Um...Judy? I believe you are confusing me with someone elses post.
I never mentioned Phoenicians, only Egyptians.
Lisa, my reference at this point was not to your post but to the
link you provided on the history of glassmaking, which, I suggest,
does not clear up the mysteries involved here.
I should have added that the references to 4000-year-old glass
bottles and Phoenicians were from the post of Teri who was
“twitching in Pittsburgh.”
That said, apparently Phoenicians did have clear glass...please
see: http://tinyurl.com/kbmo8 and Phoenicians were around since
approximately 3000 BC, http://phoenicia.org/history.html so if you
are insisting that Phoenicians didn't appear until 1100 something
AD, it will be news to them.
The problem here is only the “date” of the Phoenicians. In the
second of these internet sites, their first paragraph pretty much
agrees with what I said in my post about the origins of the
Phoenicians:
the term "Phoenician" is now normally applied to them in the Iron
Age (beginning about the twelfth century B.C.) onward when the
traits that characterize Phoenician culture evolved: long-distance
seafaring, trade and colonization, and distinctive elements of
their material culture, language, and script.
If you wish to discuss whether the people known as Phoenicians were
identical with the Syro-Canaanites who may well have moved into the
area around 3000 BC (as your internet sites says), perhaps we should
do that off-line! In any case, my dates for the Phoenicians were all
BC, not AD. I also did not “insist” that the Phoenicians didn’t
appear until 1100 – all I did was report on the writing of a scholar
whose life-work has been the ancient history of that area (Edward
Lipinski, in the Sasson volume).
This brings up another issue – the reliability of internet sites,
which often do not tell you who wrote something, what their
background is, what their evidence is, where and when they got their
from, etc., etc. That’s why I cited the Sasson volume and
the Moorey volume – they provide that kind of Since I
have a background in science, I am always most interested in primary
(not secondary or tertiary) evidence.
In any case, if the person who wrote the next paragraph in your
link:
The Phoenicians, whose lands corresponds to present-day Lebanon
and coastal parts of Israel and Syria, probably arrived in the
region in about 3000 B.C.
wishes to call the Syro-Canaanites of 3000 BC “Phoenicians,” I can
only say that is their personal preference but not one which
historians of the Ancient Near East would agree with.
As for the nature of “manufacturing,” I disagree with your
generalization on the need for civilizations to grow enough for
demand to develop:
"widespread manufacture" is a rather obfuscating term during this
era, as true "manufacturing" wouldn't have become "widespread"
until civilizations grew enough for demand to develop. Apparently
that was about 1500 BC
The civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, especially Mesopotamia
and Egypt, had been large and widespread (on and off) for at least
1500 years before 1500 BC. Mesopotamia had mercantile trading
colonies in upper Syria in the fourth millenium BC, and the Sumerians
had factories for manufacturing the textiles they traded for raw
materials, in the third millennium.
Also, the reference to the oldest known glass being from Egypt of
around 2000 BC (from the Bartleby link):
Ancient Glassmaking The place and date of origin of manufactured
glass are not known. The oldest known specimens of glass are from
Egypt (c.2000 B.C.), where the industry was well established c.1500
B.C.
is simply incorrect. Moorey (1994: p. 190) says: “Since Beck’s [C.
W. Beck, “Glass before 1500 BC,” Ancient Egypt and the East, 1934;
pp. 7-21], fundamental review of the evidence, published in 1934,
there has been remarkably little progress in the study of the
earliest glass reported from the Near East, though the database
slowly increases. Beck was able to list only seventeen objects, not
all of them of certain date, and not one of them a vessel, made
before about 1500 BC in Egypt or the Near East. Although the list may
be lengthened sixty years later, there is still no firm evidence for
vessel production before the middle of the second millennium BC. Most
of the early specimens were, and remain, beads found singly or in
relatively small groups. None of Beck’s examples, nor any of the
subsequent finds, may confidently be dated before the middle of the
third millennium BC. Beck’s main conclusion, that regular glass
production originated in Western Asia rather than in Egypt, has also
stood the test of time…”
Ah well, this is getting convoluted and probably of lesser interest
to the Orchid list! But I always love folks who are interested in
ancient history!
All the best,
Judy Bjorkman, B.Sc.(chemistry); B.D. (theology); M.A. (Oriental
Studies); Ph.D. (Ancient History).
For references to the wonderful glass artifacts excavated at the
northern Iraqi site of Nuzi, see my article, “How to Bury a Temple:
The Case of Nuzi’s Ishtar Temple A,” in D. I. Owen and G. Wilhelm
(eds.), Nuzi at Seventy-Five – Vol. 10 of the series, Studies on
the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and
the Hurrians (CDL Press; 1999) pp. 103-122.