Although we have come to take glass for granted--as windows, dishes and spectacles--it is really a mysterious interesting substance when you think about it. Created out of super-heated sand, glass is one of the early technological materials first developed in Egypt or Mesopotamia about 3500 BC. The earliest use of glass was crushed quartz used as a glaze on ceramic vessels. But by the Late Bronze Age of about 1200 BC, molded glass ingots of an entire range of colors were being made throughout the Mediterranean region. Last year, excavations at the New Kingdom Egyptian capital of Piramesses (today called Qantir) identified an early glass making workshop, built under and no doubt for the use of the glass artisans in the court of Ramesses II, also known as Ramses the Great. The site deposits included glass molds that are very similar to ones that would have produced glass ingots recovered from the Bronze Age shipwreck off the coast of Turkey called Ulu Burun. The Piramisses site findings substantiate the Egyptian New Kingdom's role in trade throughout the Mediterranean region during the Late Bronze Age.
The photograph of the ceramic vessel recovered from Qantir was taken from the article, Late Bronze Age Glass Production at Qantir-Piramesses, Egypt, written by Thilo Rehren and Edgar Pusch and published in May 2006. The article details the archaeological evidence found at Qantir-Piramesses, and is available for download on a per-copy basis.
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