I know at least of no example of a vessel or bead of glass of an earlier date. That the molten material of the glazes—known from the earliest period—may even in very early times have been rolled into slabs and subsequently cut up into pieces for inlay-work, would seem to be proved by a fragment of a wooden box, bearing the name of a king of the First Dynasty, found by M. Amélineau on the site of Abydos. This box (it is now in the Ashmolean Museum, where it was pointed out to me by Mr. Bell) is decorated with small triangular plaques of what is apparently a blue translucent glass, with an uneven but undecomposed surface. Footnote 8: It should be borne in mind that colourless rock crystal was at all times ‘taboo’ to the Egyptians, and this fact may partly account for the absence of clear white glass in Egypt. Footnote 9: In most cases, I think, the comparatively hard arragonite, the _carbonate_, and not the _sulphate_ of lime that we know by that name. Footnote 10: There is, however, some reason to believe not only that the salt lakes of the Delta were exploited at a very early date, but that the natron, an impure carbonate of soda, may well have been exported thence by an old caravan route, perhaps even in pre-dynastic times. Footnote 11: Professor Buckman, in a paper in the _Archæological Journal_ so long ago as 1851 gives some valuable analyses of ancient glass, the main result of which is to show the absence of lead and the general use of copper as a source of blue, in pre-Roman times at least. In many of these older analyses, as in those made by Sir Humphry Davy, there always remains an element of doubt, not so much as to the accuracy of the chemist’s work, but as to the _provenance_ of the specimen that he is examining. Professor Buckman dwells upon the light that properly conducted analyses would throw upon the origin and classification of the glass of the ancients. He does not, unfortunately, distinguish the nature of the alkali, whether soda or potash, in his own analyses. Little work of this kind has been accomplished in the fifty years that have since elapsed. Footnote 12: Antimony has been found in the glaze of Assyrian bricks, as well as in the yellow enamel of mediæval Saracenic glass. The Egyptian name was _mestem_, whence the word _stibium_ (antimony), but other minerals such as galena, hæmatite, and pyrolusite (oxide of manganese), have also been found in their kohl-pots; at one time indeed, during the early empire, a copper-green was in fashion for painting the angles of the eyes. I may mention that in the twisted rods—of a comparatively late date, however—that fitted into these kohl-pots, we have some of the earliest examples of a transparent white glass. Footnote 13: