Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/281

Rh common before the rule of the Cæsars, may be shewn from the inscriptions APTAC CƐIΔωN, with the semicircular sigma, and Artas Sidon in Latin, inscribed on the same vessels, noticed on specimens found in Italy, and preserved in the collection of M. Bartoldi, late Prussian consul at Rome. It is, indeed, probable that glass was not made in Rome itself, but imported from the Tyrian coast and Alexandria. The glass of the Sidonian manufacturer Artas resembled the commoner kind, such as the vessel found in the Harpenden sarcophagus. Pliny mentions that in the time of Nero the manufacture of glass had reached Italy, Spain, and Gaul: N. H. xxxvi. 66. The glass urns used among the Romans are generally of a different shape, having a globular body with double handles and a conical cover, which is sometimes perforated at the top, like an inverted funnel, for the purpose of pouring liquids over the bones when they had been collected. The glass amphora, discovered in the sarcophagus attributed to Severus Alexander, generally known as the Barberini, or Portland vase, is another proof of the prevalent use of glass, and of the high state of art to which engraving on glass had been carried; and it is also an evidence that the most valuable productions of art were by preference deposited with the dead.

Among the Celto-Roman population, glass, when employed for sepulchral purposes, was generally deposited with the greatest care, the vessel with the bones being enclosed within an urn of earthenware of a globular shape, pointed at the base, when there was not wealth or facility for obtaining a stone sarcophagus. Such are the terra cotta globes found at Tancarville in Normandy, and now preserved in the museum of the Department at Rouen. A similar globe was found at Hemel Hempstead, in Essex, enclosing a fictile urn and bones, and others were discovered in the Roman burying-grounds at Deveril-street