Mauretanian glassmakers in Roman Britain

There was no word in Latin for glass at the beginning of the first century of this era ¹, though glassware had been made and admired in the panhellenic world for a very long time.

Right: Glass found at Begram, Afghanistan, then part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom we at HHI describe as part of Greco-India.

The art of glassmaking was born in Akkadia in about 2400 BCE and it was a Semitic, and then a Jewish art for the next three millennia. ² The process of vitrification was discovered once only as far as we know.

Once made, glass is easily melted and reformed. The producers of the primary material retained their secret manufacturing process and the secret of this technology remained within the community of glassmakers until the medieval period.

The vital ingredient for making glass is natron (a relatively-pure form of soda) and the area between Cairo and Alexandria, known as Wadi-El-Natrun, was mined extensively for this, to be used in mummification, soap and glassmaking.

Left: Situation map of primary glass workshop sites. French archaeological survey (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France):

The Beni Salama site, located 14 kilometres east of the Wadi Natrun village, on the northern edge of the lakes, includes a series of hills formed by the accumulation of successive generations of basin furnaces, used for glass fusion. At the surface, bricks have been identified – covered with light-coloured and translucent glass when they come from the furnace vaults and an opaque vitreous material when they come from the basin walls and bottom – mixed in with layers of ash, as well as infinitesimal glass fragments. The geophysical prospecting (2000 and 2002) has shown the presence of large-scale hook-shaped magnetic anomalies, leading us to open a dig on the site in 2003.

A second site south of the lakes, Bir Hooker, was identified in 2002. It is located just south of the modern-day village of Wadi Natrun on the road leading to the monasteries, bordering a fossil dune currently mined as a quarry. The geophysical prospecting (2004) has indicated the presence of magnetic anomalies similar to those in Beni Salama and regular underlying occupation (village?). The ceramological prospecting has made it possible to date the occupation between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AC. The partial destruction of some of the rubbish mounds by bulldozers has made it possible to observe the mounds’ stratigraphy, where layers of ashes alternate with layer of bricks from dismantled vaulted ceilings and walls.

The third site, again south of the lakes, is located 10 km northwest of the village Wadi Natrun, in the locality Zakik. This is the site referred to in Description of Egypt in the paper the General Andreossy dedicated to the Wadi Natrun Region (Modern State, XII, p. 1-40; Atlas, pl. 26). It later appears on the majority of the maps of Egypt produced in the 19th century and was visited in 1843 by English Egyptologist Gardner Wilkinson, who made a watercolour of it and described it in his work Modern Egypt and Thebes. The site contains some of the same type of waste as in Beni Salama and Bir Hooker, but the geophysical prospecting carried out in 2002 yielded but little information, as a village involved in natron mining had settled on the rubbish mounds at the start of the 19th century.

Glass in the Greco-Roman world was made only by Jews and others may have melted and reworked imported raw glass or locally-collected cullet.

Glass was made at a relatively small number of centres, mainly in the East and North Africa, and then traded to a much larger number of glass-houses throughout the empire, where it was used alongside cullet as the raw material for vessels and windows.

Glass window pane made 1-70 CE, about 3 mm thick.
From a house built before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79, which destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Hamilton Collection, British Museum

Windows on the past

Reworking glass requires a lower temperature than founding new glass. More than 20 archaeological sites have been identified in Roman London, in which glass was reworked. ³ None have been found where glass was made.

Archaeologists had more or less given up expecting to find evidence of glassmaking in Britain, when in Yorkshire:

… exploration on the site of demolished houses in Welbeck Street located an industrial area in the vicus outside the south gate of the fort. Many glass wasters were found, all unstratified. Pottery suggests occupation from the mid-2nd century. ⁴

This was the beginning of a history so surprising that English Heritage paid for a review, which confirmed that glass was being made in Northern Britain, in the Roman period.

The Place of the Bottlemakers

The Roman fort of Lagentium appears twice in the Antonine Itinerary, as well as in the Fifth Itinerary as Legeolio and in Iter VIII "The Route from Eburacum to Londinium". The fort underlies the town centre of Castleford in West Yorkshire, on the south bank of the River Aire, where the stream was forded by the main Roman road running between the Colonies at Lindum (Lincoln, Lincolnshire) and Eburacum (York, Yorkshire).

The Roman name of Lagentium for the fort derives from the Latin lagenae 'bottles, flasks'. The modern name of Castleford also tells of its strategic position.

The founding vessels indicated glassmaking, then archaeological excavation at nearby Eburacum (York) revealed certainty.

Legio VI Victrix

Coppergate was made famous through the archaeological discoveries in 1982 of Viking settlement and industry. ⁵

The modern name of this city comes from the Viking Jorvik and the Old Norse placename Konungsgurtha, Kings Court, recorded in the late fourteenth century in relation to an area immediately outside the site of the porta principalis sinistra, the west gatehouse of the Roman encampment, perpetuated today as King's Square, perhaps indicates a Viking royal palace site based on the remains of the east gate of the Roman fortress. ⁶

York was founded in 71 CE when Cerialis and the Ninth Legion constructed a military fortress (castra) on flat ground above the River Ouse near its junction with the River Foss. The fortress was later rebuilt in stone, covered an area of 50 acres, and was inhabited by 6,000 soldiers. Much of the Roman fortress lies under the foundations of York Minster and excavations in the Minster's undercroft have revealed some of the original walls. ⁷

At some time between 109 and 122, the garrison of the Ninth Legion was replaced by the Sixth Legion. Legio sexta Victrix (Sixth Victorious Legion) was a Roman legion founded by Octavian in 41 BCE. It was the twin legion of VI Ferrata and perhaps held veterans of that legion, while some soldiers kept to the traditions of the Caesarian legion.

The name Victrix dates from the first half of the first century CE and is attested for the first time during the reign of Nero. In 67, Lucius Clodius Macer of Africa and Gaius Julius Vindex of one of the provinces in Gaul, supported the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, Servius Sulpicius Galba, when he announced that he wanted to dethrone Nero. Later, he was proclaimed emperor in the legionary camp of VI Victrix.

In January 69, the commander of the army of Germania Inferior, Vitellius, marched on Rome with the Rhine army, though Galba was lynched by soldiers and was succeeded by Otho, who in turn was defeated at Cremona. Vitellius then managed to become emperor (April 69), until he was defeated by Vespasian, the commander of the Roman army in Judaea, putting down the First Jewish Revolt.

Meanwhile, the Batavians revolted on the weakened Rhine border and Vespasian sent a large expeditionary force to the north. This force included VI Victrix and the Roman victory at Xanten is commemorated in an inscription mentioning the new emperor and the commander of the sixth legion, Sextus Caelius Tuscus.

At History Hunters International, we have described the history for this period as the dynastic struggle for power, as expressed in economic and religious terms. The sharp end of the power, though, is the sword. The Sixth Legion therefore can be seen as having taken an important part in the deposition of Nero, then as reliable soldiers of the first Flavian emperor, Vespasian. 

Dedication to Sol Invictus by a vexillatio of the VIth, (Corbridge, Northumberland, 162-168).
Roman Inscription, Corbridge, Northumberland RIB 1137 (date: 162-8) SOLI INVICTO VEXILLATIO LEG VI VIC P F F SVB CVRA SEX CALPVRNI AGRICO LAE LEG AVG PR PR "To the Invincible Sun-god, a detachment of the Sixth Legion, Victorious, Loyal and Faithful (set this up) under the command of Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, Legate of the Augustus with pro-praetorian power."

One part of Roman York lay on the north-east bank of the Ouse and the other on the south-west bank. By the early third century this settlement had become a provincial capital and acquired the status of a colonia, at least showing that York had received a measure of imperial favour denied to most other places in Britain. This dual character, with military and civilian sites of the highest rank side by side, makes Eboracum unique in Britain.

The earliest written reference to York is datable to about the year 100 and occurs as an address on one of the famous wooden writing tablets from Vindolanda, a fort near Hadrian’s Wall. In 2002, two previously unrecorded Roman camps were discovered by aerial photography at Monk’s Cross, about 5km (3 miles) north-east of York ; one was excavated and dated to the Hadrianic period thereby prompting a renewed evaluation of York’s role at this crucial period in the history of Roman Britain. ⁸

In 121, the emperor Hadrian visited Germania Inferior, where he ordered the construction of the Lower Rhine limes. The building activities were led by the governor, Platorius Nepos, a personal friend of Hadrian. Next year, the emperor visited Britain and took VI Victrix with him, together with Platorius, who now became governor of Britain.

The soldiers of the Sixth Legion were now to build the British limes (Hadrian's wall) and their new base was York, close to the wall. They built the section between Newcastle and Carlisle, and a bridge across the river Tyne near Newcastle. ⁹

Pons Aelius was an auxiliary castra and Roman settlement on Hadrian's Wall.
A birdseye view of the fort and surrounding area.
The bridge gained the name Aelius after Hadrian's family name and the town which grew up here may also have been of that name. Roman ships used the Tyne and no doubt supplies and soldiers and civilians reached the Roman settlements in the north by sea, sailing to the important fort at South Shields called Arbeia, quite close to Wallsend at the wall's eastern end. Roman settlements further south would also be linked to the new base on the Tyne via the bridge.

Later (between 139 and 142), units of VI Victrix helped constructing the Antonine wall, between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Glassmakers of the Legion

The North African legionaries at York appear to have been drawn from the area of modern Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. ¹⁰

A study of the archaeology of glassmaking in York is Glass-Making and the Sixth Legion at York, by H. E. M. Cool, C. M. Jackson, Jason Monaghan (Britannia, Vol. 30 (1999), pp. 147-162), from which is drawn much of the following information:

• The debris relating to the glass industry consists of approximately 3 kg of sherds from pottery vessels that had been used as receptacles to melt glass, some block of what appeared to be semi-reacted batch materials suggesting that glass was being manufactured from raw ingredients, and a small quantity of glass fragments of the sort usually associated with glass-blowing.
• At Coppergate all of the Roman deposits were designated Period I and these were followed by a period of abandonment lasting to the mid-ninth century (Period 2).
• …evidence of the manufacture of glass from raw materials…English Heritage agreed to fund a programme of scientific analysis to explore the material and to cast light on the glass-making episode…glass was indeed being made on the site, but that the glass-blowing debris may not have been connected with this.
• The glass-melting pots provide the best evidence for the date of the glass-making activity:

There were 187 potsherds with glass adhering to them, if the fragments of glass which merely retained a ceramic coating from sloughing off the surface of a vessel are excluded. Of the 187 fragments, 179 were of Ebor ware with 12 of these having a white slip and a further four sherds either exhibiting a white slip or being flux-stained. There were also five fragments of other oxidised fabrics and three grey fragments, though the latter may be discoloured. Ebor ware was the product of the local coarse-ware pottery industry at York, manufactured between c. 71 and 225-50, although white-slipped Ebor ware had died out by c. 200.

• The physical location of Coppergate close to the fortress in an area where there is evidence for military industrial activity suggests the glass-working activity at the site may have been carried out by the legion.

This is not all, for where the legion was based whilst pacifying the Batavians – the canabae legionis at Nijmegen ¹¹, archaeologists found much evidence of glassmaking. Further, the location of the pits in the canabae has a similar broad spatial relationship to the fortress at Nijmegen, as Coppergate has to the fortress at York. On both typological and stratigraphic grounds, the burial of the Nijmegen glass appears to have taken place at the beginning of the second century ¹².

Why should anyone at York decide to make glass? One explanation may lie in the special circumstances pertaining in York in the late second to early third centuries. It has been recognised for some time that Ebor ware of that time appears to be imitating North African forms, and it has recently been pointed out that the forms being imitated are specialist cooking-vessels. This must reflect the arrival of North African soldiers amongst the garrison of York who required specialist vessels to be able to cook their favourite food. Thus, at the time the Coppergate glass-making and melting activity was being carried out, there was a North African contingent in the York garrison substantial enough to have had an impact on the local pottery production. Amongst these North African legionaries, could there have been individuals who were familiar with the process of making glass from the raw ingredients?

Glass beaker from second half of the 4th century. The style is called diatret.
The characters at the top: "Bibe multis annis" short for "Bibe vivas multis annis" (Drink and you will live for many years").
One of about 50 found in Cologne, now in the Staatliche Antikensammlung Munich.

North Africa

As glass was made only by Jews, Jews used natron from Wadi-El-Natrun to make glass, and North African glassmakers served in the Sixth legion, then it is logical to conclude that these too were Jewish.

On what basis were Jews from North Africa serving in the Sixth Legion at the beginning of the second century?

This question has to be asked, if only because this is the period of the three Jewish-Roman wars and the Second Jewish-Roman War, known as the Kitos Revolt (ca. 115-117), named after the Roman general Lusius Quietus, began in North Africa.

The revolt began in the North African province of Cyrenaica and soon spread to Egypt and then Cyprus, inciting revolt in Judea.

Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two, from the head downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators. In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt, also, they performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished. For this reason no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon the island by force of the wind, he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan.
- Dio's Rome, Volume V., Book 68, paragraph 32

A widespread uprising centred at Lydda threatened grain supplies from Egypt to the front. The Jewish insurrection swiftly spread to the recently conquered provinces. Greek, Roman and Jewish population centres were devastated and afterwards, Rome had to re-establish them entirely.

In 132, the third and final Jewish-Roman War broke out, with greater losses.

That the Roman army would employ in Jews, or North African Jews would seek employment in the Roman army during this contentious period begs explanation.

Four steeds pull the chariot bearing the sun god Helios
Sepphoris synagogue

Proto-Rabbinic Judaism

The image of Sol – Helios – has been found in recent years by archaeologists in a number of early synagogues and you will note the Sol image (supra) for the Sixth Legion at Corbridge, Northumberland. We are faced with the stark realization that Judaism in the period post-Kitos is not yet the Rabbinic Judaism we have come to know.

Jerusalem Talmud, from the Cairo Geniza: "In the days of Rabbi Johanan they permitted images [tzayirin] on its walls, and he did not stop them. In the days of R. Abun they permitted images on mosaics, and he did not stop them."

The situation changes radically from the third century: A broad repertoire of images appear within Jewish contexts, including both Jewish symbols and blatantly pagan images. Discovery of the synagogues of Naaran, Beit Alpha, the necropolis of Beit Sheraim, and, most important, the synagogue of Dura Europos in Syria, has provided evidence that Jews during late antiquity often interpreted the Second Commandment in a more liberal manner. ¹³

This liberalism is Hellenistic, the pervasive influence against which observant Jews had resisted since 168 BCE and why they fought the three Jewish-Roman wars inside less than a century. The resistance was the driving force behind the Maccabees, the Essenes, the zealots and sicarii, and Messianic Judaism. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain much documentary evidence for the theological basis of this resistance.

The War of the Messiah is a series of Dead Sea scroll fragments describing the conclusion of a battle led by the Leader of the Congregation. The fragments that make up this document include 4Q285, also known as The Pierced Messiah Text, and 11Q14 with which it was found to coincide. It is possible that it also represents the conclusion of the War Scroll ¹⁴.

The situation revealed by archaeology of Jews of North Africa either serving with, or working alongside Roman legions in this period is almost incredulous, unless one can provide an explanation for how these glassmakers were sympathetic to the army that was literally crucifying their fellow compatriots en masse.

Inside the the nuns' monastery known as Monastery of Glass “Dir El-. Zugag” at Taposiris Magna (a little west of Alexandria, Egypt), the archaeologist G. Vörös found a furnace for making glass. This suggests that Jews from the Wadi-El-Natrun area were at least comfortable within this early-Christian monastic community.

The Lake Mareotis Research Project has found that the shores of the lake embraced major production centres for different industries such as glass, pottery and wine, which contributed significantly to the economy of Alexandria and of Egypt as a whole.

This massive production from the early-Roman period, when the large Jewish community in Alexandria was flourishing and Jewish craftsmen of Wadi-el-Natrun were producing glassware for the empire, continues into the Byzantine period, of the Coptic 'Desert Fathers' and the establishment of the earliest Christian monasteries – in the same area.

Pottery wasters and amphora sherds from the shore of lake. Lake Mareotis Research Project

In Roman Britain, North African amphorae occur in the second half of the second century ¹⁵ at:

1. Exeter ¹⁶
2. Caerleon ¹⁷
3. West Tenter Street, London ¹⁸
4. Slaughter House, Winchester ¹⁹
5. York ²⁰

They become more common during the course of the third and fourth centuries. The accession as emperor of the African Septimius Severus at the end of the second century and the relative proximity of Africa to the large market of Rome, both seem to have played a large part in boosting the exports of African olive-oil around the Mediterranean. ²¹

The mirage

The Desert Fathers were hermits, ascetics and monks who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt, beginning around the third century CE.. Coptic tradition has long assumed that a major source for the mass of Christians flooding into the Scetes Desert – from which is derived the term ascetics – has been Jewish converts. Certainly, the sizable Jewish populations shrank rapidly.

There is a difference of time, through, of a full century between the North African Jews making glass in the Roman legions (early second century) and the first Christian ascetics appearing at Wadi-El-Natrun (early third century). It is during this period that fully-functioning, recognisable synagogues appear, with their Ptolemaic zodiacs and Helios images, indicating a form of Judaism different to that of the Second-Temple period and for which we at History Hunters International have coined the term Proto-Rabbinic Judaism.

There are no sure Christian structures in the early-second century. They also first appear later.

My colleague is describing how Hadrian created a new religion and so far we have:

1. The Gospels According to Hadrian (part one)
2. The Gospels of Hadrian Part II: Death on the Nile
3. The Gospels According to Hadrian, Part III: The Aelian Canon and the Main Hand of God

Right: inscribed 'magic' bowl found in 2008, by the divers of Franck Goddio in Alexandria’s Eastern Harbour. It reads: DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS and was used probably in the first century. This Chrst and the Chrestiani of first-century inscriptions and graffiti are perhaps precursors of the Jesus Christ movement appearing under Hadrian and yet, there is still no archaeological evidence for a recognisably-Christian Church at this time, in Rome or anywhere else.

There is therefore a possibility that whatever changes are being undergone in Judaism in this period, which allows Jews to be recruited in North Africa for duty with Roman legions, whilst at the same time and in the same place, Messianic Jews are tearing apart Greco-Roman society and in a most-bloody fashion, they describe new developments. These become visible in the novelty of synagogues, with Helios-Mithras as their focus, the abundant evidences for Greek magic and the appearance of a cloud of divine men across the panhellenic world.

How this new faith has been missed by generations of scholars may warrant a study of its own, but some are now beginning to realise the false assumptions, false histories and false archaeology use to buttress traditional viewpoints.

Three quotes from a recent doctoral thesis ²²:

(i) One need but think of the roles of Apollo and Sol in Augustan religion, the range of symbolic meanings attached to the imperial radiate crown, the rise of Mithraism, the particular interest in Sol expressed by emperors such as Aurelian and Constantine, or the adoption by Christians of the winter solstice as birthday of Christ, to realize that the sun is a topic of considerable interest to the history of Roman religion and culture.
- Chapter 2, Classical Art, Roman Religion, and Visual Meanings

(ii) This remarkable idea that there had been two distinct sun gods in Rome has been the dominant view in Classical scholarship for well over a century. Nonetheless, this is a modern myth for which there is quite simply no evidence. The evidence we do have suggests, either implicitly or explicitly, that the Romans had venerated Sol as a Roman god for as long as they could recall, and never ceased to do so until the demise of polytheism. This then is the stark conclusion with which we preface this chapter, namely that generations of classicists have ignored the evidence we have for solar worship in Rome, and in particular for the Roman nature of the sun god Sol and the continuity of his cult in Rome, in favour of a mirage.

(iii) As a result, the role of the sun in Greek and early Roman religion has tended to be downplayed, culturally as well as religiously, to a greater extent than the evidence warrants. Conversely the evidence for solar cult in late antiquity, and notably for the half-century from Aurelian to Constantine, is commonly exaggerated to the point that Roman religion is sometimes portrayed as centring on Sol in an almost monotheistic fashion. As we shall see, both views are overstatements.
- Chapter 1, Sol in the Roman Empire: Previous Research, General Trends. A Brief Survey of the Status Quaestionis.

A mirage is what traditional history for Classical Antiquity has always been and that is the ethereal foundation upon which Western Civilisation rests.

The relationships formed by Cleopatra VII with first, Julius Caesar and then Mark Anthony, ensured that the Ptolemaic dynasty, though unseated, was not destroyed by Rome. The sycretisms of Persian, Greek, Greco-Roman, Roman and then Coptic faiths – as noted here, at the Kharga Oasis for example – continued uninterrupted across the centuries, in spite of and maybe because of, this series of cultural shifts.

Gold coin of Kanishka I with the Hellenistic divinity Helios. Ca. 120 CE

The Egyptian Alexandria was part of a network of Alexandrias across the panhellenic world, linked by trade routes of land and sea. For all that Hadrian created, he did not conjure up all the many divine men appearing at this time, nor even the method of their divination. His approach was to use this ritualistic methodology – and the life of his Antinous – to impose a Final Solution on what he perceived as a threat to imperial wealth, security and authority.

If Hadrian had failed, it must be doubtful that his legions could have attracted North African Jews at this juncture. Conversely, the appearance of legionary glassmaking at Nijmegen and York is a sign of his strategy succeeding. This success, as the archaeology and historical record tell us, stabilised the empire for a period and more importantly, for us today, produced two new faiths of worldwide importance.

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