Fluted glass bottle

This glass bottle was discovered by the excavator Leonard Woolley in a grave at Ur dating to the Kassite period. It was made from dark brown glass moulded on a core and decorated with a turquoise blue thread wound around the vessel. The hot glass was then combed to create a chevron pattern and fluted body. The original dark brown colour is preserved in parts of the neck and a few sections of the body but most of the glass has weathered to a grey colour/. The turquoise blue thread decoration has partly faded. Small parts of the body, neck and larger parts of the rim are restored. Similar fluted bottles from the fifteenth to the fourteenth centuries BC have been found in northern Mesopotamia at Ashur, Nuzi, and Nineveh as well as further west at Alalakh. The origin and beginnings of glass making are only vaguely known. Glass is one of the earliest artificial materials made by man. Glazed objects are known in Mesopotamia from the late third millennium BC. However, it was not until around 1600 BC that technological changes in the manufacture of glass appeared which, with the use of special tools and the use of different metal oxides to provide a range of colours, led to the expansion of the technology. The glass objects were either made in a mould or the liquid glass poured over a core which was later removed. By the mid-second millennium BC marbled and mosaic glass had been invented.