Natron is a natural mixture of sodium chloride, sodium sulphate, sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate found in the Nile Delta which has significant desiccation properties, but it is currently unclear if natron has further beneficial properties for the mummification process. It is widely believed that natron was the main desiccation agent in the preparation of Egyptian mummified bodies in the 18th Dynasty. In order to preserve the deceased in as lifelike condition as possible they developed artificial mummification to a high level of sophistication. Trade and for the supply of natron within and outside Egypt are discussed in the light of Pliny’s accounts.The ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife where the body of a dead person would be needed by the spirit. The implications for the identification of glass production sites, for the organisation of Glass, free of unreacted batch or bubbles, could have been produced from natron in its unprocessed form in a single stage, that larger quantities of natron would be required than has previously been anticipated, that the presence of different sodium-containing compounds in the deposit aided melting, and that negligible waste is produced. Here, natron from el-Barnugi in the Egyptian Nile delta, a site which also probably supplied Roman glassmakers, is used to produce glass.

Analyses of Egyptian natron have shown it to be a complex mixture of different sodium compounds, and previous experiments to make glass with Egyptian natron have been unsuccessful. His account of glassmaking with natron has since been corroborated by analyses of archaeological glass and the discovery of large-scale glass production sites where natron glass was made and then exported. Abstract : Pliny the Elder describes the discovery of a processfor making natron glass, which was widely used for much of the first millennium BC and AD.

Natron egypt