Ptolemaic Glass Inlays between Tradition and Innovation: a Closer Look at the Tebtynis Workshop

Inlays are among the most aesthetically pleasing and technically challenging glasses produced in the Ptolemaic period. This presentation will focus on the study of the Tebtynis (Fayum oasis, Egypt) inlay workshop and its materials, from an archaeological, technological and archaeometric point of view. The Tebtynis workshop stands as a landmark in vitreous materials studies, not only because it yielded a huge quantity of semi-finished and finished products, but mostly because it preserved the tools, the kiln and the room furniture which were used for glass-making. The location of the workshop and the planimetry of the structures were never published at the end of the dig in 1931, but the recent revision the archives of Carlo Anti, director of the excavations, offered the chance to obtain first-hand data about the discovery of the workshop and its materials, which will be discussed in relation to other coeval and earlier/ later contexts and analytical data. Special attention will be given to the technology of glass-forming, to the provenance and type of the raw materials and to the issue of glass-coloring, thanks to a multimethodological approach comprising textural, chemical and mineralogical analyses (OM, CLSM, SEM-EDS, EPMA and µ-Raman) on 144 samples carefully selected from the 800+ fragments from the site now at the Egyptian Museum of Turin (Italy). The results suggest a specialized craft of traditional origin, but open to innovation and experimentation, and point towards new hypotheses on the organization of the Ptolemaic glass industry.