Among the simplest yet most necessary adjuncts of a developing civilisation Pottery may be recognised as one of the most universal. The very earliest and rudest remains of any people generally take the form of coarse and common pots, in which they cooked their food or consumed their beverages. And the fact that such vast quantities of pottery from all ancient civilisations have been preserved to us is due partly to its comparatively imperishable nature, partly to the absence of any intrinsic value which saved it from falling a prey to the ravages of fire, human greed, or other causes which have destroyed more precious monuments, such as gold ornaments, paintings, and statues of marble or bronze. Moreover, it is always in the pottery that we perceive the first indications of whatever artistic instinct a race possesses, clay being a material so easy to decorate and so readily lending itself to plastic treatment for the creation of new forms or development from simple to elaborate shapes. To trace the history of the art of working in clay, from its rise amongst the oldest nations of antiquity to the period of the decline of the Roman Empire, is the object of the present work. The subject resolves itself into two great divisions, which have engaged the attention of two distinct classes of enquirers: namely, the technical or practical part, comprising all the details of material, manipulation, and processes; and, secondly, the historical portion, which embraces not only the history of the art itself, and the application of ancient literature to its elucidation, but also an account of the light thrown by monuments in clay on the history of mankind. Such an investigation is therefore neither trifling in character nor deficient in valuable results. It is impossible to determine when the manufacture of pottery was invented. Clay is a material so generally diffused, and its plastic nature is so easily discovered, that the art of working it does not exceed the intelligence of the rudest savage. Even the most primitive graves of Europe and Western Asia contain specimens of pottery, rude and elementary indeed, but in sufficient quantities to show that it was at all times reckoned among the indispensable adjuncts of daily life. It is said that the very earliest specimens of pottery, hand-made and almost shapeless, have been discovered in the cave-dwellings of Palaeolithic Man, such as the Höhlefels cave near Ulm, and that of Nabrigas, near Toulouse; and pottery has also been found in the “kitchen-middens” of Denmark, which belong to this period. Such relics are, however, so rude and fragmentary, and so much doubt has been cast on the circumstances of their discovery, that it is better to be content with the evidence afforded by the Neolithic Age, of which perhaps the best authenticated is the predynastic pottery of Egypt.[1]