The glass vessels of the ancients rarely bear any inscription, and there is little, as a rule, in the decoration that can give occupation to the antiquary. Classical glass has therefore been comparatively neglected, except when of superlative merit; the record of its _provenance_ has generally been lost: in continental museums it has either found a back place on the shelves of the Greek and Roman collections, or it has been handed over _en masse_ to other departments. We thus find crowded together in the same case delicately turned bowls from Greek tombs, cinerary urns from Gaul or Britain, and examples of the rudely carved and engraved glass of the third and fourth centuries. Such little evidence as there is, especially a few passages in Roman writers, would point to Alexandria, above all other towns, as the principal home of the glass industry in the first centuries before our era. We know, however, of no find of blown glass in Egypt, previous to later Roman or Coptic times. The Ptolemaic glass found at Tanis and elsewhere differs, as we have seen, little from the old type; and even at what is probably a later period we have found the same old type of glass in use at Denderah for inlaying (see above, p. 32). It was not the Egyptians themselves that favoured the new process—by them the new glass was doubtless rejected as something exotic and unholy. The Greeks, on the other hand, seem never to have taken any interest in the material—the ‘fused stone,’ as they called it, was at the best but a poor substitute for the native minerals that it imitated. [Illustration: _PLATE IV_ 1. FLASK WITH “PEACOCK” DESIGN GRECO-ROMAN 2. BOWL, FINISHED ON LATHE, SHOWING IRIDESCENCE GRECO-ROMAN 3. BOWL OF THIN GLASS, BLOWN INTO MOULD ROMAN] Perhaps after all there is an element of truth in the prevalent Roman tradition, and we should not be far wrong in giving the credit for the introduction of the new system of manufacture to the glass-makers of Sidon or of some other of the Phœnician coast towns. I have already pointed out that the Greeks had at first no separate word for glass. Herodotus speaks of ear-ornaments made of ‘melted stone’ (λίθινα χυτά). Plato, in the _Timæus_, thinks it necessary to explain that he uses the word ὕαλος in the same sense. In the treasure-lists of temples, of the early part of the fourth century, where the same word is used, the reference is apparently to vessels of glass. We hear, too, of seals of glass (σφραγῖδες ὑάλιναι) in similar inscriptions of the same date. The word ὕαλον ultimately became the equivalent of the Latin _vitrum_.