Not surprisingly, the potentials of glass were

not immediately realized, and the initial

stages produced only beads and other small

objects, formed or cast using simple tools and

finished by stoneworkers' techniques. Few

glass items of any kind are known from

anywhere until the first vessels were made in

western Asia sometime before 1500 BCE.

Shortly thereafter, in the fifteenth century

BCE, the Egyptian industry was born. About

this time, too, treatises on glassmaking occur

in Mesopotamian written sources. A little

later glass is manufactured in the Greek isles

and on the mainland. The Hellenistic period

saw the glass industry flourishing as never

before. In the Roman period, glass objects

came to take a central place in everyday life,

from the lady-of-the house's cosmetic

preparations each morning to the setting of

the table for the evening meal. By the

beginning of the second century CE, it has

been estimated that the glass industry were

producing as many as one hundred million

items of glassware year-in and year-out to

satisfy the empire's domestic demands.