Antike Gläser vom Bau der Bagdadbahn. Zur Herkunft einer Glassammlung im Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum in Mainz

Abstract

Ancient Glass Finds from the Construction of the Baghdad Railway.
On the Origins of a Glass Collection in the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz
Within the collections of the RGZM there is a group of 63 ancient glass objects discovered during the
construction of the Baghdad Railway in the area to the north of Aleppo. Through the mediation of Ernst
Lebach, a construction engineer from Darmstadt, they arrived in Mainz in the period 1912 to 1914. The
collection consists almost entirely of glass finds of the Roman Imperial period. The quality is good, although
no spectacular pieces are present. Together with a further 33 glass objects from Ottoman Turkey, which
arrived in Mainz in 1912 following arrangements by Theodor Wiegand, this has resulted in an inventory of
96 glass pieces from the Eastern Mediterranean region. It was the declared intention of the then museum’s
directorship (K. Schumacher, F. Behn) to obtain and investigate these objects as comparative material for the
numerous glass finds from the north-western provinces of the Roman Empire.