The recent discovery of an industrial complex in Egypt has led researchers to revise their conceptions over what level of advancement the Nile civilization had actually reached, with their advanced glass making abilities roving that the ancient Egyptian were technologically much more ahead of their time than scholars previously thought, according to livescience.com
The site at Amarna, is on the banks of the Nile and dates back to the reign of Akhenaton (1352-1336 BC), just a few years before the rule of Tutankhamun.
Historians have said Egyptians of that time imported their glass. But a team led by archeologist Paul Nikolson of Cardiff university in Wales has reconstructed a 3000 year-old glass furnace ,showing that ancient Egyptian glass making methods were much more advance than thought.
The researchers used local sand to produce a glass ingot from their own experimental reconstruction of an ancient furnace near the site.
They also have discovered that the glass works part of an industrial complex, as they have described it. The site contained a potter’s workshop and facilities for making blue pigment and materials used in the architectural inlays.