These were placed close to the fire, and the heat was sufficient to melt a portion of one of them, which, mixing with the siliceous sand at its base, produced a stream of glass.

There is nothing impossible or even very improbable in this story; but we may question whether the scene of it is rightly placed.

Glass was manufactured in Egypt many centuries before the probable date of the Phoenician occupation of the Mediterranean coast; and, if the honour of the invention is to be assigned to a particular people, the Egyptians would seem to have the best claim to it.

The process of glass-blowing is represented in tombs at Beni Hassan of very great antiquity,[829] and a specimen of Egyptian glass is in existence bearing the name of a Usurtasen, a king of the twelfth dynasty.[830] Natrum, moreover, was an Egyptian product, well known from a remote date, being the chief ingredient used in the various processes of embalming.[831] Phoenicia has no natrum, and not even any vegetable alkali readily procurable in considerable quantity.

There _may have been_ an accidental discovery of glass in Phoenicia, but priority of discovery belonged almost certainly to Egypt; and it is, upon the whole, most probable that Phoenicia derived from Egypt her knowledge both of the substance itself and of the method of making it.
Still, there can be no doubt that the manufacture was one on which the Phoenicians eagerly seized, and which they carried out on a large scale and very successfully.