Fluted bottle with ring-handled lid

Fluted bottle with ring-handled lid

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Many artworks of the Roman Period in Egypt represent the taste of wealthy urban merchant and rich farming classes of Roman Egypt. Wide trade of luxury works is evident, and Greco-Roman style dominates. Since Egyptian pharaohs had first authorized Greek trading colonies and employed Greek mercenaries in the seventh century BC., there was a considerable Greek presence in Egypt. With Alexander's conquest, Macedonian Greek Ptolemies ruled as successors to the pharaohs, and Ptolemaic Greek and eastern Mediterranean soldiery was heavily settled in parts of Egypt. Although the Ptolemaic kings maintained traditional Egyptian religious and political forms, elite society, of mixed Greek and Egyptian descent, aspired to Greek culture in many respects. With the replacement of a Ptolemaic pharaoh in Memphis and Alexandria by a Roman emperor in Rome, the status of Greek culture and art, if anything, increased. However, multiple cultural influences were t play, and their reconciliation differed, depending on the identity of the patron and on whether personal, public, religious, or funerary purposes were in question. This handsome fluted bottle would have been a prized possession.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.