and Whitechapel[1]. Another was dug up at Lincoln, enclosing a glass vase filled with bones[2]. An urn of glass of the same shape as that in the Harpenden sarcophagus, was found near Meldham Bridge, Essex, with remains of Roman pottery[3].
Glass vases have been occasionally found in England totally unprotected, but these should probably be referred to a much later period, when glass had become common instead of scarce and valuable as it had been at an earlier time.
Glass vases, not of the same shape, have been occasionally found in barrows, with iron implements, as at Dinton, near Aylesbury, Bucks, and in Minster churchyard. Isle of Thanet, and at Woodnesborough, near Sandwich[4]. Several vases and jugs of Roman glass, many employed for the same purpose, are in the museum of Boulogne[5], from Roman tombs in the vicinity of that town. A glass amphora, employed to hold bones, was also found by Professor Henslow, with an unguent vase, in the barrow called the East Low Hill, Rougham, near Bury St. Edmunds[6].
That the introduction of glass into Britain was long sub- sequent to the Phœnician trade is proved by the negative evidence of its not being discovered in the barrows and rude cemeteries of the primitive inhabitants, with their amber and jet beads, and flint or stone weapons.
Notwithstanding the extraordinary accounts of the glass sarcophagi of the Æthiopians, and the glass trough (πύελος) in which Belus was laid[7], all probably of a later age, the early manufacture of glass in Egypt, and its employment among the Alexandrian Greeks under the Ptolemies, it does not appear to have come into general use among the Romans till the third century of our era. Until that period metallic vases were preferred, but under Gallienus the fashion of using glass had become common. Britain, furthest removed from the centre of Roman refinement, seems to have enjoyed only imperfectly, and as a distant province, the benefits of the civilization of her masters. The arts in Britain were always half a century behind, and the chiefs and reguli of our country
- ↑ Archæol., vol. xxvii. p. 412.
- ↑ Carter in Archæol., vol. xii. p. 108—111. cf. vol. vii. p. 108. Pl. xiii. the supposed abrendaria or obruendaria.
- ↑ Arch., vol. xiv. p. 74. Pl. xiv. fig. 1.
- ↑ Douglas, Nenia Britannica, fo. 1793, p. 69—7, Pl. xvi. fig. 2, 3. 5. xvii. 1, 2, 3.
- ↑ Roach Smith, Coll. Ant., 8vo., 1843. p. 2. Pl.
- ↑ An Account of the Roman Antiquities found at Rougham, near Bury St. Edmunds. 8yo., 1843.
- ↑ Ælian. H. N. xiii. 3.
