The arts of the Babylonians, who were contemporary with or suc ceeded the Assyrians, are so like that the difference is hardly per ceptible. Sun-dried bricks of nearly the same dimensions as the Assyrian, found in all the ruins of the plains of Shinar, were prepared by the same process, and generally had straw. The kiln-dried bricks, mentioned iu Genesis as in use after the Flood, have also straw for the sake of heating them more thoroughly, and vary in quality and colour. They are also stamped with the names of Babylonian monarchs. Some buildings, as the Birs Nimrud, now known to be a temple dedicated by Nebuchadnezzar to the seven planets, were made of stages of differently coloured bricks, each the appropriate colour of the planet. Mortar of lime and bitumen for the foundations, as mentioned in the description of the Tower of Babel, is found to have been used for cementing the brick-work together. Small cones wore also used for mak ing an ornamental brick-work. The public and private records were pre served in baked clay like the Assyrian, and bas-reliefs and small votive figures of baked and sun-dried clay, made by a mould, were used for religious purposes, and portions of the colossal statues of the gods appear to have been made of clay, plated externally with brass, or clay formed part of the figure with other metals. The glazed ware of the Baby lonians was of the same character as the Assyrian. The potteries of Assyria and Mesopotamia appear to have continued in activity under the foreign rulers of that country, and the remains shoW local wares manufactured, under Greek and Roman influence, while the use of the fayenco under the Sassanian monarchs took an extraordinary develop ment, an immense number of glazed coffins of that period having been found at Warka and Mugeyer, with other fictile remains of a late epoch. The Persians, who succeeded to the empire of the Assyrians, ate only known to have used pottery, and the art of pottery must be considered at this period to have been chiefly exercised by the Phceni eiarei and Greeks. The first of these people, the great traders of antiquity seem to have made plain unglazed terra cotta and glazed ware like the Egyptians, and to have traded in them with the Greek islanders and the Etruscans at about the 7th century, B.C. The Hebrews do not appear to have exercised the art till after the Exodus, and pro bably brought it with them from Egypt, having before that period used other substances for drinking purposes, or acquired them from other people ; and the very few Jewish vases as yet found do not seem older than the Maccabees, although the art of glazing by litharge was known in the days of Solomon. At the time of the Captivity the prophets often used metaphors derived from the potter's art, and some bowls supposed to have been used by the captive Jews of Assyria are evidently of a comparatively recent epoch. Fragments found in Moab have revealed a ware like the earlier glazed Greek ; but the greatest advance in the fictile art was made by the Greeks.
Prometheus, according to their legends, had modelled Pandora out of Sinopic clay, and bricks, statues, and other objects of sun-dried clay were made by some of the earliest potters. Kilns were, however, in use at the earliest age, and the palaces of Crccsus, Mausolus, and Attains show their extensive use in Asia Minor, while constructions of brick have been found at Athens and in Sicily. They were made as the Egyptian by wooden moulds, plaisia, and named after the dimensions : didora 1 foot long and 2 palms or half a foot broad ; tetradora, 4 palms square, chiefly in use for private buildings; and pentadora, or 5 palms square, used in public edifices; and Lydia, or 1 foot 6 inches long 1 foot broad, probably those of the palace of Crcesus. Besides which a very light kind was made at Pitaue in Mysia. Bricks of dimensions not described by ancient authors have been also found, and all are distinguished by their greater thinness than the Egyptian or Assyrian ,resembling tiles, and made of a fine red or yellow clay. Till about n.c. 580 the temples of Greece were roofed with terra cotta tiles kerantoi, which were said to have been invented in Cyprus, and are flanged at both sides like the Roman, the joint being covered with a semicircular tile, and the lower semicircle of the series having an upright semi oval part called the antefix, on which ornaments were impressed in a bas-relief, the front of the antefix being faced with a finer clay for the impression; all these tiles have occasionally stamped upon them, in relief, the name of the city, the potter, and year of the magistrate in which they were made. The cornices of tombs and nave or shrines of the Doric order were ornamented with gargoile heads of lions, and the invention of antefixes was attributed to the Corinthian potter Dibutades, who flourished at a mythic period. Friezes and other architectural members, and cylindrical pipes of terra cotta for draining or conveying water were also used by the Greeks. One largo branch of the manufacture consisted in small figures called pelina clays, or agalmata ostrakina earthenware, used for penates or votive offerings; they were made in a mould of two pieces of a harder and more compact terra cotta, into which a crust of clay about 1-8th inch thick was pressed so as to leave the centre and base of the little figure hollow, the heads and arms were solid, and sometimes produced from separate moulds and attached .while the clay was moist. At the back there is usually a large hole to allow the clay to expand or to attach the figure to a wall. After coming from the furnace these figures were covered with a coating of whitewash leukonta, and then painted and sometimes partially gilded. Some of these figu rines are as old as the Dwdalids, and they continue till the close of the Roman Empire. Larger figures of deities are of rarer occur rence, and existed in Greece in the days of Pausanias, and others, are mentioned as extant in Constantinople. This art was first applied to producing casts of statues in other materials by Lysistratus, the brother of Lysippus, and by other artists, such as the celebrated Zeuxis, who flourished B.C. 400, to model the subject of his pictures, and Pasiteles, a Greek artist, living at Rome, in the let century, B.C., modelled his statues first in terra cotta. Terra cotta was also used for portions of statues in toreutie work and for the moulds of objects in bronze. Reliefs or friezes of different sizes, emblemata for applying to other works of art, were also made from moulds and painted iu the same way : cones used for the loom, or as weights for nets or drapery, dolls called korce, nymplcce, or neurospasta, but with moveable hands and arms, and lamps, lychni, were made of terra cotta, with reliefs on the upper surface, and the maker's name on the base below.
The invention of the potter's wheel at the earliest period of Greek history described in Homer, claimed by Athens for Corcebus, by Corinth for Hyberbius, and for Daedalus or Talus by the Cretans, probably came from the East. The wheel was a low horizontal table turning on a pivot on a central foot ; it was made to revolve by 'a boy or assistant, and extensively used in the production of vases of various shapes and all dimensions, such as saucers, phialce ; plates, pinakes ; jugs, anochoce ; pots, chytrce ; boxes, pyxides; and even jars, amphorce, in great numbers ; and all vases except huge casks, pithoi, which were moulded on a frame. The feet and handles of vases were stamped or moulded, and fixed while wet to the body of the vase. The amphora) of several states, about the 2nd to pat century B.C., are stamped with the name and emblem of the magistrates on the handle to indicate the state from which they came, and the date when they were made, but they are otherwise not ornamented. [VAsEs.] Some of the sepulchral vases were covered with a leukoma, painted in colours and gilded, but these belong generally to the class of glazed vases. These vases were made of a finely levigated clay, such as has recently been found at Mon Reale in Sicily, in the vicinity of Naples, and elsewhere ; and the most celebrated clays acre those of Muuut Colisa near Athens, Corinth, Cuidut, Samos, sod Coptoa. The vases were made by the same pre cut as those of terra cotta, but are of a redder or paler clay. After they had been sufficiently dried in the sun they were painted, and the upper surface, to about ird the thickness of the vase, was faced with a finer clay to receive the colour. The figures intended to be painted
were first traced on the wet clay with a tool in a alight outline, or in a dotted line, and the colours laid on with a reed formed like a brush. Some of the colours were glazed and others fiat. The principal colours were Lawn, maroon colour, and black, which varies from a deep jet to a deep green or leaden hue. This was made of manganese, oxide of iron, or carbonaceous substances. The other colours used, flat and not glazed, were white made of a fine pipe-clay or alumina, crimson produced by an oxide of iron, yellow ochre, blue and green oxides of copper, a light brown ochre, light red made of ground terra cotta, and a bright scarlet produced from an iron oxide. Gilding was occasionally employed, especially on the later vases. The glazed colours were mixed or covered with a siliceous or thin alkaline glaze, and the vases were sent to the furnace and baked at a low temperature, apparently with out saggers. Glazed vases of this kind were manufactured in Greece, from the 8th or 9th century till the lot century n.c., but very different in paste, style, shape, and colouring. The earliest vases contempo raneous with the heroic age of Greece, and found at the oldest sites, are of a pale clay, clumsy shape, generally of large size, and painted in light red, brown, or dark coloured ornaments of large proportions. With these are occasionally very small figures of animals, which by degrees are drawn of larger size, but still of the same thin proportions. These vases, which have no inscription, and were succeeded by others of Corinthian fabric with a pale clay, the body covered with a siliceous coating of a cream or lemon colour, the figures and ornaments painted in a dark brown, maroon, or black colour, the subjects of which were at first friezes of animals, :oldie of larger size and fuller proportions, with backgrounds strewn with flowers. After they returned from the kiln, the potter cut with a sharp tool incised lines in the dark figures and ornaments to mark out the details and relieve the monotony of the figures, and touched up parts with a flat crimson colour. The later vases of this style have human figures introduced with animals, and Doric inscriptions as old as the 6th century n.c., and subjects derived from Asiatic sources, or the oldest legends ; some of these vases are supposed to be late imitations, and great difference is observable in the local fabrics of Corinth, the Isles, and Italy. By degrees the potter changed the tone of the clay, introducing a pale salmon-coloured earth, and ceased to use animal friezes except in a subordinate manner; the art also improved, although resembling the Aegimoan and Selinuntine remains. By degrees this style attained its full development by the employment of a rich orange red clay, and of a (lark black for figures and backgrounds, a freer use of white and red fiat colours, a more finished style of art, with figures of better proportion; and the abundant use of inscriptions, giving the names of the figures represented, of the artists, potters, the celebrated beauties of the day, speeches, and ex clamations. The attitudes are still, rigid, the eyes seen in profile, the forms full and muscular; the accessories, parts of the form, and of the draperies, are coloured in crimson, and the flesh of females white. There are clearly traces of two or three fabrics in these vases—of earlier ones, the most remarkable is that at Florence, the work of the potter liergo times and the artist Glaucythes, representing in several friezes the arguments of an epic poem, reciting the adventures of Achilles. Several artists of this style, such as Amasis, Execias, and Hicron painted with great vigour; the principal shapes are Ilydrier, or water vases with three handles, amphora) with two ; oznochea, or wine jugs ; and cylices, or cups; other shapes called cycalti and mastoi are of rarer occurrence. The subjects are chiefly taken from the adventures of Bacchus, the ex ploits of Hercules, and the war of Troy, the contest of the gods and giants, and of the Greeks and Amazons. These vases seem to have con tinued until the 5th century, a.c., when a new class of painted vases were invented; the figures were traced out as in the old style, but the back ground was filled in with black colour, and the figures left the rich *arm red colour of the clay ; the inner details of the form were traced with fine black lines of the same glaze, to which finer lines in a brown glaze indicating those portions less distinctly seen were added ; the accessories are at first coloured in crimson, but white was subsequently introduced. The art at first resembles that of the black figures, and some painters used both styles on the same vases ; but by degrees, especially after the age of Phidias, n.c. 460, the art rapidly improved ; the eyes are no longer oblique but represented as in modern drawing, and lashes are introduced ; full faces appear, the drapery of the figures alter, the flesh of the female figures is the same colour as the male. Inscriptions are rare, but the letters of the later and completed alphabet are found. The principal shapes are amphora, krateres, anochar, and cylices, and some varieties of cups; the hydria disappear for the smaller kalpides, and the amphoras are of smaller proportions. These rues appear to have been made from 480 to about 360 n.o. Their subject. are taken from the same sources, with the addition of others from the Nana, or return of the Greeks, the Odyssey, the Oreeteid, Per-field, and the Gymnasium. Many of the paintings seem to be copies from memory of the picture,' of l'olygnotus, Parrhasius, and Zeuxis. As the style continued to improve the figures became larger and more grandiose ; and finally, of more slender and elegmit proportions, with elaborate drowses and minute and finished lines resembling those of the euhis of Magna °neck and Sicily. In the (lays of Pyrrhus, an attempt is made at aerial perspective by groups introduced at different heights, and the Introduction of undulating lines, stones, and other objects ; while interiors are represented, and the pictures, as in modern art, crowded with accessories or mingled with arabesques. Some of these vases exhibit local costumes; the size of the craters, amphorae, and larger vases transcends that of the last style; the aubjects are principally those of the later myths of the Tragedians. Nearly contemporary with these vases are those having their body covered with a leukonta, or coating of white, on which figures have been traced in red outline and then painted with polychrome flat colours. They are principally lecythi, and used for the dead. Other vases of this clans, of small size, are moulded in shape of gods or animals. The close of the vase art in Greece and Italy appears to be about the 2nd century n.c. The florid style hail then degenerated into a coarse scrawl, with subjects taken from the comic stage ; and at last the potters substituted moulded vases entirely coloured black with emble mate stamped at tho handles, or painted with opaque flat colours, masks, arabesques, doves, and heads on tho black glaze of the vases ; some are accompanied with archaic Latin inscriptions, evidently after the conquest of Campania by the Romans. At all periods there were numerous vases entirely painted black, called libyes, of less value than the vases painted with figures, but distinguished by the lustre of their glaze, that of Nola being remarkably black and bright, and at the Later period in S. Italy of a leaden hue. In imitation of the metallio vases, which superseded those of clay, the later ones have eniblemala or bas-reliefs stamped in separate pieces and affixed while the clay was moist, or even stamped with figures in intaglio to imitate cups of precious stone which were engraved like gents. During the most flourishing period of the art the names of about fifty potters and thirty vase painters are known as exercising the art. The trade was lucrative, the prices on the whole being about the same as modern earthenware. These vases have been found in Italy as far north as the ancient lIadria, throughout Greece proper, and Asia Minor, to the Taurus, in the Isles of the Archipelago, and as far east as Pantimpieum.