page_title: Ancient glass trade
section_title: Mesopotamia and Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient glass trade / Mesopotamia and Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Baguettes de verre coloré, trouvées lors des fouilles de l'atelier d'un verrier, Egypte, XVIIIème Dynastie, 16ème - 14ème siècle - JC. Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, section des Arts Décoratifs, Parc du Cinquantenaire, Bruxelles.
context_page_description: The ways in which glass was exchanged throughout ancient times is intimately related to its production and is a stepping stone to learning about the economies and interactions of ancient societies. Because of its nature it can be shaped into a variety of forms and as such is found in different archaeological contexts, such as window panes, jewellery, or tableware. This is important because it can inform on how different industries of sections of societies related to each other – both within a cultural region or with foreign societies.
  Glass trade is mainly studied by compositional analysis of glass objects creating groups with specific chemical compositions that hopefully allow to differentiate between production centres. Complications arise from the fact that for long periods of time glass was made following very similar recipes and as such the major elements found do not vary significantly. It is made by a mixture of raw materials which means that different sources of each raw material even for the same production centre further complicate the situation. That it is a material that lends itself well to recycling can only add to this.
context_section_description: Glass beads are known from the 3rd millennium BC but it is only in the late 2nd millennium that glass finds start occurring more frequently, primarily in Egypt and Mesopotamia.  This is not to say that it was a widespread commodity, quite the contrary.  It was a material for high-status objects with archaeological evidence for the Late Bronze Age (LBA) also showing an almost exclusive distribution of glass finds at palace complexes such as that found in the city of Amarna – Egypt.  Texts listing offerings to Egyptian temples would start with gold and silver, followed by precious stones (lapis lazuli) and then bronze, copper and other not so precious stones with glass mentioned together with the lapis lazuli.  In this period it was rare and precious and its use largely restricted to the elite.  The oldest glass ingot was discovered in the 1300 B.C. Egyptian Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey 
  Production of raw glass occurred at primary workshops of which only 3 are known, all in Egypt:  Amarna, Pi-Ramesses and Malkata. At the first two sites cylindrical ceramic vessels with vitrified remains have been identified as glass crucibles where the raw materials (quartz pebbles and plant ash) would be melted together with a colourant. The two sites seem to show a specialisation in colour, with blue glass, via the addition of cobalt, being produced at Amarna and red, through copper, at Pi-Ramesses. The resulting coloured glass would then be fashioned into actual objects at secondary workshops – far more common in the archaeological record. It seems certain that glass making was not exclusive to Egypt (in fact current scholarly opinion resides with the industry having originally been imported into the country) as there are Mesopotamian cuneiform texts which detail the recipes for the making of glass. Further supporting this hypothesis are the Amarna Letters, a contemporaneous diplomatic correspondence detailing the demand and gift giving from vassal princes in Syro-Palestine to the Egyptian King, in these the most asked for item is glass.
  The evidence then points to two regions that were making and exchanging glass. It seems logical to believe that at an initial stage it was glass objects, as opposed to raw glass, that were exchanged. The major element composition of glass finds from Mesopotamia and Egypt is indistinguishable with as much variation found within a specific assemblage than between different sites. This is indicative of the same recipe being used in both regions. As analytical techniques develop the presence of trace elements can be more accurately determined and it has been found that glass is compositionally identical within each region, but it is possible to discriminate between them.  This could be a huge step in uncovering trade patterns, however at present no Egyptian glass has been found in Mesopotamia, nor have any Mesopotamian glasses been found in Egypt.
  Across the sea, Mycenaean glass beads were found to have been made with glass from both regions. The fact that the beads are stylistically Mycenaean would imply an import of raw glass. Archaeological evidence for this trade comes from the Uluburun shipwreck, dated to the 14th century BC.  As part of its cargo it carried 175 raw glass ingots of cylindrical shape. These ingots match the glass melting crucibles found at Amarna and Pi-Ramesses. 
  It is not yet possible to discern if trade in glass was occurring directly between the glass producing regions and foreign consumers, it is quite possible that indirect routes via trading and seafaring partners along the Mediterranean coast,  trace element analysis of the Uluburun ingots might allow us to learn more.  At this point we know glass was being consumed by the elites of Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia, it was produced in Egypt and Mesopotamia with workshops possibly specialising in colour and distributed locally presumably through state control to state sponsored artisans, and exported further out as raw glass ingots.
caption: Coloured glass rods ready to be worked into finished products, excavated from an Ancient Egyptian glass workshop. 18th Dynasty, 16-14th century B.C.E.
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