Egypt - Wadi Natrun

Archaeological Mission of Wadi Natrun: research on primary glass workshops in Greco-Roman Egypt

Research on primary glass workshops in Egypt has been strong since 2003, run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Dig Commission. It has focused on the Wadi Natrun region, a depression located between Cairo and Alexandria, which offer the two raw materials needed to produce raw glass - sand and natron, a mineral sodium that is used to lower the fusion temperature of silicium.

We have been able, through pedestrian prospecting carried out between 1996 and 2002, to identify three primary raw glass workshops in Zakik, Bir Hooker and Beni Salama. They have been dated to the Greco-Roman era thanks to the study of ceramic and amphoric surface material carried out in 2003 and 2004. The geophysical prospecting (2000-2004) has revealed magnetic anomalies on two of the sites (Beni Salama, Bir Hooker) indicating the presence of furnaces.

The dig campaigns carried out on the Beni Salama site in 2003 and 2005 made it possible to bring to light two large furnaces, with glass fusing basins measuring 4 metres in length, 2 metres in width and 1.20 metres in height, in which up to 16 tonnes of glass could be produced in a single batch.

These discoveries are important in many respects. These are the best-preserved raw glass furnaces discovered until today in Egypt and in the Near East, and may well enable the study of architectural components and an accurate reconstruction of the complete operative glass fusion chain. These are also the oldest furnaces of this kind, as they are dated to the 1st and 2nd centuries after JC (the Syro-Palestinian parallels are dated, at the earliest, to the 6th and 7th centuries). Lastly, these discoveries have confirmed Egypt’s importance in the production and trade of glass between the East and West, during the Greco-Roman Era.