WHAT WILL BE THE MONUMENT TO THE INVENTOR?


If any sculptor decided to create a monument to the inventor of the glass-blowing tube, he would be in great difficulty. How to portray this person? What people does he belong to? In what centuries and in what country did he live?

Glassblowers or Blacksmiths?
Glassblowers or Blacksmiths?
 In dozens of books that the sculptor will look through in search of answers to his questions, he will find the most contradictory information. Most often in books on the history of glass, he will come across such a picture: two half-naked people sit by the fire and blow in long narrow tubes. This drawing was found on the walls of one of the Egyptian tombs near the village of Beni Hassan. According to things found here, scientists have found that people who lived three and a half thousand years ago are buried in the tomb.

“Glassblowers are buried here. This image was made in memory of their art, ” - the scientists decided. This image began to be printed in books that told about the history of glass. It migrated from one century to another, is found even in modern books. But there were scientists who considered such an explanation a mistake.

Murano Glass
Murano Glass

- How so? - they objected. - To blow out of glass, it is necessary to make it liquid. And for this, you need a temperature of one and a half thousand degrees. The Egyptians did not know how to get such a high temperature. And blowing something out of a thick glass dough is also impossible, like blowing it out of honey.

Finally, one scientist managed to figure this out. He found similar images in other tombs. There were inscriptions, from which it became clear that half-naked people with long tubes are really not glassblowers, but blacksmiths. They make a fire to heat a piece of iron before forging. The content of the Beni Hassan drawing was explained. And the inventor of the glass-blowing tube was not found.

Margaret

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