[Illustration:  Fig. 233.—­Interior decoration of cup, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 234.—­Lenticular vase, glazed ware, Saite.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 235.—­Chamber decorated with tiles in step pyramid of Sakkarah.]

Glazed pottery was common from the earliest times.  Cups with a foot (fig. 232), blue bowls, rounded at the bottom and decorated in black ink with mystic eyes, lotus flowers, fishes (fig. 233), and palm-leaves, date, as a rule, from the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, or Twentieth Dynasties.  Lenticular ampullae coated with a greenish glaze, flanked by two crouching monkeys for handles, decorated along the edge with pearl or egg-shaped ornaments, and round the body with elaborate collars (fig. 234), belong almost without exception to the reigns of Apries and Amasis.[66] Sistrum handles, saucers, drinking-cups in the form of a half-blown lotus, plates, dishes—­in short, all vessels in common use—­were required to be not only easy to keep clean, but pleasant to look upon.  Did they carry their taste for enamelled ware so far as to cover the walls of their houses with glazed tiles?  Upon this point we can pronounce neither affirmatively nor negatively; the few examples of this kind of decoration which we possess being all from royal buildings.  Upon a yellow brick, we have the family name and Ka name of Pepi I.; upon a green brick, the name of Rameses III.; upon certain red and white fragments, the names of Seti I. and Sheshonk.

[Illustration:  Fig. 236.—­Tile from step pyramid of Sakkarah.]

Up to the beginning of the present century, one of the chambers in the step pyramid at Sakkarah yet retained its mural decoration of glazed ware (fig. 235).  For three-fourths of the wall-surface it was covered with green tiles, oblong in shape, flat at the back, and slightly convex on the face (fig. 236).  A square tenon, pierced through with a hole large enough to receive a wooden rod, served to fix them together in horizontal pyramid of rows.[67] The three rows which frame in the doorway are inscribed with the titles of an unclassed Pharaoh belonging to one of the first Memphite dynasties.  The hieroglyphs are relieved in blue, red, green, and yellow, upon a tawny ground.  Twenty centuries later, Rameses III. originated a new style at Tell el Yahudeh.  This time the question of ornamentation concerned, not a single chamber, but a whole temple.  The mass of the building was of limestone and alabaster; but the pictorial subjects, instead of being sculptured according to custom, were of a kind of mosaic made with almost equal parts of stone tesserae and glazed ware.

[Illustration:  Fig. 237.—­Tile inlay, Tell el Yahudeh.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 238.—­Tile inlay, Tell el Yahudeh.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 239.—­Inlaid tiles, Tell el Yahudeh.]