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Virtual Guide | Lands of Abraham | Roman GlassLands of AbrahamEgypt | Roman Glass | Bricks GlassThe manufacture of glass finds its origin in Western Asia, in what nowadays is called Syria and Iraq. In the 16th century BC the old techniques for making glass were among other things casting and cold cutting from a solid block. Inflation was a more recent technique. At the time of the Roman emperors (from the 1st century BC onwards), the development of blown glass took a tremendous flight. The older techniques continued to be used.Glassmakers from Syria came to Rome. They were instrumental in the introduction of the technique of glass blowing. Within the next 100 years, glass industries were set up throughout the Mediterranean under Roman influence. It is through these ways that the Roman glass ended up in Africa. FayumRoman Glass.The art of making glass objects was known long before the rise of the Roman Empire. The pre-Roman glass industry used techniques of core-forming, casting, cold-cutting and grinding. However, its processes were laborious and slow. Glass objects were in favour in royal and aristocratic circles, but too rare and costly for the com-mon people. The relatively peaceful period under the strong, centralized rule of the Ceasars, the 'Pax Romana', and the discovery of a new technique in the second half of the first century BC - inflatingglass on a blowpipe - enabled the glass industry to forge ahead and its products to rival those in other materials, notably pottery and metalwork, both in speed of production and in variety of shapes and sizes. Glass thus came to rival these older materials for many domestic and other social uses and to be made in sufficient quantities. It became very popular and widespread. Roman glass also found its way to many Saharan cities along the trade-routes and deep into Asia. The art of glass-blowing developed in a very small period. Within twenty of thirty years the glass workers were capable of developing almost all the many inflation techniques still present 2,000 years later in the work-shops of their modern successors. In a sideroom of the entrance building a small collection of Roman glass can be admired. Several practical objects, glass vases and glass sculp-tures in different colors, sizes and shapes are presented. Free blown glass became very popular in the 2nd century CE. Before the invention of glass blowing, molds had been used, limiting production to small objects only. From around 200 BCE, Romans started to take over the giant empire Alexander the Great (died c.330 BCE) had left to his heirs. Seleucus I and his dynasty ruled over the Seleucid Empire from Antioch (today's Antakya-Tyrkey) and Ptolemy over the rest of Africa and the Near East from Alexandria (Egypt). Hellenization and later Romanization of Europe, the Near and Far East, as far as today's Uzbekistan and Pakistan created an enormous Common Wealth. East-West Trade and migration dominated social economic development for the next two millenniums. Glass was used as packaging for costly potions and ointments. Incense trade from Oman, via Yemen flourished. The secret Hellenized city of Petra (Jordan), under de Nabateans, became a major station in the route like Gaza, Tyrus, Jerusalem, Damascus, Palmyra, Ctesiphon, Phrygia and Antioch. 
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