The making of molded or cast glass vessels or objects was first achieved about 1500 BC, and again, it is unclear whether this process was invented in Mesopotamia or Egypt. Glass workshops dated to the Late Bronze Age include sites such as Lisht and Amarna in Egypt.
Documentary evidence for controlled production of glass includes offertory lists on Egyptian temples such as Karnak and a mention in the Amarna letters. Glass-making processes were detailed in Mesopotamian cuneiform texts discovered in Nineveh, as part of the Library of King Assurbanipal [668-627 BC].
A primary glass work shop was discovered recently at Piramesses, Egypt; other workshops of the period have been discovered at Amarna. Also of interest is the deposit of molded ingots of glass discovered in the Bronze Age shipwreck called Uluburun.
Sources and Further Information
A Glass Making Workshop at Qantir details the New Kingdom Egyptian workshop at Piramesses.
More detail is also available about the Mesopotamian Library of King Assurbanipal, and in the Uluburun shipwreck report.
Rehren, Thilo and Edgar B. Pusch 2005 Late Bronze Age Glass Production at Qantir-Piramesses, Egypt. Science 308:1756-1758.
Shortland, A. J. 2007 Who were the glassmakers? Status, theory and method in mid-second millennium glass production. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26(3):261-274.
Shortland, Andrew, Nick Rogers, and Katherine Eremin 2007 Trace element discriminants between Egyptian and Mesopotamian Late Bronze Age glasses. Journal of Archaeological Science 34:781-789.
Additional information was gathered from the Bibliography of Glass Making, assembled for this project.
