Excerpt:
According to the Corning Museum of Glass web site, glass making was discovered by potters in Mesopotamia, within the area now known as the countries of Iraq and Syria."As early as 3,300 years ago, secret "instructions" for furnace building and glassmaking in Mesopotamia were written on clay tablets in a cuneiform alphabet. These instructions were copied and recopied over the centuries." (From the Corning Museum site.) A glimpse of glass making in the 4th Century A.D. is provided by a huge glass slab found in Beth Shearim, Israel. See below for more information about the Corning Museum web site.