aked clay. Some are like oblong boxes rounded at
each end, with a saddle-back lid. Some are in human form, but barbarous in
style, the heads being surmounted by a pudding-shaped imitation of the
ancient Egyptian head-dress, and the features indicated by two or three
strokes of the modelling tool or the thumb. Two little lumps of clay stuck
awkwardly upon the breast indicate the coffin of a woman. Even in these
last days of Egyptian civilisation, it was only the coarsest objects which
were left of the natural hue of the baked clay. As of old, the surfaces
were, as a rule, overlaid with a coat of colour, or with a richly gilded
glaze.

[Illustration: Fig. 224.--Glass-blowers from Twelfth
Dynasty tomb.]

[Illustration: Fig. 225.--Parti-coloured glass vase, inscribed Thothmes
III.]

[Illustration: Fig. 226.--Parti-coloured glass vase.]

[Illustration: Fig. 227.--Parti-coloured glass vase.]

[Illustration: Fig. 228.--Parti-coloured glass goblets of Nesikhonsu.]

Glass was known to the Egyptians from the remotest period, and glass-
blowing is represented in tombs which date from some thousands of years
before our era (fig. 224). The craftsman, seated before the furnace, takes
up a small quantity of the fused substance upon the end of his cane and
blows it circumspectly, taking care to keep it in contact with the flame,
so that it may not harden during the operation. Chemical analysis shows the
constituent parts of Egyptian glass to have been nearly identical with our
own; but it contains, besides silex, lime, alumina, and soda, a relatively
large proportion of extraneous substances, as copper, oxide of iron, and
oxide of manganese, which they apparently knew not how to eliminate. Hence
Egyptian glass is scarcely ever colourless, but inclines to an uncertain
shade of yellow or green. Some ill-made pieces are so utterly decomposed
that they flake away, or fall to iridescent dust, at the lightest touch.
Others have suffered little from time or damp, but are streaky and full of
bubbles. A few are, however, perfectly homogenous and limpid. Colourless
glass was not esteemed by the Egyptians as it is by ourselves; whether
opaque or transparent, they preferred it coloured. The dyes were obtained
by mixing metallic oxides with the ordinary ingredients; that is to say,
copper and cobalt for the blues, copperas for the greens, manganese for the
violets and browns, iron for the yellows, and lead or tin for the whites.
One variety o