. ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL HildO<heim, Genn•ny) '' excmting '� Red glass for the Pharaoh industrial estate dating to the foundatio period of the new city, including the larg-� I Thilo Rehren est known bronze foundries of antiquity,1 Glass in ancient Egypt appears to have been used as a substitute military workshops supplying and main­ for precious stones that were not available in the country. Here taining the pharaoh's chariotry including the process of glass manufacture is traced through the examina­ stables for hundreds of horses, and the only known production site for glass in tion of the fr agmentaryremains of ceramic reaction vessels and Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia. The crucibles used in the production of small glass ingots. excavations date back to the 1980s, but only in the past couple of years have we been able to identify the glassmaking evi­ n archaeological terms, glass is a these precious materials, and ancient Egypt dence, although much of it had been exca­ relatively young material that was is no exception to this rule. It was famous vated many years previously. Why this invented much later than pottery or for its riches in gold, but had no silver ores; delay? Because we didn't know how to rec­ Imetals; only from the beginning of it produced amethyst, carnelian and tur­ ognize glassmaking: there being no prece­ the Late Bronze Age onwards do we quoise, but not lapis lazuli, amber or ob­ dent or template to follow when looking have good evidence for its intentional and sidian. Should the country's rulers there­ for Bronze Age glassmaking, and the evi­ routine production. Glassmaking seems to fore forgo their enjoyment of these other dence is surprisingly unspectacular and have emerged in Mesopotamia at about materials? There are several ways to deal quite different from the large-scale glass­ 1550, and it reached Egypt shortly after­ with shortages of specific luxury materi­ making remains of the end of the Roman wards. However, the use of glass differs als. One can simply not use those not avail­ period known from elsewhere in the strongly from what we know today as a able locally; after all, they are luxury items, Levant. Furthermore, most of the materials mass-produced, cheap and usually colour­ not necessities. One can obtain them from involved do not survive well in the wet and less material for windows, drinking ves­ those who have them, by peaceful ex­ basic soils of the delta (Fig. 2). Only the sels and many more items of daily use. change, as tribute or booty, although goods combination of systematic long-term exca­ Egyptian glass objects are typically small, to offer in return may be limited, and vation, meticulous finds recording and colourful and highly decorative, reserved changing political circumstances may be painstaking investigation of unusual mate­ for the highest levels of society: the phar­ disruptive. Or one can make the desired rials final! y enabled us to piece together aoh, his family and the highest priests and material, or materials that look quite like the evidence. 2 bureaucrats. Much of it is in the form of them. It is this latter option that interests jewellery or small containers with very us here, for glass in ancient Egypt is just The material narrow openings. Typically, they have a such a material: artificially made precious This is what we found: fragments of reac­ blue body inlaid with lines of white, stones, providing qualities and quantities tion vessels and crucibles, and severely yellow, dark blue, black or amber. Beads of material that is otherwise difficult to corroded pieces of glass. The reaction ves­ are in one or more colours and were often obtain. sels are identical to standard Egyptian beer combined with other materials to form jars and egg-shape storage jars (Figs 3, 4), complex necklaces or decorations (Fig. 1 ). Fieldwork in Egypt each holding a few litres; but here, they Before the invention of glass, such luxury During the past six years, the Institute of were used to make glass from its raw mate­ items were carved from precious stones Archaeology has been involved in research rials, plant ash and crushed quartz. This such as turquoise, lapis lazuli, amethyst, at Qantir, the location of the site of ancient initial glassmaking took place at relatively carnelian, obsidian and amber, and inlaid Piramesses, in the eastern Nile Delta. The low temperatures, in the range of 900- in gold and silver. site is better known as the city of the Exo­ 9500C, and resulted in an imperfect semi­ No single country has mines yielding all dus, the new capital setup in about 1280 by finished glass. Remains of the crushed Ramesses the Great in Lower Egypt. Here, quartz embedded in semi-finished glass Dr Edgar Pusch (the Pelizaeus Museum, are still attached to the interior surfaces of Figure 1 A necklace made fr om glass, fa ience and Egyp tian blue. Figure 2 Th e shallow water table at Qantir. 40 J ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL corroded by the acidic contents, and the contents frombeing spoiled by the corrod­ ing iron. In our case, the parting layer pro­ tects the ceramic of the vessels from being attacked by the aggressive plant ash, while preventing the semi-finished glass from discolouration by the iron oxides present in the ceramic. The second main group of finds related to glassmaking are fragmentsof cylindrical crucibles (Fig. 6). Crucibles are purpose­ made vessels used to melt metal or glass, typically at temperatures of 1000-11 00°C. In metallurgy, crucibles are often used to cast the molten metal into moulds to give Figure 5 Semi-finished glass adhering to it a desired shape. Glass, though, is too stiff a fragment of a reaction vessel. to be cast, even at the temperatures men­ tioned, and is possibly best described as ancient Egypt it was used extremely rarely, resembling in consistency chewing gum or and one might interpret its strong presence toffee. Hence, these crucibles doubled up here as indicating a two-step process in as moulds, with the molten glass cooling which the semi-finished glass was first and solidifying inside them, producing melted at a higher temperature to achieve Figure 3 The bottom fragm ent of a reac­ circular discs or cakes. At this stage, metal a good-quality base glass, before the color­ tion vessel with remains of parting layer oxides were added to give the glass the ant was finally added in a second melting. and semi-finished glass on the inside. desired colour; in the case ofPiramesses, a If this is indeed the case, then the crucibles few per cent by weight of copper oxide from Qantir would have served almost some of the vessel fragments (Fig. 5), sep­ made it a bright red. To retrieve the glass exclusively to produce glass ingots of a arated from theceramic itself by a special cakes, the crucibles were broken; often, single colour - red. Even if we assume that lining made from lime to protect the vessel small bits of glass remained stuck onto the only half of the crucibles actually repre­ from reacting with its contents. This bar­ crucible fragments,mostly in places where sent a finished glass ingot, and the other rier or parting layer acts very much like the the lime barrier had not been thick enough half are attributable to the intermediate tin coating inside a modern tin can, which to function properly. The glass cakes or refining of the base glass, we still have evi­ protects both the iron of the can frombeing ingots were the final product of the glass­ dence here for massive production of glass. maker, and were then passed on to glass The 250 individual crucibles alone that studios, where artisans remelted and have been reconstructed equal more than worked them into vases, beads and inlays. 120 glass ingots, and even more will have These crucibles are much more highly been made where we have not excavated fired than the reaction vessels, as can be the remains. seen from their darker colour and harder This emphasis on red glass contrasts fabric. This resulted in much better pres­ strongly with the colour scheme of glass ervation ofthe fragments, and we were able objects apparent in almost every museum to reconstruct at least 250 individual cru­ with Egyptian objects, where the colours cibles, typically with an inner diameter of are overwhelmingly dark and light blue, 12-18 cm and a height of probably about representing lapis lazuli and turquoise, the 15 cm. Such crucibles had already been former being a highly prized exotic stone, excavated more than a hundred years ago and the latter deeply imbued with reli­ by Sir Flinders Petrie at the site of Tell gious meaning and symbolism related to el-Amarna in Middle Egypt, and tentatively fertility and the goddess Hathor. linked by him to the glass and faience fac­ tories there. However, their exact function within the glassmaking process remained enigmatic until the Qantir finds were first published by us in 1997.3 A remarkable feature of the glass cruci­ bles fromQantir is the colour of the glass associated with them. In the majority of cases there is not enough glass left, or it is too corroded to identify its original colour; however, in about 50 crucibles we see remains of bright red glass, compared to only a few with blue glass, and a single one with amethyst glass. Intriguingly, about 40 crucibles show remains of uncoloured or semi-finished glass, although this is some­ times difficult to distinguish fromstrongly corroded glass. This concentration on just two colours, Figure 6 A reconstructed crucible from bright red and colourless, is remarkable in Qantir.