GLASS, from the Fr. glace (Lat. glades), ice, which it resembles in its transparency. Glass is essentially a combination of silica with some alkali or alkaline earth, such, as lime, barytes, etc. Generally speaking, it is understood to be a silicate of soda, or a combination of silica or flint with one or more of the salts of sodium, with the addition, for some purposes. of certain metallic oxides and other substances.
invention of glass dates from the earliest antiquity, and the honor of its discovery has been contested by several nations. As the oldest known specimens are Egyptian, its invention may with great probability be attributed to that people. It is mentioned as early as the 5th or 6th. dynasty, and called bashnu, the Coptic bijni; and articles made of it are represented in the tombs of the period; while its fabrication is depicted in sepulchers of the 12th dynasty—i.e., about 1800, B.°. The glass of Egypt was generally opaque, rarely transparent, and alway colored, the articles made of it being of small size, and principally for adornment, as beads, vases, small figures, and objects for inlaying into wood or other material. Specimens exist of this glass, bearing the name of the queen Hatasu of the 18th dynasty, 1445, B.C., and vases of blue glass,. with wavy lines in white, light-blue, yellow, black, red, and green, of that and a liter age, have been discovered. The Egyptians also successfully imitated precious and other stones in glass—as emeralds, lapis-lazuli, turquoises, jaspers, onyx, and obsidian; for this purpose, they used nearly the same materials at present, employing man ganese, copper, iron, cobalt, gold, and tin. Transparent glass, indeed, does not appear earlier in Egypt than the 26th dynasty, about 750, B.C., when bottles and a few other objects—as figures for iulitylug, and beads imitating gems—were made of it. Accord ing to i[erodotus, the Ethiopians, two centuries later, placed their mummies in glass coffins; but the fact has never been proved by any as yet discovered.
Under the native Pharaohs, Egyptian glass seems to have been extensively exported to Greece and Italy, and its reputation still continued under the Ptolemies, when the furnaces of Alexandria produced glass vases of numberless shapes and considerable size. At this period, the Egyptians invented the millefiori glass, consisting of small threads of glass arranged vertically and then fused, so that the whole rod thus formed was of one pattern; and by cutting off slices, each piece reproduced the same pattern. The glass heads of medrepore glass, which are found in the tombs of Greece and Italy, and are formed by placings lives of such rods in a mold and fusing the whole, are probably of Egyptian or Phoenician origin. Egypt still retained the pre-eminence in the manufac ture of glass under the Romans, the sand of Alexandria being indispensable for the finest qualities, and it exported glass to Rome. Hadrian, on his visit, was struck with the activity of the manufacture, and sent to Lis friend, the consul Servianns, one of the vases, called allosontes, or "opalescent;" and the Roman writers mention with admira tion the melting, turning, and engraving of Egyptian glass. To the most flourishing period of the empire are to be referred certain vases and slabs with white camel figures of fine execution in relief on a blue background, and plates of opaque glass for inlaying the walls of rooms, such as those which are said to have decorated the mansion of the usurper Firmus. The art of glass-making, in fact, has never become extinct in Egypt, the Fatimite caliphs having issued glass coins in the 10th and 11th centuries, and beauti ful lamps of glass enameled on the surface with various colors having been made in the 14th century. Although the art of glass-making has fallen to the lowest ebb in Egypt, the workmen are said to manifest considerable aptitude in its production.
After the Egyptians, the people of antiquity most renowned for glass were the Phoenicians, who were the legendary inventors. Certain of their merchants, it is said, returning in a ship laden with natron or soda, and having been compelled by sonny weather to land on a sandy tract under Mt. Carmel, placed their cooking-pots on lumps of natron on the sand, which, fused by the heat of the fire, formed the first glass.
Sidon, indeed, was long celebrated for her glass-wares made of the sand brought down from Mt. Carmel to the mouth of the river Bettis. The nature, however, of the earliest Phoenician glass is unknown, unless the opaque little vases of the toilet found in the tombs of Greece and Italy, and the beads of the same discovered in the barrows and tumuli of the old Celtic and Teutonic tribes, were imports of the Phoenicians. The vases of Sidon were, however, highly esteemed at Rome under the Antonines, fragments of bowls of blue and amber glass, with the names of the Sidonian glass-makers, Artas and Irenmus, stamped in Latin and Greek, having been found in the ruins. Perhaps the Assyrian glass vases were made at Sidon; at all events, the earliest dated specimen of transparent white glass is the vase having upon it stamped or engraved in Assyrian cuneiform a lion and the name of Sargon, who reigned 722 B. C., found at Nintrud by Mr. Layard; and glass seems to have been imported or even made in Assyria as late as the time of the Parthians, when Nineveh became the Roman colony of Claudiopolis. Under the Sassanides, moulded glass vessels, elaborately decorated, were made, as is shown by the cup of Chosrocs, 531-579 A.D., in the Louvre; and Persia continued to manufacture glass vessels in the middle ages. The Arabs seem to have derived their glass from the Byzantines, and specimens introduced into Europe by the Crusaders were called in royal and other inventories Damascus glass; this was colored, and not plain. Although the art of glass-making appears to have been practiced in remote times, this nation does not appear to have attained any proficiency in it, and is content at the pres ent day to re-melt European glass; while some of its highest efforts do not exceed the imitation of jade, and other stones. There is still an extensive use of glass.beads in the east, which are chiefly made at Khatib or Hebron. Glass was equally unknown to the Hindus, except the production of a few trinkets and inferior objects, till the settlement of Europeans in India: and the country was, at the remotest period, supplied by Phoenician, and in the middle ages, by the Venetian traders. Although Josephus claims the invention of the nrt for the Jews, no remains of Jewish glass are known, and it is probable that the Jews were principally indebted for their supplies to the neighboring cities of Tyre and Sidon. Evan In &recce itself, glass was by no means ancient. In the days of Homer it was unknown. Henc.orts, indeed, mentions its employment for ear rings, but these may have been of Phoenician It was called hyalos, crystal or ice, and lithos chyte, or fusible stone. Aristophanes, 450 mentions glass or crystal vessels, and various inscriptions confirm its use, but its value wa; next to gold, which could hardly have been the case if it had been of native manufacture. In the 4th e. B.C., Pausias, a celebrated painter, had depicted Nethe, or "Intoxication," drinking from a transparent glass bowl which revealed her face. Glasses and plates, amphorfe and diotm, large two-handled jars, were made of it, and also false stones for finger-rings, called sphragides hyalenai. These last, called by archieologists pastes, were imitations of engraved stones in colored glasses, used for the rings of the poorer classes, and were no doubt often copies or impressions of engraved stones of celebrated masters; false gems and camel having a subject in opaque white, sometimes like the sardonyx, with a brown layer superposed on the parts representing the hair, and the whole laid on a dark-blue ground, appear before the Christian era. Lenses were also made of glass, and the celestial sphere of Archimedes was made of the same material. The supposed Phoenician colored glass vases for the toilet, found in the oldest sepulchers of Greece, it must be observed, have Greek shapes. Glass-makers, hyalopsoi, hyalepsce, are also mentioned at a later period, when there can be no doubt the art was practiced. Of the Alexandrian glass, mention has been already made; and the body of Alexander the Great was shown to Augustus in a glass coffin.