Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque white, with handles in same color; trails in translucent purple. Broad, flat rim-disk; short cylindrical neck; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided body with slight upward taper; convex bottom; below shoulder, two large vertical ring handles with vestigial knobbed tails applied over trail decoration. One trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another applied to neck and wound down in spiral, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern around middle of body; below this, a third trail wound twice horizontally around lower body. Broken and repaired, with parts of lower body missing; dulling and pitting. These glass vessels with opaque white bodies and purple threads have been found throughout the Greek world, but most examples are from cemeteries and sanctuaries in the eastern Mediterranean.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art