People have made glass for thousands of years. No one knows how or when glassmaking started but there are several stories. For example, some historians report that after a shipwreck some merchants washed up at the mouth of the river Belus in Syria used a local plant with thorny leaves, a member of the salsolacae (saltwort) tribe, locally known as "the kali plant", to cook their food. The ash from this plant contains soda which, mixed with sand, would have made glass.
Others claim that merchants of natron salt (a natural soda carbonate) (used in Ancient Egypt to mummify bodies) were picnicking on the beach. They lit a fire to cook their food in pots standing on natron blocks - and saw an unknown substance creeping across the sand at their feet. However, these are just stories as it takes a temperature of 1300°C to make glass - unlikely in a bonfire in the open air!
Although the Phoenicians were famous glass-makers, glass was probably invented in the Far East, or Egypt. The oldest precise date in the history of glass is around 1400 B.C., when, in El Amana in Old High Egypt, frescoes were painted showing how glass was made.
More recently, in approximately 100 BC, the discovery of the blowpipe, a technique specific to glass, was of great importance. Cave paintings in Beni Hassan, on the Nile in Egypt, show craftsmen from Thebes blowing glass on the end of blowpipes, as we still do today.
Egypt, Greece and then the Romans during the reign of Augustus showed their spirit of invention. Many glass objects and window panes were found during the excavations of Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD. Their manufacturing processes spread to the countries they conquered and in particular to Gaul. But the tradition did not survive for long in France. In 18th century Paris, windows were not made of glass but covered with panels of oiled fabric. Only the homes of the very rich were glazed.
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