s of pyramids, in tombs, on headdresses, and on clothing of royalty. However, by the seventeenth century B.C., Egyptian craftsmen were making cups, bowls, bottles and other hollow glass forms, which were more difficult to make than the glass paste and small solid glass objects that first appeared in the region.
Glassmaking in Egypt became more popular as time went on. By about 1,400 B.C., glass was being used as an inlay material for Egyptian furniture (Battie 17). And, after the death of Tutankahamun, another Egyptian king, Thutmose III, was born. Thutmose III lived only 46 years, but, by the time he died in 1,450 B.C. (Douglas & Frank 2), he had established an Egyptian empire in the Middle East, and he had helped Egypt to begin trading with Phoenicia, the Aegean Islands in Greece, and Crete. And, according to one art historian, "it [was] possibly after Thutmose had pushed into Mesopotamia and brought back glass that Egyptians learned how to make it" (Zerwick 15).
Interestingly, although the Egyptian culture was sophisticated in architecture, language, and methods of goldsmithing, and, although Egypt had an irrigation system, a canal which connected the Nile to the Red Sea, knowledge of
geometry and contraceptives, the Egyptian glassmaker used methods that seem very simple compared to modern techniques. For example, to create hollow glass containers, such as a blue core formed handled jar with white and yellow wavy designs in it (1,400 - 1,360 B.C.), the Egyptian glass maker made a hard center of clay and mammal dung. Then the glassmaker wound hot glass around the hard core. Since hot glass cools quickly and stiffens as it decreases in temperature, the glass had to be reheated so that the glass maker could c
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