Potsherds
used for writing receipts and letters. Abundance of moulded terra-
cottas, and small lamps.
Roman, Second Period, A.D. 300-641.
The Constantinian Age brings in new styles. Much salmon-coloured hard
pottery, mainly platters and flat dishes. Brown amphorae soft and
smaller, with narrow ribbing. No glaze. Much very thin glass. Coins:
little thin flat copper, as in rest of Empire, ending about 450. No
Egyptian coinage, except a very few rough lumps from Justinian to
Heraclius, I+B on back. Letters written on potsherds and flakes of
limestone.
Red brick the material for all large buildings. Limestone capitals of
debased leafage. Rudely cut relief patterns in wood. Coarsely carved
and turned bone or ivory. Pottery in Byzantine Age with white facing
and rudely painted figures. Textiles, with embroidery in colours, and
especially purple discs with thread designs of the earlier Arab
period. A characteristic of late Roman and Arab mounds is the organic
smell.
Muhammadan Period. Seventh to fifteenth centuries.
Characterized by great amounts of glazed pottery. Smaller antiquities
found in cemeteries or on ruined sites, the earliest transitional,
and related to Coptic examples of the same kinds. Pottery: lamps at
first continue Christian forms and are unglazed; afterwards long
spouted lamps of dark green glaze.
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