But our one undoubted example of Sassanian glass forms part of a bowl now in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This famous vessel was long preserved in the treasury of the Abbey of St. Denis; as in the case of an enamelled cup preserved at Chartres, it was claimed for it that it had been a present from Harun-ar-Rashid to Charlemagne. The body of this bowl consists of a framework of gold, the openings of which are filled with rosettes of rock crystal and glass. The central medallion of rock crystal is carved to represent a king seated on his throne; for this reason the vessel was formerly known as the ‘Cup of Solomon.’ The seated king has, however, now been identified as Khosroes II. (Kosrou Parviz), one of the last of the Sassanian monarchs (590-628). The rosettes of glass and the lozenges between them are white, emerald-green, and purple, and the colours are still brilliant. M. de Longperier, who first identified the subject of the central medallion, has brought forward passages from early Arab writers in which mention is made of glass drinking-cups in use in the court of the Sassanian kings. The question, however, of the origin of the enamelled glass of the Saracens—one of the most burning ones in the history of glass—receives no light from this quarter. Nor is the problem much advanced if we turn to Egypt to study the interesting middle period between the first introduction of Christianity and the Mohammedan conquest. It is only quite lately that the exploration of Coptic tombs has thrown some quite unexpected light on the culture of these long-neglected centuries. Not a little glass has been found, chiefly in fragments, and of these the date can only be inferred from the style of the decoration. The use of thin opaque ‘painted’ enamels, quite different from the brilliant jewel-like enamels of the Saracens, seems to have been much in vogue in Egypt at this time. What has been found is not very accessible so far, nor has much been done in the way of classification. A small collection, derived chiefly, I think, from the excavations at Achmin in Upper Egypt, has lately been purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum (from M. Richard). The little bottles of various simple shapes call to mind those preserved in the treasuries of certain European churches (see above, p. 99). One slim spindle-shaped vessel reminds one a little of the vase with Greek inscription found in the South-Saxon cemetery near Worthing (p. 107). Among the fragments is one delicately painted in thin enamels in Egypto-Roman manner—we see a flying bird and the stalks and seed-vessels of the lotus; others are decorated with _entrelacs_ of Byzantine character, also in a thin opaque enamel; but on the majority of these fragments the subject and the design are thoroughly Saracenic. Some ribbed bowls (in shape identical with those from the later Celtic tombs of North Italy) have been added lately to the British Museum collection; they come from