Ancient Egyptian glass

The ways in which glass was exchanged throughout ancient times is intimately related to its production and is a stepping stone to learning about the economies and interactions of ancient societies. Because of its nature it can be shaped into a variety of forms and as such is found in different archaeological contexts (window panes, jewellery, tableware...). This is important because it can inform on how different industries of sections of societies related to each other – both within a cultural region or with foreign societies.

Glass trade is mainly studied by compositional analysis of glass objects creating groups with specific chemical compositions that hopefully allow to differentiate between production centres (both geographically and chronologically). Complications arise from the fact that for long periods of time glass was made following very similar recipes and as such the major elements found do not vary significantly. It is made by a mixture of raw materials which means that different sources of each raw material even for the same production centre further complicate the situation. That it is a material that lends itself well to recycling can only add to this. However, as scientific techniques improve it is becoming increasingly possible to discern some compositional groups, together with other archaeological and textual evidence a picture of glass technology, industry and exchange is starting to emerge.

Glass beads are known from the 3rd millennium BC but it is only in the late 2nd millennium that glass finds start occurring more frequently, primarily in Egypt and Mesopotamia. This is not to say that it was a widespread commodity, quite the contrary. It was a material for high-status objects with archaeological evidence for the Late Bronze Age (LBA) also showing an almost exclusive distribution of glass finds at palace complexes such as that found in the city of Amarna – Egypt. Texts listing offerings to Egyptian temples would start with gold and silver, followed by precious stones (lapis lazuli) and then bronze, copper and other not so precious stones with glass mentioned together with the lapis lazuli. In this period it was rare and precious and its use largely restricted to the elite. The oldest glass ingot was discovered in the 1300 B.C. Egyptian Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey

Production of raw glass occurred at primary workshops of which only 3 are known, all in Egypt: Amarna, Pi-Ramesses and Malkata. At the first two sites cylindrical ceramic vessels with vitrified remains have been identified as glass crucibles where the raw materials (quartz pebbles and plant ash) would be melted together with a colourant. Interestingly the two sites seem to show a specialisation in colour, with blue glass, via the addition of cobalt, being produced at Amarna and red, through copper, at Pi-Ramesses. The resulting coloured glass would then be fashioned into actual objects at secondary workshops – far more common in the archaeological record. It seems certain that glass making was not exclusive to Egypt (in fact current scholarly opinion resides with the industry having originally been imported into the country) as there are Mesopotamian cuneiform texts which detail the recipes for the making of glass. Further supporting this hypothesis are the Amarna Letters, a contemporaneous diplomatic correspondence detailing the demand and gift giving from vassal princes in Syro-Palestine to the Egyptian King, in these the most asked for item is glass.

...
Wikipedia