The Beautiful and Complex Artisanship of Glass-making in the Ancient World

In today’s society, glass is a material that is easily available. Due to mass production, glass objects are considered common and can be found everywhere. In the ancient world, however, glass-making was a specialised knowledge that only certain societies had at their disposal. As a result, glass could only be obtained from these few societies, thus elevating it to the status of a luxury item.

The Early Glassmakers: Phoenicians, Mesopotamians, and Egyptians

Whilst naturally occurring glass, such as obsidian, has been used since the Stone Age, it is less clear as to when human beings began manufacturing glass. According to the Roman author, Pliny the Elder, glass was first (accidentally) produced by merchants moored on the river Belus in the Syrian region of Phoenicia. These merchants were said to be transporting nitre (potassium nitrate) in their ship. As they were preparing their meal on the beach, the merchants could not find suitable stones for supporting their cauldrons. Therefore, they decided to take some lumps of nitre from their ship for that purpose. When the nitre combined with the sand on the beach, and reacted with the heat from the fire, “they beheld transparent streams flowing forth of a liquid hitherto unknown”.

Phoenician pendant in the form of a bearded head. (4th-3rd century BC) (Wikimedia Commons)