Two entire glass bowls, with fragments of others, were also found in this chamber; the glass, like all that from the ruins, is covered with pearly scales, which, on being removed, leave prismatic opal-like colors of the greatest brilliancy, showing, under different lights, the most varied and beautiful tints. On this highly interesting relic is the name of Sargon, with his title of king of Assyria, in cuneiform characters, and the figure of a lion. We are, therefore, able to fix its date to the latter part of the seventh century B. C. It is, consequently, the most ancient known specimen of _transparent_ glass, none from Egypt being, it is believed, earlier than the time of the Psamettici (the end of the sixth or beginning of the fifth century B. C.). Opaque colored glass was, however, manufactured at a much earlier period, and some exists of the fifteenth century B. C. The Sargon vase was blown in one solid piece, and then shaped and hollowed out by a turning-machine, of which the marks are still plainly visible. With it were found, it will be remembered, two larger vases in white alabaster, inscribed with the name of the same king. They were all probably used for holding some ointment or cosmetic.[86] With the glass bowls was discovered a rock-crystal lens, with opposite convex and plane faces. Its properties could scarcely have been unknown to the Assyrians, and we have consequently the earliest specimen of a magnifying and burning-glass. It was buried beneath a heap of fragments of beautiful blue opaque glass, apparently the enamel of some object in ivory or wood, which had perished.