Glass

Mesopotamian artisans began making glass objects sometime in the third millennium B. C. This is evident from the discovery of small lumps of glass scraps or debris in the ruins of ancient artisans’ workshops. Whatever glass products these workers made have long since disappeared, as the earliest surviving Mesopotamian glass artifacts date from the period of 1600 to 1500 B. c. In the centuries that followed, typical glass objects included bottles, especially perfume bottles; vases; jewelry, including pendants and amulets; small figurines; and the pupils of the eyes of stone statues to give these sculptures a more lifelike appearance. When much of the western Near East underwent devastation due to causes still not fully understood around 1200 B. c., many of the markets for Mesopotamian glass dried up; so glassmaking in the region declined. It revived in the eighth century B. c., however, and remained a major craft industry for many centuries to come. Glassmaking was also highly respected among the crafts and, for reasons that are unclear, required practitioners to employ religious rituals as well as skill and experience. Tablets found in the famous library of the Assyrian king Ashur-banipal describe such rituals as a regular part of the art of glassmaking. The glass-maker was obliged to sacrifice a sheep before heating the glass, for instance, and to make sure that he and all of his assistants were ritually clean.

There were three kinds of Mesopotamian glass—opaque, translucent, and clear, which began to be made circa 700 b. c. The chief ingredients were silicates, particularly quartzite sand; plant ashes; and lime. When combined and heated to high temperatures in a fire or kiln, these produced molten (liquid) glass, which could be cut and/or molded in various ways before it cooled and solidified. In fact, molding, in which the molten glass was poured into wooden molds, was one of the chief and simplest glassmaking techniques in Mesopotamia and in other parts of the Near East. Another common method, core forming, utilized preformed pottery objects, or cores. Using a metal handling rod, the glassmaker dipped a core into some molten glass, causing a layer of glass to stick to the core. Next, he allowed the glass to cool, a process known as annealing. Finally, he stuck pointed instruments through an opening in the glass and broke up and removed the core material, leaving behind the finished glass artifact. A third and more difficult method, cold cutting, involved making a mass of molten glass, then cutting off lumps of it. The artisan carefully molded each lump into the shape desired and allowed it to cool.

Most glass artifacts made in Mesopotamia remained fairly expensive until the first century B. c., when a glassmaker in Syria invented the technique of glassblowing. Glassblowing allowed artisans to make glass objects faster and more cheaply as well as of higher quality. Thus, by the end of that century even low-income Mesopotamians could afford to own several glass items.

See Also: crafts and craftspeople; jewelry