Egyptian faience is a non-clay ceramic ware made in Egypt and the Near East from about 4000 BC. The composition is based on mixtures of powdered quartz or sand, often containing a lime impurity, with sodium and potassium salts, and a copper colorant. This ceramic has special optical properties which could not be achieved with clay bodies of the period. The earliest examples were made by stone-working methods, and the technology was developed independently of pottery-working traditions. The manufacture of Egyptian faience is analogous to modern high-tech ceramics in that a contrived non-clay composition was developed to produce desired novel properties for which new processing methods had to be developed. -- AATA