The glass amphora from Olbia: a fragile masterpiece

The famous amphora from Olbia is a masterpiece of Hellenistic glass making and with a height of nearly 60 cm, it is the largest glass vessel preserved from antiquity. The graceful design of the vessel fashioned out of completely bubble-free, once clear, pale green glass gives no indication of how difficult it must have been to make. At the time of manufacture, glass-blowing techniques had not yet been invented. The vessel consists of two parts, a wide sweeping body on a high base and the shoulder with an elongated neck and flared mouth, which fit together perfectly, the join covered by an ornate band of gilt copper. The lower and upper parts were made in several steps: the thin walls of the body and the bell-shaped foot were cast in moulds or perhaps the glass was slumped into a half-mould, and fused together while still hot with the help of a large rod. Likewise, the shoulder and lower part of the neck were cast as one part separately from the upper neck and then reheated and fused together; the ring circling the neck marks the join. This complicated and risky process explains the visible axial displacements between the foot and body as well as in the neck area. Two holes were drilled into the lower wall of the body with spouts shaped in the form of animals held by Satyrs for pouring the wine. They were hand beaten in sheet copper, chased and gilded, as were the masks and maple leaves, which were used to attach the long S-shaped handles made of curved glass canes to the shoulder and neck. The conical lid of the glass amphora is fashioned out of light yellow clear glass. It protrudes slightly over the rim and has no grooves to secure it in place. It is a replacement for the original lid, which must have broken. The spherical bud of gilded copper plate is attached to the crown through a drilled hole. Glass, the oldest artificial material in the world, is a mixture of silica and alkali in liquid form, one of which must have a high limestone (calcium carbonate) content to make it durable. Until the Roman period, raw glass was only manufactured in a few specialised centres in the Near East and Egypt, coloured or decolourised and transported in bars for further processing. Glass was already in use in the late third millennium BCE in Mesopotamia but the earliest known vessels stem from the 16th century BCE. Since the 8th century BCE, small bottles and cups have been made of clear glass melted in one-part moulds with a core that was removed after cooling, similar to the method used to make vessels of precious stone. Fine bowls were formed by melting glass beads in a mould or by lowering a prefabricated core into a half mould. The clear raw glass preferred for Hellenistic ornate glass objects probably came from Sidon, famous for its particularly pure mix made of Belos sand. In Jerusalem, the earliest attempts in glass blowing occurred around 75 BCE; the development of the glass blowpipe was a technical revolution that made cheap mass production possible for the first time. The Berlin glass amphora assumes the form of the late Panathenaic Prize Amphora made out of clay, countless examples of which have been uncovered in tombs from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE in and around Olbia. A wealthy citizen most likely commissioned it for entertaining and parties. To his guests it no doubt appeared as light and precious as rock crystal – one can imagine the lights at night-time reflected by the glass and metal and the sparkle of the wine served by the satyrs: a majestic vessel of unique sophistication.