inches in height: one side presents a flower, and the other an inscription, containing, according to Sir J. Davis (in three out of eight he examined), the following legend :-"The flower opens, and lo! another year ;" and another has been translated by Mr. Thoms :-"During the shining of the moon the fir-tree sends forth its sap," (which in a thousand years becomes amber.)

The quality of these bottles is very inferior, and of a time, as Sir J. Davis thought, "when the Chinese had not yet arrived at the same perfection in making porcelain as at present." They appear to have been only prized for their contents; and after they were exhausted, the valueless bottle was applied to the

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THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.

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ordinary purpose of holding the Kohl, or Collyrium, us women for staining their eyelids.*

It has been questioned, if the Egyptians understood the enamelling upon gold or silver, but we might infer it fr expression of Pliny, who says: "The Egyptians paint their vases, representing Anubis upon them, the silver being p and not engraved ;" and M. Dubois had in his possession cimen of Egyptian enamel. The reason of the doubt is our ing so many small gold figures with ornamented wings bodies, whose feathers, faces, or other coloured parts are com of a vitrified composition, let into the metal. But they may adopted both processes; and it is probable that many early mens of encaustum were made by tooling the devices to tain depth on bronze, and pouring a vitrified composition in hollow space, the metal being properly heated, at the same and, when fixed, the surface was smoothed down and polishe

Both the encaustic painting in wax, and that which con in burning in the colours, were evidently known to the anc being mentioned by Pliny, Ovid, Martial, and others; an latter is supposed to have been on the same principle as our melling on gold.

Bottles of various kinds, glass, porcelain, alabaster, and materials were frequently exported from Egypt to other coun The Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Romans received the articles of luxury, which being remarkable for their beauty prized as ornaments of the table; and when Egypt beca Roman province, part of the tribute annually paid to the querors consisted of glass vases, from the manufactorie Memphis and Alexandria.

The intercourse between Egypt and Greece had been stantly kept up after the accession of Psammitichus and Am

* Since the above was written, a paper has been presented by Mr. Medhu the Royal Asiatic Society, which would establish the fact of their having brought by the Arab traders, if, as there stated, the style of the characters d come into use till the 3rd century of our era: and the poems, from which th tences were taken, were not written till the 8th and 11th centuries. The ea mention of porcelain in Chine is also limited to the 2nd conturu DA

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P. VII.

MURRHINE VASES.

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I the former country, the parent of the arts at that period, suped the Greeks and some of the Syrian tribes with numerous nufactures. The Etruscans, too, a commercial people, appear have had an extensive trade with Egypt, and we repeatedly find all alabaster, as well as coloured glass, bottles in their tombs, ich have all the character of the Egyptian; and not only does e stone of the former proclaim by its quality the quarries from ich it was taken, but the form and style of the workmanship ave no doubt of the bottles themselves being the productions of gyptian artists. The same remark applies to many objects und at Nineveh.

It is uncertain of what stone the famous murrhine vases, menoned by Pliny, Martial, and other writers, were made; it was various colours, beautifully blended, and even iridescent, and as obtained in greater quantity in Carmania than in any Duntry. It was also found in Parthia and other districts of sia, but unknown in Egypt; a fact quite consistent with the otion of its being fluor-spar, which is not met with in the valley f the Nile; and explaining the reason why the Egyptians imiated it with the composition known under the name of false nurrhine, said to have been made at Thebes and Memphis. The escription given by Pliny certainly bears a stronger resemblance o the fluor-spar than to any other stone, and the only objection o this having been murrhine, is our not finding any vases, or ragments, of it; and some may still doubt if the substance is nown to which the naturalist alludes. But the fluor-spar appears to have the strongest claim; and the glass-porcelain of Egypt, whose various colours are disposed in waving lines, as if to imitate the natural undulations of that crystallised substance, may be the false murrhine of the ancients. (Woodcuts 170, fig. 2; 171, fig. 5.)

It is difficult to say whether the Egyptians employed glass for the purpose of making lamps or lanterns: ancient authors give us no direct information on the subject; and the paintings offer few representations of lamps, torches, or any other kind of light.* Herodotus mentions a "fête of burning lamps," which took

*In the funeral processions one person carries what cooms

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place at Saïs, and indeed throughout the country, at a c period of the year, and describes the lamps used on this oc

The sculptures of Tel-elarna, again, represent a gua soldiers, one of whom hold fore him what appears to lamp, and resembles the or paper lanterns so comm Egypt at the present day. celebrated for their manufa

The Egyptians were always of linen and other cloths, and the produce of their looms wa ported to, and eagerly purchased by, foreign nations. The linen and embroidered work, the yarn and woollen stuffs, of upper and lower country are frequently mentioned, and highly esteemed. Solomon purchased many of those comm ties, as well as chariots and horses, from Egypt; and Chem the city of Pan, retained the credit it had acquired in ma linen stuffs, till about the period of the Roman conquest.

Woollen garments were chiefly used by the lower orders: so times also by the rich, and even by the priests, who were mitted to wear an upper robe in the form of a cloak of material but under garments of wool were strictly forbid them, upon a principle of cleanliness; and as they took so m pains to cleanse and shave the body, they considered it ind sistent to adopt clothes made of the hair of animals. No was allowed to be buried in a woollen garment, in consequenc its engendering worms, which would injure the body; nor co any priest enter a temple without taking off this part of his dre

CHAP. VII.

LINEN.

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The quantity of linen manufactured and used in Egypt was very great; and, independent of that made up into articles of dress, the numerous wrappers required for enveloping the mummies, both of men and animals, show how large a supply must have been kept ready for the constant demand at home, as well as for that of the foreign market.

That the bandages employed in wrapping the dead are of linen, and not, as some have imagined, of cotton, has been already ascertained by the most satisfactory tests; and though no one among the unscientific inhabitants of modern Egypt ever thought of questioning the fact, received opinion in Europe had till lately decided that they were cotton; and it was forbidden to doubt that "the bands of byssine linen," said by Herodotus to have been used for enveloping the mummies, were cotton.

The accurate experiments made, with the aid of powerful microscopes, by Mr. Bauer, Mr. Thomson, Dr. Ure, and others, on the nature of the fibres of linen and cotton threads, have shown that the former invariably present a cylindrical form, transparent, and articulated, or jointed like a cane, while the latter offer the appearance of a flat riband, with a hem or border at each edge; so that there is no possibility of mistaking the fibres of either, except, perhaps, when the cotton is in an unripe state, and the flattened shape of the centre is less apparent. The results having been found similar in every instance, and the structure of the fibres thus unquestionably determined, the threads of mummy cloths were submitted to the same test, and no exception was found to their being linen; nor were they even a mixture of linen and cotton thread.

The fact of the mummy cloths being linen is therefore decided. The name byssus, it is true, presents a difficulty; owing to the Hebrew shash being translated "byssus" in the Septuagint version, and, in our own, "fine linen;" and to shash being the name applied at this day by the Arabs to fine muslin, which is of cotton and not of linen; but as the mummy cloths said by Herodotus to be "of byssine sindon," are known to be invariably linen, the byssus cannot be cotton. Herodotus, indeed, uses the expression tree wool" to denote cotton; and Julius Pollux

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