Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opaque dark red brown, with handles in same color; trails in opaque yellow and opaque white. Slightly uneven horizontal rim-disk, with jagged edge to mouth; short cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; narrow rounded shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, tapering upwards; convex bottom; two large vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, applied over trail decoration; one higher than the other. A thick yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another yellow trail applied to base of neck together with a white trail, overlaid on the yellow; both wound in a close-set spiral around body to bottom; yellow trail ending in a swirl on bottom. Intact; very slight dulling, pitting, and weathering.

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