Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/78

 The Za prefix, recalling the Dja of Glaser's Arabian inscriptions, gives way in the 3d century to a long list beginning with El, indicating perhaps a change of dynasty from the Habesh stock to the Sabaean.

6. Egyptian cloth.—This was linen, made from flax.

6. Arsinoe was at the head of the Heroopolite Gulf, corresponding to the modern Suez, but now some distance inland owing to the recedence of the Gulf. It was named for the favorite wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus. At one time it was important commercially, as an entrepôt for the Eastern trade; and while it soon lost that position, it continued for centuries to be a leading industrial center, particularly in textiles.

6. Glass.—Pliny (op. cit., XXXVI, 65) says that glass-making originated in Phoenicia, and that the sand of the river Belus was long the only known material suitable for the industry. He attributes the discovery for the process to the wreck of a ship laden with nitre on this shore, and the accidental subjection of nitre and sand to heat as the merchants set caldrons on the beach to cook their food. Later the Phoenicians applied themselves to the industry; and their experiments led to the use of manganese and other substances, and to an advanced stage of perfection in the product.

In Pliny's time a white sand at the mouth of the river Volturnus was much used in glass-making. It was mixed with three parts of nitre and fused into a mass called hammo-nitrum; which wsa subjected to fusion a second time, and then became pure white glass. Throughout Gaul and Spain a similar process was used, and this was doubtless the process used in Egypt, as mentioned in the Periplus.

The color was added in the second fusion, after which the glass was either blown, turned or engraved.

6. Murrhine.—See the note to §49. It was probably agate and carnelian from the Gulf of Cambay; but was extensively imitated in glass by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. The murrhine mentioned here was evidentally a cheap trading product, probably colored glass.

6. Diospolis (City of God) was probably Thebes, the metropolis of the Egyptian Empire—the modern Karnak. This was its name under the Ptolemies and Romans. There was another Diospolis in Egypt, mentioned by Strabo; it was in the Nile delta, above the Sebennytic mouth; but it was not of great importance. Still another, known as Diospolis Parva, was on the Nile some distance below Coptos. The greater Diospolis—Diospolis Magna—was a center of commerce and industry, being no great way above Coptos, from which the caravans started for Berenice.