Ancient glassmaking site uncovered in Egypt

What may be one of the earliest glassmaking sites in ancient Egypt has been uncovered in the eastern Nile Delta.

Evidence at Qantir-Piramesses indicates that glass was made there out of raw materials as early as 1250 B.C., researchers from England and Germany report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The reworking of already made glass into finished goods has been documented at ancient sites in the Middle East and Egypt, but the new report adds evidence for primary glass production at this location.

Thilo Rehren of University College, London, and Edgar B. Pusch of Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany, report finding a large number of crucibles with remains of glass inside.

Glass was made using finely crushed quartz powder which was melted with other materials inside the ceramic crucibles, which then were broken to get the glass out, the researchers reported. The glass ingots "would then have been transported to other, artistic workshops where they were re-melted and worked into objects," they said.

Much of the glass produced at Qantir-Piramesses was red, produced using copper in a complex process, and some of it was blue or colorless. A large shipment of glass ingots has been found in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Turkey. The wreck predates the materials found at Qantir-Piramesses, but the ingots are similar in size and shape to the crucibles found at the Egyptian site.