Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent purple but streaked with light blue especially around lower body, with handles and base-knob also in translucent light blue; trails in opaque yellow and turquoise blue. Inward-sloping rim-disk; cylindrical neck; uneven angular shoulder; ovoid body, tapering downwards to pointed bottom; applied small circular base-knob with rounded edge and small indent at center of slanting bottom; two strap handles applied to top of shoulder and drawn up and in, forming oval rings on sides of neck. One yellow trail attached at edge of rim-disk; another thick yellow trail applied to shoulder and wound in a spiral around to top of body, then tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern on upper body, where a turquoise blue trail is added, mingling with the yellow; below this, a third fine yellow trail wound horizontally twice around lower body. Intact; slight dulling and pitting, with small patches of iridescent weathering. Glass vessels such as these first appeared in the Greek world late in the sixth century B.C. They originally contained perfumes or scented oils used in funerary rites, after which the bottles were left in the grave.
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.