and fired to a hard shiny finish. Faience was widely used from the Predynastic Period until Islamic times for inlays and small objects, especially ushabtis. More accurately termed 'glazed composition', Egyptian faience was so named by early Egyptologists after its superficial resemblance to the tin-glazed earthenwares of medieval Italy (originally produced at Faenza). The Egyptian word for it was tjehenet, which means 'dazzling', and it was probably used, above all, as a cheap substitute for more precious materials like turquoise and lapis lazuli. Indeed, faience was most commonly produced in shades of blue-green, although a large range of colours was possible. Glass Although the glassy materials faience and Egyptian blue were manufactured in Egypt from an early period, the technology for making glass itself was only perfected in the early 18th Dynasty. It was probably imported from Levant, since the Egyptian words for glass are of foreign origin. The funerary objects of Amenhotep II included many glass artefacts, demonstrating a range of different techniques. At this period, the material was costly and rare, and may have been a royal monopoly. However, by the end of the 18th Dynasty, Egypt probably made sufficient quantities to export glass to other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. Glass workshops have been excavated at Amarna and Pi-Ramesses. The raw materials – silica, alkali and lime – were readily available in Egypt, although ready-made ingots of blue glass were also imported from the Levant and have been found in the cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck off the southern coast of Turkey. Egyptian blue Egyptian blue is a material related to, but distinct from, faience and glass. Also called "frit", Egyptian blue was made from quartz, alkali, lime and one or more coloring agents (usually copper compounds). These were heated together until they fused to become a crystalline mass of uniform color (unlike faience in which the core and the surface layer are of different colors). Egyptian blue could be worked by hand or pressed into molds, to make statuettes and other small objects. It could also be ground to produce pigment. It is first attested in the Fourth Dynasty, but became particularly popular in the Ptolemaic period and the Roman period, when it was known as caeruleum. The color blue was used only sparingly even up until as late as Dynasty IV, where the color was found adorning mat-patterns in the Tomb of Saccara, which was