Such little evidence as there is, especially a few passages in Roman writers, would point to Alexandria, above all other towns, as the principal home of the glass industry in the first centuries before our era. We know, however, of no find of blown glass in Egypt, previous to later Roman or Coptic times. The Ptolemaic glass found at Tanis and elsewhere differs, as we have seen, little from the old type; and even at what is probably a later period we have found the same old type of glass in use at Denderah for inlaying (see above, p. [32]). It was not the Egyptians themselves that favoured the new process—by them the new glass was doubtless rejected as something exotic and unholy. The Greeks, on the other hand, seem never to have taken any interest in the material—the ‘fused stone,’ as they called it, was at the best but a poor substitute for the native minerals that it imitated.
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1. FLASK WITH “PEACOCK” DESIGN
GRECO-ROMAN
2. BOWL, FINISHED ON LATHE, SHOWING IRIDESCENCE
GRECO-ROMAN
3. BOWL OF THIN GLASS, BLOWN INTO MOULD
ROMA
Perhaps after all there is an element of truth in the prevalent Roman tradition, and we should not be far wrong in giving the credit for the introduction of the new system of manufacture to the glass-makers of Sidon or of some other of the Phœnician coast towns.