History of glass
The history of glass-making dates back to at least 3600 years ago in Mesopotamia. However, they may have been producing second-rate copies of glass objects from Egypt, where this complex craft originated. Other archaeological evidence suggests that the first true glass was made in coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or Egypt. The earliest known glass objects, of the mid second millennium BC, were beads, perhaps initially created as the accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing. Glass products remained a luxury until the disasters that overtook the late Bronze Age civilizations seemingly brought glass-making to a halt.
Hourglass
The origin of the hourglass is unclear. Its predecessor the clepsydra, or water clock, is known to have existed in Babylon and Egypt as early as the 16th century BCE. According to the "Journal of the British Archaeological Association" the so-called clepsammia were in use before the time of St. Jerome (335 CE), and the first potential representation of an hourglass is in a sarcophagus dated c. 350 CE, representing the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, discovered in Rome in the 18th century, and studied by Winckelmann in the 19th century, who remarked on the hourglass held by Morpheus in his hands However, it is disputed whether the object in question is a clepsammia or a similarly-shaped clepsydra; no other hourglass clearly appears in the historical record for another thousand years.