In crystalline quartz, atoms are pinned to regularly spaced positions in a repeating pattern.
Glass, both ancient and modern, is a material usually made of silicon dioxide, or silica, that is characterized by its disorderly atoms. The Trustees of the British Museum Glass from the past Moreover, who is the dog that would not obey the orders of the king, my lord, the Sun from the sky, the son of the Sun, whom the Sun loves?” A number from the Canaanite ruler Yidya of Ashkelon (like these shown) include one that comments on an order of glass for Pharaoh: “As to the king, my lord’s, having ordered some glass, I herewith send to the king, my lord, 30 (“pieces”) of glass. The Amarna Letters, clay tablets carrying the cuneiform correspondence of ancient kings and excavated at Tell el-Amarna in modern-day Egypt, include references to glass.
This analysis, in turn, opens a window onto the lives of Bronze Age artisans, traders and kings, and the international connections between them. Where was glass first fashioned? How was it worked and colored, and passed around the ancient world? Though much is still mysterious, in the last few decades materials science techniques and a reanalysis of artifacts excavated in the past have begun to fill in details. In a hierarchy of materials, glass would have sat slightly beneath silver and gold and would have been valued as much as precious stones were.īut many questions remain about the prized material. In a world filled with the buff, brown and sand hues of more utilitarian Late Bronze Age materials, glass - saturated with blue, purple, turquoise, yellow, red and white - would have afforded the most striking colors other than gemstones, says Andrew Shortland, an archaeological scientist at Cranfield University in Shrivenham, England. His funerary mask sports blue glass inlays that alternate with gold to frame the king’s face. King Tutankhamen’s tomb housed a decorative writing palette and two blue-hued headrests made of solid glass that may once have supported the head of sleeping royals. Thousands of years ago, the pharaohs of ancient Egypt surrounded themselves with the stuff, even in death, leaving stunning specimens for archaeologists to uncover. But early in its history, glass was bling for kings. Today, glass is ordinary, on-the-kitchen-shelf stuff. This glass fish was found in a fairly modest private house in Amarna, buried under a plaster floor along with a few other objects.
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