Levantine pioneering industry: Late 19th century CE glassmaking at the Mizgaga factory (Haifa, Israel)

Abstract

We investigate the glass produced at the late 19th century CE glass factory of Mizgaga near Haifa, modern-day Israel with two main questions in mind: firstly, to understand the raw materials used, and secondly to test for any technological relationship to contemporary glassmaking in Europe. We show that the silica source is similar to the sand exploited more than a millennium earlier for Roman and Byzantine glass making in the same region, but with a different lime source, while a modern, likely industrially-produced soda was used as flux, despite the proximity to the large mineral natron deposits in northern Egypt. The soda-lime-silica recipe has close similarities to contemporary European glass production, but differs in its soda content, resulting in a softer and overall easier to work glass, more suitable for the inexperienced labour force available at the time.