution in sanctity from a want of uniformity in the tradition as to its earlier history.^[68] The sacro catino is a shallow hexagonal bowl with feet and handles; the slight ornaments on the surface are finished with a tool. It was carried off to Paris during the revolutionary war, and then discovered to be not an emerald, as had been always maintained, but a piece of admirably tinted glass, containing, however, a few air-bubbles. The bowl was broken before its return to Genoa, and the pieces are now united by a filigree mounting of gold.

It is claimed for the famous treasures preserved in the royal basilica at Monza, that they date from the time of Theodolinda, Queen of the Lombards (589-625 A.D.). Among them is a cup of a deep blue material which is stated to be a sapphire. It is almost three inches in diameter, and Mr. Nesbitt, who examined it, failed to discover any air-bubbles. If, however, as is probable, this cup is of glass, it gives evidence of the technical skill of the craftsman who made it. In the same treasury are a number of little flasks in which were preserved the oil exuding from the bodies of martyrs—whether these flasks came originally from Rome or from Palestine, I am unable to say. In any case they closely resemble certain little bottles said to be of Coptic origin, found in Upper Egypt. There are some very similar flasks, claiming to date from the sixth century, in the treasury of St. Croix at Poitiers.

But it is to the treasury of St. Mark at Venice that we must go to find what is by far the largest collection of Byzantine glass in existence. The tradition that refers this collection as a whole to the time of the fourth crusade, when in the year 1204 Constantinople was subjected to a systematic pillage by the combined forces of the Venetians and the Franks, is doubtless in the main true. But long before this the Venetians had been in close commercial relations with the Greek capital. The nucleus of the Pala D’Oro, undoubtedly a Byzantine work, dates from the last years of the tenth century. On the other hand, there are some objects in the treasury of considerably later date than the twelfth century. As the little that we know of the glass of the Byzantines is mainly founded upon this collection, I will extract from Passini’s great work^[69] a complete list of the examples of glass that it contains.

I. Among a series of ten chalices of which the metal mountings bear inscriptions in Greek relating to the consecration of the holy wine, is a hemispherical cup of common glass, some 5 inches in height, studded with conical points, and another of clear glass with an arcading in low relief (xxxi. 76 and 77). In the same series is a bowl of green glass, decorated with four quaint animals rudely carved in low relief (xlv. 99).

II. Among a set of so-called chalices, without inscriptions or symbols, we find—1st, A vase of plain blown glass of greyish colour, 71/2 inches in height; it is without ornament, but is richly mounted in filigree and jewels (l. 116). 2nd, A bowl of plain glass, some 6 inches in height; at the base is a series of circular button-like projections with a stud in the centre of each (xlii. 87). 3rd, A cup of clear glass (some 6 in. high); the surface is decorated by a series of shield-like projections similar to those on the last (xl. 79). 4th, Another cup of coarse glass (5 in. high) is not illustrated in Passini’s work.

III. Among a series of so-called patens of various materials we find four of glass—1st, A plate-like paten of greenish glass (7 in. diam.), the outside incised with a number of small circular depressions (xlix. 109). 2nd, A paten of milky-white semi-transparent glass with shaped margin (9 in. diam.); not illustrated. 3rd, An unmounted shallow dish or bowl of plain glass (14 in. diam.) shaped like the pan of a balance; eight ringed discs, standing out in relief from the surface, surround a central circular shield; between are facetted, pointed projections^[70] (lix. 110a) (Plate XI. 3). 4th, A smaller pan-like paten or hanging lamp similar to the above (10 in. diam.) is not illustrated.

IV. Lamps—1st, A vessel in the shape of a balance-pan, mounted as a lamp, and hung by three chains (liv. 125). We are reminded by this of the lamps that hung in St. Sophia, as described by Paul the Silentiary (p. 97). The decoration of discs and facetted points is almost identical with III. 3. The inscription in Greek on the silver rim maybe rendered: ‘? Saint Pantaleone, help your slave Zachariah, Archbishop of Iberia! Amen!’ This connection with Iberia (Georgia) is of the greatest interest as bearing upon the origin of this family of glass (Plate XI. 1). 2nd, A bucket-shaped lamp of plain glass hanging from three chains (hgt. 6 in.) (liv. 124). 3rd, An ellipsoid hanging lamp of common glass (chief diam. 8 in.). On the exterior, projecting in high relief, are carved shells, fishes, and other animals. From the silver rim project six cloisons which formerly held jewels; one alone remains, an oval paste of opaque blue. Above project eight little cylindrical sockets, as if to contain candles (liv. 123).

V. Amphora-shaped vessels—1st, A cylindrical vase of common glass, with rich mounting (total height, 20 in.) (xxxvi. 65). 2nd, A pear-shaped vase, set with a false metal spout to resemble an ampulla or cruet; the mounting is of Oriental character. The glass is carved with a design containing two long-horned rams among a conventional leaf pattern (the glass alone 4 in. high) (li. 115) (Plate XIII.). 3rd, An unmounted vase of common glass, with handles (10 in. diam.). 4th, An unmounted conical vase of common glass with conical neck, carved in low relief with three conventionalised four-legged monsters with tendril-like limbs and bodies (hgt. 5 in.) (xl. 80).^[71]

VI. SitulÆ, or bucket-shaped vases, 1st, A situla of clear glass of a violet tint. The design—somewhat rudely cut with a wheel—consists of a series of figures, with pastoral and Bacchic emblems. The decoration is similar in style to the engraved work found on some late Roman glass from the Rhine district (hgt. 8 in.) (liii. 121). 2nd, The famous situla that I have already described when treating of the diatretum glass (p. 72). The Canonico Passini thinks that the rings of glass have been fitted on subsequently, and that is the impression that I formed when examining the vase (hgt. II in.) (liii. 122). (Plate XIV.)

VII. The vase enamelled with classical medallions which has already been described in connection with the enamelled glass of the Romans (p. 66). Although, as I have said, the figures are purely classical in style, yet the scroll-work reminds one of the decoration on Coptic bowls and fragments brought from Egypt (xl. 78, and xli. 82).

VIII. There remains the turquoise basin, richly mounted in gold and gems, presented in 1472 by the Shah of Persia to the Signoria of Venice. The only ornament is a conventionalised hare carved in low relief on each of the five compartments that divide the sides. On the base is a brief dedication in Arabic to Allah. As to the material of this vase, all I can say is that it is carved; this is seen by the light reflected on the somewhat unctuous surface; it is therefore not porcelain or other ceramic ware, as some have thought. The slightly waxy lustre is in favour of its being a natural stone of the turquoise order. Some, however, have held this dish to be of a glass paste, on the ground of the minute bubbles on the translucent edge; but the existence of these bubbles is denied by others, and I myself failed to discover them (hgt. II in.) (liii. 122).

I have dwelt in some detail on this little-known Byzantine glass at St. Mark’s, for it is, as a group, of unique interest for our history, throwing light on so many obscure problems.

We may obtain some slight hints as to the commoner kinds of glass in use by the Byzantine Greeks from the illustrations of contemporary manuscripts. I will give an instance of frequent occurrence. The Evangelist who on the opening page is represented seated at his desk engaged in writing his gospel, dips his pen into a little flask of clear glass, of cylindrical body and straight neck. This is a simple form, easily turned out by the blowing-tube, without the use of the pontil. We may trace it all through the Middle Ages, and a flask very similar in shape is still used in the laboratory of the chemist.

Apart from the more or less conventional rendering of the human figure—and this is what we usually think of in connection with Byzantine painting—we find two tendencies in the minor arts of the time; one classical, carrying on the old Greco-Roman tradition, the other Oriental in motive and feeling. For more than three hundred years the frontiers of the Roman and Sassanian empires were continually fluctuating, and in this border region, which included Armenia, Georgia, Western Persia, and the upper waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates, there were at this time many flourishing centres of industry. It was probably in some of these lands, rather than in Constantinople itself, that we may look for the home of the school of carving in rock crystal and in glass that we associate vaguely with the Lower Empire.^[72] Nor did the Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries make at once any great changes in the arts of these districts. It was through these lands probably that so many Oriental motives filtered through to the west, not only to Constantinople, but to the north and west coasts of the Black Sea also, and thence through Poland and Hungary to Germany. Nowhere is this Oriental influence better seen than in the vases of rock crystal and other hard stones preserved in the treasuries of our Western churches, nor can we separate these vases from the even rarer objects carved in glass. The carving on the so-called Hedwig glasses is, as we shall see, executed in an allied if somewhat degenerate style; some of these glasses can be traced back to the borderlands of Poland.

Of the glass in use among the Persians and the other subjects of the Sassanian empire (which lasted from the end of the third to the beginning of the seventh century) we know practically nothing. Doubtless many examples of Sassanian glass have been turned up during the gigantic explorations around Nineveh, Babylon, and Susa, but till quite lately little attention has been paid to objects of so comparatively late a date. In the Louvre are some fragments of glass lately brought from Susa. One piece calls for mention here. This is a large fragment of thick clear glass which has formed the half of a shallow circular dish, about fourteen inches in diameter. There are some eight or nine shallow circular depressions cut out from the sides, with a stud rising in counter-relief from the centre of each. We are at once reminded of certain ‘balance-pan’ hanging lamps in the treasury at Venice—in fact, this fragment from Susa must have formed part of a vessel almost identical with these.

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.