ANCIENT GLASS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1831, 5 January 1880, Page 3

ANCIENT GLASS.

The Saturday Review” is of opinion that the oldest specimen of pure glass known is a little moulded lion’s head, bearing the name of an Egyptian king of the eleventh dynasty, in the Made collec'ion at the British Museum. It was probably fashioned more than 2000 years 8.0., and the skill displayed in it is sufficient evidence that the art of glass making was not then in its infancy. GHuz d pottery and beads as old as the first Egyptian dynasty have been found. Of later glass there are numerous examples, such as the bead found at Thebes, which has the name of Queen Hatasoo or Haahop, of the eighteenth dynasty. Of the same period are vases and goblets and many fragments. It cannot bo doubted that the story prepared by Pliny, which assigns the credit of the invention to the Phoenicians is so far true that these adventurous merchants brought specimens to other countries from Egypt. Dr. Schliemann found disks of glass in the excavations at Myeanajs, though Homer does not mention it as a substance known to him. That the modern art of the glass-blower was known long before is certain from representations among the pictures on tho walls of the tomb at Beni Hassan, of the twelfth Egyptian dynasty ; but a much older picture, which probably represented tho same manufacture, is among the half-obliterated scenes in a chamber of a tomb of Thy at Sakkaro, and dates from the time of the fifth dynasty, a time so remote that it is not possible, in spite of the assiduous researches of many Egyptologers, to give it a date in years.