polished plate glass is produced

for the first time

One of the main ingredients for

glass is silicia. This was readily available on sites in the Ancient

Near East since it is the main constituent of desert sand.

There is a distinciton between

glass-making from its raw materials and glass-working from raw glass.

The first is considerable more

difficult than the second. Glass-making remained precarious well beyond the middle ot the nineteenth century AD!

The earliest known glass objects

are small beads which must have been extremely precious.