Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1880 — How Old is Glass? [ARTICLE]

How Old is Glass?

The oldest specimen of pure glass bearing anything like a date is a little moulded lion’s head, bearing the name of an Egyptian King of the eleventh dynasty, in the Slade collection at the British Museum. That is to say, at a period which may be moderately piaeed as more than two thousand years B. C., glass was not only made, but made with skill, which shows that the art was nothing new. The invention of glazing pottery with a film of glass is so old that among the fragments which bear inscriptions of the early Egyptian monarchy are beads possibly of tho first dynasty. Of the latter class there are numerous examples, such as the bead found at Thebes, which has the name of Queen Hatasoof Hashep, of the eighteenth dynasty. Of the same period are vases and goblets and many fragments. It can not be doubted that the story prepared by Fliny, which assigns the credit of the invention to the Phoenicians, is so far true that these adventurous merchants brought specimens from other countries to Egypt. Dr. Scliliemann found disks of glass in the excavation at Mycenae, though Homer does not mention it as a substance known to him. That the modem art of the glass-blower was known long before is certain from presentations among the pictures on the walls of a tomb at Benni Ilassan, of the twelfth Egyptian dynasty; but a much older picture, which probably represented the same manufacture, is among the half obliterated scenes in a chamber of the tomb of Thy, at Sakkara, and dates from the time of the fifth dynasty, a time so remote that it is not possible, in spite of the assiduous researches of many Egyptologers to give it a date ju years. —Saturday lieview.