Simply red: A Late Bronze Age glass ingot from Amarna

•A ‘muddy’ turquoise-blue glass ingot from Amarna is a failed red glass.•Trace element ratios, ingot dimensions and comparative data give an Amarna provenance.•Glass production at Amarna centred on blue glass, but other colours were made.•Different political ideals of successive ruling elites influenced glass production/colour. Chemical analysis of a visually opaque, turquoise-blue ingot from the Late Bronze Age royal capital at Amarna, housed in the Garstang Museum, University of Liverpool, shows an excess of copper colourant which indicates that the intended colour was opaque red. Trace element analysis places the location of manufacture in Egypt, and the date, finds location, dimensions and analysis suggest that the glass was made at Amarna. This, coupled with other recent finds of ingots/part ingots at the site, suggests that Amarna was producing not only blue glass, but a variety of different colours in this early period of Egyptian glassmaking. Other royal locations, such as the later site at Qantir where red glass predominates, appear to specialise in specific colours. These findings suggest that the political and economic focus of different ruling elites during the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE) influenced the volume and range of colours of the glasses manufactured.