Glass making
Vidrio fundido
- Date
- c. 2500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Eshnunna and Tell Brak, Mesopotamia; later Nuzi and Amarna
- Credited to
- Mesopotamian and Hurrian craftsmen; Egyptian industry under Thutmose III
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Fusion of silica, soda (or plant ash) and lime into a transparent or coloured material that imitates precious stones. First beads and amulets (3rd millennium); around 1500 BCE, core-formed vessels on a sand core and ingots exported from Egypt and the Levant.
Glass beads from Eshnunna and Tell Brak (c. 2500-2300 BCE) are the oldest; some scholars consider New Kingdom Egyptian glass a Hurrian/Mitanni technological import.
What it led to
- A luxury industry under palace control with secret recipes (glass tablets of Nineveh)
- Trade in coloured glass ingots (Uluburun) as an international raw material
- The technical basis of vitreous enamel, ceramic glazing and, much later, blown glass and optics
Built on
- Faience (glazed quartz frit)c. 4200 BCE
- Egyptian faience and vitreous glazec. 3500 BCE
- Bellowsc. 3000 BCE
- High-temperature furnaces
- Steatite glazing
Made possible
- Nimrud lens (rock-crystal disc)c. 700 BCE
- Indo-Pacific drawn glass beadsc. 200 BCE
- Glassblowingc. 50 BCE
- Ife primary glass productionc. 1050
- Core-formed glass vessel
- Lenses (much later)