Levantine Centerlevantinecenter.org

A register of the eastern Mediterranean coast. Every entry is one site or object, located and attributed to the excavation that found it.

Section 04

Glass

Blowing turns a luxury into a household object.

Ancient glass and pottery vessels displayed together in a museum glass case04
Museum sequence of early glass forms: small, thick-walled and shaped one at a time.Photo: Glass case 20 shapes of ancient glass vessels 3747 · Wikimedia Commons

Three entries on a single tool. Before the blowpipe, glass was a precious object; a generation after it, a household one.

Entries in this section

3 entries
  • 04.1Before blowing

    Core-formed and cast glass was slow, thick and precious, which is why so little of it exists.

  • 04.2The blowpipe

    Appearing on this coast in the first century BC, it made glass fast enough to be ordinary within a generation.

  • 04.3Roman distribution

    Once it was cheap it travelled, which is why Levantine glass turns up across the empire.

32°N33°N34°N35°N34°E36°ELEBANONISRAELCYPRUS100 kmN01 Ras Shamra (Ugarit)02 Byblos04 Tyre03 Sidon06 Wadi Brissa08 Beirut09 Damascus
Glass in position — drawn from the same geometry as every map on this site.

Located, then read

Every entry in this section names a place you can put a pin in. Coordinates come from the register; the entries carry the argument.

The whole register →