Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/472

Glass. 4^5 the process admitting of rapid production. Thus 1300 pieces of this material were collected in the Spata tomb alone. In the old layers of Troy, however, Schliemafln found but six glass objects.' Two knobs for walking-sticks, of green paste orna- mented with white lines, may have been imported ; as to the small beads said to have come from the same stratum, may they not have slipped down in the excavation from the upper layers ? No glass has been traced in the prehistoric houses of Thera, or Kiu. 495- — Glass-paste i (2 Via. 496. — Glass paste- in the oldest cemeteries of Antiparos and Amorgos. If glass is still very rarely met with in the royal tombs at Mycenae, it abounds in the period represented by the cupola and bee- hive graves, whether at Mycena;, Spata, Palamidi, or lalysos. Glass manufacture was in all likelihood learnt from the Egyp- tians. But the pupil did not attain the teacher's high standard. U nlike Phoenician artificers trained at the same school, he did not teach himself to fashion those elegant glass flasks Km. 497.— Glass-iMSto. FlU. 498. — Glass-paslc. which Sidonian and Syrian traders sowed broadcast all over the coasts of the Mediterranean. No such ambitious aims were astir in the Mycenae or JEge^n workshops ; no effort was made to obtain from this material the fanciful forms and iridescent tints which form the distinguishing features of Venetian glass, the secret of which was derived or stolen from Syria. But the taste for cheap glass ornaments became none the less > SCHLIEMANN, //(W. ^ ScHUEMANN, MyunX.