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Although it is now known that glass was invented in Mesopotamia or Iran around 2000 BCE,
there is a myth about the discovery of glass that reaches back to Pliny the Elder, the Roman
author and philosopher. He claimed that Egyptian merchants carrying natron (a sodium
compound) brought their ships ashore at the mouth of the Belus River in Phoenicia. The
merchants used their natron cargo to build fire pits to hold up their cooking pots because there
were no stones to properly do so. Eventually, the fire caused the natron and sand from the
shore to fuse into glass. Even though it is a myth, the Romans did play a huge part in the
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In addition to storage of cosmetic oils, glass vessels were also used to store olive oil purposed
for cooking. Regardless of their place in the social order, Roman families would use olive oil in
their daily dinner preparations because dinner was a ritual shared by all facets of Roman
society.