The Egyptians had from the earliest periods been adepts in the carving of native minerals and rocks, and evidently found great pleasure in the strange markings and contrasts of colour found on their polished surfaces. Already in pre-dynastic times they availed themselves of their native granites, porphyries and conglomerates; from these materials they manufactured those large, carefully turned vases of which so many have lately been brought from Egypt. For smaller objects—jewellery, beads, and inlay of various descriptions—they had command of a wide scale of colours—reds and tawny yellows from jasper, purple from the amethyst, greens from root of emerald and from a special kind of felspar, and blue from the turquoise and (at a very early period) from the _lapis lazuli_. But the stones to which they had recourse for their favourite blues and greens were rare, and they were therefore the more ready to find a cheaper substitute in glass. Again, in Egypt, no stone was in greater favour than the native alabaster,[9] with its bands and zig-zag lines of transparent crystals in an opaque base of a warm milky hue. But there was no play of colour in this latter substance, and its very softness restricted the uses to which it could be put. In glass they found a substance hard enough to allow of more delicate forms, and on it chevrons of yellow and white could be traced upon a nearly opaque ground of turquoise or dark blue. Some such origin in native stones we may perhaps find for the decorative motives of the little vases, variously known as _phialæ_, _unguentaria_, _alabastra_, which were in such favour not only with the Egyptians, but perhaps even more so among the inhabitants of the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, during a period of at least a thousand years. It is indeed these little vases that are the most characteristic product of the first period of glass-making. It is not too much to say that the little we know of the processes of these early Egyptian glass-makers is derived from notices on the subject scattered through the memoirs in which Dr. Flinders Petrie has described the results of his excavations, more especially from the report issued in 1894, on his discoveries at Tell-el-Amarna. In the introduction to the catalogue of the Egyptian Exhibition held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1895, Dr. Petrie has summed up our knowledge on this subject. I will quote the description of the method by which, according to him, these alabastra were made. [Illustration: _PLATE II_ SMALL VASES OF “PRIMITIVE” GLASS 1. EGYPTIAN, NINETEENTH DYNASTY. 2. PROBABLY FROM GREEK ISLANDS. 3. ŒNOCHOE, FROM THE SLADE COLLECTION.]