in the
neighbourhood of Daphnae,[58] and upon a fragment of mummy-case in the
Museum of Turin, the hieroglyphic forms of many-coloured glass are inlaid
upon the sombre ground of the wood, the general effect being inconceivably
rich and brilliant. Glass filigrees, engraved glass, cut glass, soldered
glass, glass imitations of wood, of straw, and of string, were all known to
the Egyptians of old. I have under my hand at this present moment a square
rod formed of innumerable threads of coloured glass fused into one solid
body, which gives the royal oval of one of the Amenemhats at the part where
it is cut through. The design is carried through the whole length of the
rod, and wherever that rod may be cut, the royal oval reappears.[59] One
glass case in the Gizeh Museum is entirely stocked with small objects in
coloured glass. Here we see an ape on all fours, smelling some large fruit
which lies upon the ground; yonder, a woman's head, front face, upon a
white or green ground surrounded by a red border. Most of the plaques
represent only rosettes, stars, and single flowers or posies. One of the
smallest represents a black-and-white Apis walking, the work being so
delicate that it loses none of its effect under the magnifying glass. The
greater number of these objects date from, and after, the first Saite
dynasty; but excavations in Thebes and Tell el Amarna have proved that the
manufacture of coloured glass prevailed in Egypt earlier than the tenth
century before our era. At Kurnet Murraee and Sheikh Abd el Gurneh, there
have been found, not only amulets for the use of the dead, such as
colonnettes, hearts, mystic eyes, hippopotami walking erect, and ducks in
pairs, done in parti-coloured pastes, blue, red, and yellow, but also vases
of a type which we have been accustomed to regard as of Phoenician and
Cypriote manufacture.[60] Here, for example, is a little aenochoe, of a
light blue semi-opaque glass (fig. 225); the inscription in the name of
Thothmes III., the ovals on the neck, and the palm-fronds on the body of
the vase being in yellow. Here again is a lenticular phial, three and a
quarter inches in height (fig. 226), the ground colour of a deep ocean
blue, admirably pure and intense, upon which a fern-leaf pattern in yellow
stands out both boldly and delicately. A yellow thread runs round the rim,
and two little handles of light green are attached to the neck. A miniature
amphora of the same height (fig. 227) is of a da