Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/60

 36 Outlines of Etiropean History The weavers and tapestry- makers tall as a man, where the pottery is packed in, protected from the wind and evenly burned. These two inventions, the potter's wheel and the potter's furnace, were carried over to Stone Age Europe like many other contributions from the Orient. Indeed, we discover in the next booth also the source of those bright blue-glazed beads ^ which found their way from Egypt to far- off England in the Late Stone or early Bronze Age (p. 14). This is the earliest-known glass. The Egyptians were making it for centuries before the Pyramid Age. It was spread on tiles Fig. 20. Cabinetmakers in the Pyramid Age At the left, a man is cutting with a chisel which he taps with a mallet ; next, a man " rips " a board with a copper saw ; next, two men are finish- ing off a couch, and at the right a man is drilling a hole with a bow-drill. Scene from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 15). Compare a finished chair belonging to a wealthy noble of the Empire (Fig. 33) in gorgeous glazes for adorning house and palace walls, or wrought into exquisite many-colored glass bottles and vases, which were widely exported (Fig. 48). Yonder the weaving women draw forth from the loom a gos- samer fabric of linen. The picture on this wall could not tell us of its fineness, but fortunately pieces of it have survived, wrapped around the mummy of a king of this age. These specimens of royal linen are so fine that it requires a magnifying glass to dis- tinguish them from silk, and the best work of the modem machine loom is coarse in comparison with this fabric of the ancient 1 The tailpiece of Chapter I (p. 16) shows blue- and green-glazed Egyptian beads found in prehistoric graves of England. Compare page 14.